Winter Forecasts

After spending a week on the beach with 70 degree temperatures it has been a little bit of a shock to come back to the cold November weather. Last Sunday I ended up doing Jims's Ride. And this week I lead a ride from Bordentown. On both rides the temps were in the low 40s. Jim's ride was a little colder and cloudier but both were normal fall rides. As long as you were dressed correctly you could stay warm. There is that annoyance factor of riding in the cold of having to decide what to wear so that you are neither too hot or too cold and then dealing with the either being a little too hot or too cold during the ride itself.

Some people stop riding when it gets too cold. Others go down to Florida but neither is an option for me. I will just ride through the cold winter weather as best I can and try to have some fun doing it. These cold rides got be looking at the long range winter forecasts and the outlook is not promising. Both the Farmers Almanac and NBC10s long range forecasts are the same. They both call for a cold and snowy winter. I don't put a lot of faith in these long range forecasts as the models are very complicated and not very accurate. In fact there are more ways their models could be wrong than right. However with that said all the predictions seem to be in agreement so I believe them a little more than I normally do(especially after getting 5 inches of snow this week).

Because of that and because is was sunny for most of the ride. I decided to extend Saturday's ride a few miles and go around Mirror Lake in Browns Mills. We stopped for a few pictures as we rarely go around the lake. We ended up with close to 50 miles. It was a little cold on the way back because of some clouds and a stiff wind. I'm glad we put in the extra miles because base on the long range forecast this may be the warmest and longest ride we do for a while. 

A Relaxing Week on the Grand Strand

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Because my wife was off from work and I had a few extra vacation days this year we decided to take a trip south to a beach to get a few more days of warm weather. We went to the Myrtle Beach area (also known as the Grand Strand). It was close enough to drive to but far enough to be 10-15 degrees warmer than home. Because we took our dog with us we decided to rent a house instead of a hotel room. The small house we rented was in an ocean side retirement community. The reason for renting in a retirement community was that it looked like a nice quiet place and it had an indoor pool we could go to if the weather wasn't warm enough to be outside.

This was meant to be a relaxing vacation to de-stress from our normal life. The house we rented ended up being your typical shore house. It was a little worn in spots but comfortable. The houses in the community are very close to each other but since these are vacation homes with mostly retired people it is one of the quietest places I have even been. About half the houses are empty and the people that are here aren't very active. Its so quiet that I could hear the ocean waves from the porch and the ocean is a couple of blocks away.

In this community everybody rides around on golf carts to get to the beach or the pool or the community center. It was very strange at first but our house came with its own electric golf cart and once we used it to get to the pool or beach it made total sense. It was just so much easier to jump on the cart and go some place. In fact at Myrtle Beach you can even take your golf cart on the beach.

The weather was actually sunny and warm enough to get some beach time and while we were sitting on the beach people were driving by in carts. The beach is very hard sand so it would actually be possible to ride a bike on the beach as long as you had wider tires.

Besides the beach there are a lot of attractions to keep people busy. There are amusements and rides an of course lots of shopping. On one of the cloudier days we spent a couple of hours at an outdoor mall walking around and visiting the local aquarium. It was small but had some interesting exhibits like some cool looking jelly fish.

They also had the usual large tank with sharks and stingrays which we enjoyed sitting around and staring at for a while.  The mall was built around a large lake which was filled with catfish that you could feed. They were well trained because if you looked over the railing you would see a bunch of catfish opening their mouths waiting for you to drop some pellets. It was actually a little scary looking at them and reminded me of a couple of horror movies that I had seen.

This place like all vacation spots is filled with places to eat. Being by the shore means there are a lot of seafood places. Being in the south means a lot of fried food. This included hush puppies which is fried cornbread. I have had hush puppies before but the ones in Myrtle Beach are the best I've ever had, especially went pair with cinnamon butter. I'm sure my arteries are a little more clogged than they were a week ago.

While driving around looking for a place to eat we found an interesting biker bar name Suck, Bang, Blow.

I know the name sounds like the plot to every porn movie but its actually referring to the internal combustion of a motorcycle engine (intake, combustion exhaust). I didn't have enough tattoos to stop in for a drink.

The weather for week ended up being better than expected as we had only one day where it rained. That let us get to the beach for a couple of hours most days. I also took a few hikes since there are not any good places to bike around here. The best hike I took was in Huntington State Park. This park is mostly marshland by the ocean and is filled with birds like egrets and storks. I spent a couple hours walking around the trails taking pictures of birds.

In New Jersey you are lucky if you get a fleeting glimpse of a heron. In Huntington State Park there are at least 10 or 20 egrets or storks in view most of the time along with a lot of other birds.

It was a good relaxing week that was a welcome break from the normal grind of life. We enjoyed our time in Myrtle Beach and at the retirement community. It's definitely a place we may come back to if we need to get away and relax a little.