FUCK 2020!!!

 

 Nobody is going to have fond memories of 2020. It was a horrible year for a number of reasons. The main reason of course was the pandemic. Although we knew about Covid-19 last January nobody really understood how bad it was until March when the case and death count rose dramatically and it was officially declared a pandemic. As of today John Hopkins website shows that over 1.8 million people have died world wide with over 342,000 in the US alone. That is a lot of tragic stories of fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and friends dying an untimely death. And unfortunately it is not over as the case and hospitalizations are at an all time high and we are setting new records almost daily.

There is some good news as there are now a couple of vaccines available that should help stop the pandemic but it may be a few months before enough people are vaccinated to see a drop in cases and deaths. This means the first few months of 2021 are going to be a continuation of 2020 but at least there is hope that 2021 will be a year of improvement and healing. 

The pandemic was not the only thing that made 2020 a bad year. There were months of civil unrest because of the inequality in our country as highlighted by the death of George Floyd, Breonna Talyor and too many others. On top of that there were horrible wild fires in the west that burned millions of acres and thousands of home. There was a record number of hurricanes this year. Its like nature is angry at us. And there were of course Murder Hornets invading the US. 

On a personal note I lost my mother in January which was a sad start to the year. As the pandemic set it I was anxious of course but I was already working remote so it wasn't as big a change for me as for other people. My wife and I have taken a very cautious approach to the pandemic and have limited our contact to a very small circle of friends and family and this has kept us safe and disease free but has meant no vacations or family gatherings (Although to be honest I don't miss certain members of my family that much). 

I do know a few friends who got Covid but luckily none has had a bad case so I have yet to be directly impacted in any big way by the pandemic. My heart does go out the people who lost loved ones and are struggling because or lost wages or jobs. I know things will get better soon but it is a very painful time for a lot of people that is going to leave scars that we will all need to help heal (especially the nurses and doctors that are on the front lines of this). 

I am thankful during this year that I had the insane bike posse as it helped keep me sane. It was just good to get out and do something almost normal. In the beginning of the pandemic we stopped riding together but as we got more information about the virus and how it spread we found ways to safely ride together like most other bike groups. 

Because of the pandemic we didn't do any bike trips this year but we did go to a few places in NJ that we haven't been in a while and is something we will continue next year. We also got together on Zoom meetings like most other people. Initially it was to check in with each other and talk about the pandemic and how to safely ride together. We kept it going most of the year to keep some type of social interaction going. This year has been the most fucked up year of my life but I'm glad I had my bike and a few friends to make this year a little more bearable.

 

O Holy Night

With Christmas comes the story of the birth of Jesus. According to the story there was a bright star that guided the Magi to the manger where Jesus was born. Astronomers have asked themselves if there was some celestial event that would explain this bright star. There were some planetary conjunctions and some reports of comets within a few year of when Jesus was suppose to be born. One of these conjunctions was the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn which also appeared this year around Christmas. 

I have been watching the sky for the past couple of weeks and got a few good pictures just after sunset from my house. 

The one about was taken on Dec 17th. You can see the Moon on the top left and Jupiter and Saturn just above the trees on the right. Jupiter is the brighter one. I watched Jupiter and Saturn get a little close each day. Here is picture I grabbed from https://spaceweathergallery.com/ showing Jupiter and Saturn getting closer. Click on it to zoom in.

The actual conjunction was on Dec 21 where the planets would be within 0.10 degrees of each other. The planets haven't bee this close in 800 years. Unfortunately on Dec 21 it was just too cloudy to get a shot but here is another one from https://spaceweathergallery.com/ show what it looked like. 

You can see Jupiter and Saturn in the top middle of the photo. The inset on the top left shows you a close up where you can see the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter. 

I did get a few picture on Dec 22 where Jupiter and Saturn were almost as close. Saturn is now to the right and below Jupiter. The wide angle shot is at the top of this post. There were clouds around so there only a few opens to get the some pictures. 

I did get a good close up of the conjunction on Dec 22. Saturn looks a little elongated because of the rings and the glare around Jupiter is actually the moons. This is a pretty good picture from a point and shoot camera.

I also got an couple of shots on Dec 23 from my house. 

I'm not sure why these type of planetary conjunctions generate so much interest as they are just two points of lights converging in the sky. But these conjunctions have interested people for thousands of years and is one of the reasons the field of astronomy exists. Originally these conjunctions were thought predict some important event and if that is the case lets hope this conjunction means better things for next year.

Snow Day

 

The weather for December has been a mixed bag. It started off with a cold weekend that was too cold to do a road ride so we ended up on the LHT trail. The LHT trail is continually being improved so its always nice to take a ride and see if anything has changed. The main change they made recently was around Rosedale park where they added a couple of bridges to get rid of some messy and dangerous parts of the trail. 

Last weekend I ended up two road rides on my own as the weather was warmed up and almost hit 60 on my Sunday ride. 

This week we got 4-6 inches of snow and after the storm it stay cold so none of us wanted to get out on the road. Laura suggested Tyler State Park and we all agreed. Tyler State Park has a series of paved paths that they keep plowed in the winter so its one of the few places that you can ride after a snow storm safely. 

It was 24 degrees when we all got there at 10am. I had my warmest gear on and once we got started it was warm enough. I have a nine mile loop around the park that we usually do twice. However once we crossed the dam over the Neshaminy Creek and headed up the hill we found that not all of the paths were plowed. We usually go down to the covered bridge but that path was still snow covered with just a couple of ruts in it from a truck that went down it. I went about a quarter mile down the snow to see if it was possible to get the bridge but turn around as it would have been an ice mess trying to get back up the hill. 

Usually we take a path that dumps us into a neighborhood and then take a path back into the park. However the path back into park wasn't plowed either so  we ended up taking side streets through the neighborhoods and a golf course to get back to a paved park path. 

While going through the neighborhoods we hear a lot of loud sirens. It sounded as it was a mass causality event but it ended up just being the local firehouse Santa parade. 

We eventually made our way back into the park paths but had to make one last detour on the local roads to get back to the start. We only have about 10 miles in so we did another small loop around the park this time keeping to the paths we knew were open. We ended up with close 14 miles and 800ft of climbing so it was a good work out. The weather looks cold for the rest of the year but I'm sure we will get a few more rides in before the new year.

Sunny November Rides

 

Although the weather has gotten colder as we get closer to winter there have been some sunny days that have allowed me to get some long rides in. At this time of year nobody wants to drive to far from home so all the rides have been local within about 10 miles of my house. In the last few Saturdays we have done rides in the 50 mile range and not too hilly. A few weeks ago we did my Jackson Wawa run and this week on a Friday ride we headed to Farmingdale. A couple of weeks ago we crossed over Rt1 on one of my stupider routes. 

Because of the pandemic it is easier to get across Rt1 so I have done that more often this year. Even through I have ridden these roads many times there are still things to discover. I tried to use a few interesting bike paths to do something different. We started off on the Trolley Line trail in West Windsor and then headed through Plainsboro to get to Rt1 and crossed at New Rd. On the way back we headed back across Rt1 at Harrison and through the old Sarnoff labs. 

There are a lot of cool little paths in NJ and there are more every year. One of my favorites it the LHT which is constantly being improved. I was off the day before Thanksgiving and did a 30 mile trail ride down to Trenton through Pennington and back along the LHT. It was a long ride for a mountain bike ride but I was trying to burn some extra calories before Thanksgiving although this years celebration involved much less food and people than normal.

I know that there will be some tough cold months ahead where it will be harder to ride for a couple of different reasons. However I know there there will always be a few sunny days that will allow me to keep riding until and getting together with the posse that will get me through the winter.

A Couple of Silly Rides

 

As this has been a stressful year for a lot of reasons I have tried to increase my silliness a little. So when Laura had a ride last Saturday on Halloween I decided to add a spiderweb to my helmet. It wasn't much of a costume but is was more than I usually do as I'm not a big fan of Halloween. 

 It was barely above freezing when we started the ride but it was sunny and once we got moving I was warm enough. We headed to Lambertville to see the Halloween displays but this year there weren't a lot of big displays so it was kind of disappointing.

This week I decided to do something flatter. The weather was much warmer and was close to 60 when we started so all I needed was a long sleeve jersey. We started in Bordentown and I invited Chris to join us since he lives so close. Chis always seems to have a small malfunction every time he joins us. This time he had a problem keeping his head, I mean helmet on so it took him a few minutes to fix it. 

Since it was a sunny fall day I decided to head to Robling for to get a view of the river. We ended up going down almost to the Burlington Bristol bridge. 

 

It doesn't smell real nice in this area kind of a mix of raw garbage, industrial waste with a hint of diesel fumes. We did see a few interesting things along the river. We saw an outside spin class. Not sure how they got all those spin bikes in the middle of the park but somebody got a work out putting them there. We also saw a couple of parks and marinas and this Eagle statue. 

Since Laura decided to be in the glass studio instead of joining us I sent the required middle finger pictures. It just a stupid thing we do. It wasn't one of my more created pictures. I originally planned to do it in front of a Trump sign but we couldn't find many of them for some reason...

After a few pictures by the bridge we headed out of town to the better roads in Jacksonville and Columbus on our way back to Bordentown. It felt good to run these roads on a warm sunny day after last weeks cold ride. I know that winter is coming so it was good to get one more warm ride in before that happens.

Falling Leaves

 

This week I continued with my mini bike vacations. This Friday I took the day off and decided the check out the Paulinskill Trail which is near Blairstown NJ. This is a 27 mile long rail trail along the Paulins kill (kill is Dutch for creek). I had not done this trail before but my nephew had hiked it a few weeks ago and it looked interesting.

It was another hour and a half drive to the start. It was cloudy with a little fog along the way but when I got to the starting point it was just cloudy and the fog had retreated to the surrounding mountains. It is just after peak foliage so there were good color in the trees even thought a lot of leaves are already down. 

 I got Jack, Pete, Ricky and Laura to join me. The trail map said there was a parking lot at the beginning of the trail but we couldn't find it so parked at a ball field about a mile away. 

The start of the trail was a little rough and rocky with a little mud and Laura took a spill on one of the muddy parts but we kept going and after a mile or so it got better especially after we passed the Paulinskill viaduct.

I couldn't really tell what the surface was as it was covered with a few inches of leaves. The trail is mostly through the woods along the creek but there were a couple of spots where we got a view of the mountains and some fall colors

The trail goes next to the Blairtown airport and through the backside of Blairstown. At the north end of town there is a dam and a scenic lake where we stopped to take a few pics

 

 

There were also a few interesting bridges along the way.

At just over 12 miles out Laura and I decided to turn back as I wanted to get back to go visit my father. Ricky, Jack and Pete continued to head up the trail for about 10 miles.

On the way back Laura and I stopped a few times for some more pictures. I tried to get some good pictures of the Paulinskill viaduct but it was really hard to get a picture through the trees.

Its an impressive structure architecturally and has some interesting features as profiled in Weird NJ. The main feature is that the bridge has internal tunnels use to inspect the bridge. The bridge was build in 1908 for a rail line that ran between Scranton PA and New York. The rail line went out of service in 1979 so the bridge is abandon and its out side and internal tunnels are covered with graffiti some of it satanic in nature. Since the bridge was abandon it has been a popular place for teens to hang out and party so the state police patrol this area often. 

This trail is a little rougher than the Columbia trail or the D&R Canal trail but it was a very scenic trail so it was a good way to spend a day off.

 

Zoo Cruise

 

We haven't been able to do any bike vacations this year so instead we have done some local rides to parts of the state we haven't been too in a while. This Saturday we headed down to Bridgeton which is in the deep southern part of the state. There are a lot of quiet flat roads in this area in and among the farmland that makes New Jersey the Garden State. Down in this area here is also the Cohanzick Zoo. Its a very small zoo and will take you all of 10mins to walk through but its worth the diversion if you are in the area and gave us another reason to take the hour and 20 min ride to get to there especially since we all got nothing but time. I got most of the crew to join me included Laura, Jim, Pete, Jack and Ricky.

Bridgeton was one area covered in my Road Biking NJ book and I called the ride around the Bridgeton area the Zoo Cruise because as part of the ride it visits the zoo. We also stopped here in 2015 as part of our high point rides. The ride we did today was sort of a combination of the two with a few new roads thrown in. This is a very rural area filled with farmland, small lakes and a few grouping of buildings that they call towns. 

We started the ride going into a stiff north west wind which made the hill we were climbing seem worst than it really was. We passed by Rainbow lake and Parvin lake on our way to the high point of Cumberland country which at 140 feet is hard to even find. From there we wound our way through a lot of open farmland to Alloway where we stopped at a general store. The southern part of the state is a lot redder than other parts of the state and the sign on the door of the store made it clear that the owner didn't agree with Govern Murphy's mask mandate. 

We continued on some more quiet roads and eventually got a good tail wind as we headed south along some rivers and swamp land not far from the Delaware river. We did have a few small hills to climb towards the end which felt harder than they should of but then we got another good tail wind to push us back to where we started. 

After the ride we took a walk around the zoo. They have some small marsupials and lemma but the main attraction is the lion and the tiger and the bear. I had bought a new gaiter for Halloween. I like the SweatVac Shapshifers as they have two layers and are a simple mask I can easily pull up when needed when I ride. They also have some cool patterns. I got the tiger one because that is my favorite animals. I know gaiters are not the best mask so when I know that I'm going to be closer to people I put a surgical mask underneath it. 

Of course with a tiger mask on I had to try and get a selfie with the actual tiger.

I took one with my phone which came out okay but Ricky took the one at the top of the blog which is a better close up. Here is a better picture of the actual tiger.

I didn't get a good picture of the bear as he was laying in his hammock and was just a ball of fur.  

Last time I was at the zoo I got a good picture of the people riding we me in front of the (plastic) Gorilla. I was going to try and do a similar shot this time but with the Gorilla roped off and social distant requirements we took a slightly different type of picture. 

 

For some reason giving the finger while taking a group picture has become our standard. This time Laura got to partake instead of being the recipient of the picture. I guess this is our FUCK 2020 picture.

Although it was a long day it ended up being a fun day and so we may do a few more of these type of excursions as a way to get some mini bike vacations in.

My Moonshot

 If you have visited this blog over the last few years you would see that beside my biking adventures I also occasionally post some stories of some of my astronomical endeavors. Recently because of some good weather I have been working on getting some pictures of the moon. One of my goals in life is to get a picture of the moon for each day of its 28 day cycle. I have been taking pictures of the moon for at least the last 10 years. Until recently I took the pictures by attaching a camera to the eye piece of my telescope. It wasn't easy to get the camera aligned with the eye piece and although I got a few OK pictures they never look close to what I actually saw through the eye piece. 

Last year I bought a Canon SX740 super zoom camera. With a 40x zoom I can get a reasonable picture of the moon by just putting the camera on a tripod and pointing it at the moon. The results are a lot better than I have been able to get before. The picture at the top is a Day 13 moon just one day before full. 

It does take a little practice to get a good picture and you have to have good conditions. I usually take 30 or 40 pictures at a lot of different shutter speeds to the settings to get the best picture. This I do some post processing to adjust the exposure and sharpen it. This past two weeks have been clear with no wind so I was able to get out 5 different nights. Here are the pictures I got.

Here is the Day 4 Moon

Here is the Day 5 moon

Day 8 moon

Day 11 moon

The interesting thing about is that each day is different as the terminator (the line between light and dark part) moves and highlights different parts of the moon and different craters. I currently have 5 out of the 28 days and got a couple of other days from pictures Laura took. 

It will still take me a while to get the rest of the 28. Getting the first few days means I have to go some where that has a clear view of the western horizon because the first few days of the new moon are only visible in the early evening near the horizon. Getting day 3 thought 15 I is easy because I can get that from my backyard on a clear night before I go to bed. Getting day 16 to 28 is harder because by the time the moon got above the trees it would be after midnight so I would have stay up past my bedtime. 

I'm sure somehow I will eventually get all the pictures and if I do I plan to put together a video like this one. That will not only show the waxing and waning of the moon but the libration (The twisting of the moon as seen from the earth)

Of course getting the rest of the pictures will take some time as it is rare to have weather as clear and calm as we have had for the past couple of weeks. However now that I have a camera that can get a take a good picture of the moon I can opportunistically get the pictures as weather and my schedule allows. 

 

Lying Bastard 2020

 

There is not much to really say about this years Lying Bastard ride expect is was another PERFECT ride. Yes it was overcast, the roads were wet and we did get drizzled on for about 10 mins but otherwise it was a great ride. 

This year Pete, Jim and Bob joined me. Laura bailed again to blow some glass. We sent here a picture that showed here that we missed her. 

I have updated the route for this ride each year to try to make it a little better. Here is the route we did this year. This is almost exactly the route we did last year. This is a hilly ride which starts out with an 8 mile grind up to the ridge where Lake Nockamixon is then it is a series of annoying rollers for most of the rest of the ride. This route is a little easier than a few years ago as I got rid of the short steep 15% plus climb that got us out of Perkasie and to the lake and was the reason I got the name lying bastard.

Now instead we go down to the south side of the lake for a quick break then head up around the hills of the north side. It is a scenic ride through some strange woods. There is a Greek temple and a few strange holistic healing centers tucked in along the way. Even through this ride is in Pennsylvania and an hour north of Philadelphia it feels a lot more like the deep south which is why I call this area Pennsyltucky. 

We did see some more strangeness a few miles from our rest stop at a Turkey Hill. There was a farm with some strange sculptures including a cow made out of a oil tank and a snail 

 

I'm guessing it must have been some art studio because there were a number of other art works decorating the lawn. 

After the break it was a quick 10 mile sprint back to the start. With the usual quick and deadly plunge down the Red Circle of Death road which we all made it down with no problems. 

This ride has a reputation for being a hard annoying ride. The truth is that it is really not much harder than some of our other hillier rides if you look at the facts. However as I have seen recently some people don't seem to believe in the facts so this ride will always be a bastard of a ride to some people. 

NJ Safari

 

Click HERE for more Pictures

Because of the pandemic we decided not to do any big vacations this year. We thought about spending a long weekend up in Cape Cod hanging out at the beach but a some of stuff we normally do wasn't opened and so we didn't think it would be worth the extra hassle. That means I have a lot of vacation days to use. I plan to use most of my vacation by taking four day weeks for the next few months.

This pass Monday I took a vacation day and my wife and I decided to go on a safari. This year Great Adventure made their safari park a separate attraction instead it being a included as part of the admission for their theme park. So if just want to go to the safari park you can now do that for a reasonable fee.

The safari park is a 5 mile loop with a number of different areas. There are a lot of deer, antelope, zebra and other grazing animals.

There are also some elephants and giraffes

And Lions and Bears who we saw get into some fights so we got a little show.

It wasn't like taking a real African safari but it was a good way to spend a couple of hours and enjoy a little local vacation

Southern Sojourn

 

Since everybody had enough hills last week I decided to do something much flatter this Saturday. I wanted to do something a little different so we headed a little further south than normal. This meant an hours drive south to Batsto Village. It was another good weather day with temps just below 70 and partly cloudy skies. I got Jack, Pete, and Bob to join me. Here is the route we did.

I like riding in this area because its easy riding and there are some interesting bridges and rivers mostly crossing the Mullica river. 

And of course there was a bridge out.

And it looks like the bridge is condemned because besides the barriers there were permanent guard rails across it. Of course that didn't stop us from getting over it and on to Smithville by the coast where we found a few ducks and geese. 

Then it was on to Oyster Creek for a view of the marshland along the bay. It's a nice scenic spot where you can see from the end of Long Beach Island to Atlantic City. The only problem is the green flies that attack you. However with the stiff north east wind we had today there were no flies around.

Once we left Oyster Creek we had a tail wind most of the way back. I made a few changes to the route to try and stay off the busier roads. This brought us through some retirement and residential neighborhoods as well as through empty roads named after German cities. 

When we got back to Batsto Village the parking lot was packed as after Labor Day there is no fee to park here and walk around the village and trails. There was even a bunch of MGs in the parking lot on their way to a car show. I got out of there and away from all kids running around as quick as I could. 

There are a lot of good places to ride in South Jersey so I may head down this way again if the weather stays warm.

I'm a Little Bit Off Today...

 

This Labor day weekend like everything this year didn't work out quite as planned. On Saturday I had planned to lead a ride from Cocoluxe in Gladstone. I hadn't lead a ride up that way this year because we all have been staying closer to home this year and because it was too hot this summer to do a ride this hilly. 

However Saturday was a cool low humidity day and would be perfect for the ride. I got a good turn out for the ride with Jim, Ricky, Jack, Pete and Sarah joining me. As I warmed up in the parking lot I had a problem with my right shifter. It would shift up but not down and on a ride this hilly I needed a way to get to the lower gears. We tried to find a way to fix it but it seemed the problem was not the cables or derailleur but something in the shifter itself so there was no quick fix that we could find.

That meant of course I could not lead the ride. Luckily Jim was there and had downloaded the route and led the ride(Thanks Jim). I was disappointed of course that I wasn't going to be able to ride, especially after driving an hour just to get to the start. The only saving grace was that I had headed up this way not only to do the ride but to also visit my father so the trip wasn't a total waste. 

Between driving up to the ride and up to my father's and then back home I spent a few hours in the car. Knowing this I had downloaded a bunch of new songs and created a new play list. I didn't realize until listening to the playlist that it was a lot of songs were filled with references to our current situation so I realized this is now my official pandemic play list. The first song on the list was Fly on the Wall by The Violent. Written at the beginning at the start of the lock down. Its a song about how isolation can surface some violent thoughts that can make you feel even more alone. The next song was from Five Finger Death Punch called A Little Bit Off. Its an angry anthem about how nothing feels right anymore. The video is actually a little funny because the lead singer is walking around an empty Las Vegas more or less showing how they couldn't make the video they actually wanted because of how fucked up everything is. The song has one of the better last lines.

During this pandemic almost all musicians are locked away and most of them are working on new music because they can't tours so what else they are going to do. I suspect there is going to be a surge in new music in the near future. I heard some new material from bands, like Green Day, and am amazed what these can do in their home studios. Even mixing different instruments and vocals across the interweb. 

There were a few songs on the play list that were more up lifting like Larkin Poe's Holy Ghost Fire which is a cool kick ass blues song. It has one of my favorite new song line "From your fingers to the frets, gonna testify" You also got to love a girl who can play a slide guitar while dancing around.

In any case I didn't get to do the ride but did have an good day seeing my father again and enjoying some new tunes.

Although I didn't get to do the Cocoluxe ride I was able to torture the posse from them just following my route. As Jim's write up shows there were a couple of rough milled roads and the two new roads I added to ride ended up a gate road that was a pain to get around. That's so me. I'm sorry I missed it. 

The weather was perfect this weekend so I did get out on Sunday for a ride in the Sourlands to get my hill work in. I had to take the Feather because the Synapse is in the shop. Luckily it is just some corrosion in the shifter so after a cleaning and tune up it should be good as new in about a week. 

On Monday I did get back with some of the posse to do a ride pass the Mansquan reservoir to end the weekend. It was a good ride and we did see some other free wheelers at Etra Park but this is usually the day of the all paces ride out of Mercer Parks so it felt a little off.

Canal Loop

 

 

 The past two weeks we haven't ventured far from home. Last week was another humid Saturday ride. To change it up a little we headed out of Cranbury north to Helmetta for a fairly flat ride. This Saturday was too wet to ride and I ended up riding on my own on Sunday. I could have done Jim's ride or another out of Mercer Park but wasn't moved by either choice so I did a loop on my own from home to the canal and back. 

With traffic down this year because of the pandemic a ride that crosses route 1 is much easier. I started out from my house a little before 8am and headed into a headwind and and over a few hills to get to the canal. The route I took crossed Jim's route and based on when his ride started I thought I might run him on the road if things worked out. I was hoping for some Slugchronicity as even when we don't ride together we sometimes end up running into each other. Although I did see a lot of bikers on the road today none of them were part of the posse. 

It was a beautiful day for a ride. It was 65 when I started and 75 when I got back home and for once there was no humidity. It was a little windy going out but I had a good push going home. 

I took my break on a path in Herrontown Woods next to a small lake. Then headed back along Carnegie lake and back across route 1 for a quick 46 miles. 

 Now that summer is almost over and the weather is getting cooler I hope for more days like this. 

 

Bad Juju

 

Its been a bad couple of weeks for some of my biking buddies. The good new is that everybody is okay but there were a couple of scares.  First, as most of you know Laura got t-boned by a work truck during her commute. You can see the description and pictures of the accident here

Besides some road rash Laura was fine but her bike Beaker was bent and broken beyond repair. Luckily the truck hit the bike and not Laura or she would have been bent and broken. Although Beaker bit the dust the college will be paying for a replacement so Beaker will ride again.

Last week I lead a ride to the Pinelands. Mike joined Laura, Jim and Chris and myself. Mike's was on his repaired Bianchi bike with rebuild rear rim. Because of the pandemic Mike can't spend the summer sailing around the Caribbean so he has been back on the bike and joining our rides again.

The ride was a good flat uneventful ride. Even through Mike had not been riding a lot he didn't have a problem completing the ride and did it at our normal pace. He did say he didn't feel 100% after the ride but that is to be expected since he had not been riding as much as he use to. I didn't think much about his comments until I got an email from him on Tuesday. He said that after he got home, on Saturday, he still wasn't feeling great and actually called his teledoc and soon after talking to the teledoc he was in an ambulance and on his way to the hospital. It turns out he had a mild heart attack at some point. The good news is that two stents later he is fine and on the mend and hopes to be riding with us again in a month or so. 

I'm amazed that Mike rode so well with his heart not at 100% and show us that we have to seriously take chest pains and other signs of a heart attack and not hesitate to call a doctor. Now that Mike is back at 100% we might have problems keeping up with him once he is back on the bike.

This Saturday I went on Laura's ride to Asbury. She wanted to stop at a coffee shop there and we haven't been that way in a while. It was a hilly ride and I was hesitant to go especially seeing that a few of the fast boys signed up. 50 miles of hills is about the limit I can do without cramping up. I have tried a lot of different things to prevent cramping but haven't found any drink or gel or pre-ride preparation that gets me beyond 50 miles in the hot weather. I have just come to accept it and ride with in the limit my body sets. 

 There were seven of us that started from Frenchtown.

 

It was only a couple of miles before we started the climbing and then is was 6 miles of climbing to get to the top of Rick Rd. Here is the route I ended up doing 

We did some nice downhills along the way but there was on hill we did that I was concerned with.It short and steep and last time I was on this hill I maxed my heart rate. Its call Heart Attach Hill I mean Henderson Hill Rd just by Spruce Run. This time I hit 184 bpm which is the highest my heart has been this year but it didn't feel as bad as last time. In fact I feel good today. I just was not as fast as the other people on the ride. 

A few miles later Ricky got a flat and actually split the side wall of his tire (the white spot in the tire below). Somebody gave him a boot to put in the tire but when this thing happens you are never sure if it is going to last a mile or 50. Of course we were as far away from Frenchtown as we could get but I had looked at the route before hand and had a couple of bail out options in my mind in case I wasn't feeling good today. 

 

 

So about 5 miles later Ricky and I turned off from the group and headed back. This short cut would only remove a few miles from the ride but it would eliminate one of the climbs. We did end up going pass the coffee shop that Laura wanted to stop at. There aren't a lot of places to stop in this area so Laura made a point of calling them to make sure they would be open. However like every other time I have stopped here the place was closed. 

 

This time it was because of the power failure. I have tried to stop here three times and each time it was closed for one reason or the other so I wasn't entirely surprised. Since the pandemic I have always carried extra gatoraid and snacks so that I am self sufficient which turned out to be a good idea today. 

Ricky and I made it back to Frenchtown without his tire blowing out. It was a pretty ride especially along the river. I'm sure I will be back this way again especially once the weather gets a little cooler. 

We have had some bad juju so I might have to break out the Holy Kickstand again to ward off the evil spirits that have affected my friends over the past few weeks to make sure it doesn't get any worse.