My Christmas Card

I don't send out Christmas Cards but if I did I would send out one with this picture. I was off this past Tuesday and it was too cold to be on the road so I road the path from Allaire down to the beach in Manasquan. It's my go to ride when I just want quick a 15-20 mile ride in cold weather. The best part of the ride is riding the paved path along the beach as there is always something to see. This time I saw a Christmas tree in the sand on the beach. According to the locals Santa comes during the week before Christmas and puts the tree up then all the local add decorations to it and painted sea shell underneath it. 

When my wife goes to the beach she takes a picture of her bare feet looking out over the sand towards the water and then sends it to her friends to let them know she is on the beach. So when I saw the Christmas tree on the beach I knew I wanted to take a similar picture and send it to her. 

Of course it was 30 degrees so my feet are covered by my booties but you get the general idea. Sitting on the beach when its 30 degrees looking at a Christmas tree is wrong in a lot of ways which is what makes it a good picture. 

I hope to get a couple of more rides before the end of the year as I'm off of work. And if I'm lucky hopefully see some more interesting sights. This will be my last post before Christmas so I wanted to wish everybody a happy holiday season and hope to see you on you on a ride soon. 

New Paths

Since my move last year I have been looking at all the possible places to ride in my area. I already knew most of the roads in the area but have not explored all the possible rail trails and parks. This past Wednesday since I was off from work and it was a little too cold to ride on the road I decided to check out the Barnegat Branch Trail. This is a rail trail along one of the old Central Jersey Railroad lines that was abandon a long time ago and was finally converted to a trail.

This current top of the trail is just over 25 mins from my house. This trail will eventually be 15 miles in total but only 11 miles have been completed. The last part from Tom's River toBayville t has yet to be completed. I let a few of the posse know that I was doing this trail. I didn't think anyone would join me as they all live at 30-40mins west of me but Jim decided to take the trek. It was good to have him along. 

The trail itself has a very well packed crushed stone service and was easy to ride. There are some parks and river crossings along the way that are somewhat scenic but there isn't really a lot to see along the way as you are just riding through the woods and fields next to Rt 9. We did manage to cross both forks of  Forked River though.

When we got to the southern end of the trail instead of turning around we headed east to Barnegat Bay to take a look at the shore. At this time of year there isn't a lot of people around so we road along the shore without having to deal with much traffic.

What we had to deal with was a strong north wind which slowed our progress back. We ended up riding on the roads for about 5 miles before getting back on the trail for the ride back. We rejoined the trail about 3 miles from the southern end and retraced our way back to the start stopping at a couple places to take pictures. 

We ended up with 25 miles by the time we got back. Even though the ride was very flat it felt like a hard ride. That was probably because of the wind and because its been a while since I have ridden my mountain bike which takes more effort to ride. 

There was nothing spectacular about the Barnegat Branch trail. I may do it again if I'm looking for some miles on a cold day but there are a few other place I want to check out first to see if I can find some other option to ride when I want to do some trail riding.