I Lead for Ice Cream

This Saturday I decided to ride with my other club (JSTS). I usually ride with them once a month, in the summer, as their starting points are a little closer to where I live and rides are shorter. So when there are things I need to do later on a Saturday I usually ride with them. They also do an ice cream ride once or twice a year so I always try to do those rides as who doesn't like free ice cream.

I signed up for the B ride which didn't have a leader. Towards the end of the week an email went out from the club that said if there was no leader for a ride there would be no free ice cream. So I signed up to lead. Usually the JSTS Saturday rides go out of Michael Tighe Park in Freehold but this Saturday's ride went out of Thompson Park so we could stop at the Four Boys ice cream place that was just outside the park after the ride. I had expected a large number of people on the ride but only had four others besides myself. I guess the threat of rain and different starting point made some people stay away. 

It was a cloudy and calm morning and I like the way the sky reflected off the lake.

 

As we sent off out of the park we were on familiar roads as this is PFW territory so I didn't really have to worry about getting lost. The JSTS clubs ride are run a little differently. All club rides are routes that are in the club library and the B, C+ and C routes are always the same. This lets people start with the B and end up in the C+ group. Although there are individual rides during the week most of the weekend rides are more like PFW all pace rides where everybody meets at one point and goes with the pace ride they want. Although they are not as chaotic. The JSTS website is better than the PFW website for leaders. From the ride page one click gets you a list of riders on a ride and see their emergency contact information. In fact there is no need to print out a Ride Sheet like I do for PFW rides as I can just use my phone to connect to the website and see who is on the ride and get their information if needed. 

Leading a JSTS ride is very similar to a PFW ride. I only knew one of the people on my ride but  the other rides were well behaved. I was also lucky that the pace I set worked for everybody on the ride. There are some differences in JSTS rides. They have a few different commands they yell out during a ride. For example "GAP" means someone if falling off the back. 

Even though I was following the route that JSTS specified for the ride I actually made a slight detour during the ride. The JSTS club is not as familiar with the roads in the area so to stay off the lower part of Applegarth Rd. I went across and down the back way. I told the people riding with me that this was the part of the ride where you have to "trust" the leader. Although I pointed out that most of the people I ride with on the PFW ride still don't trust me even after leading them for over 30 years. 

Five miles after my detour we were back on the original route and were really cruising at a good clip. We ended up stopping at the Wawa on 33 for our rest stop where I met Dave and his ride. It seem like even when I'm with the JSTS group I run into some PFW riders somewhere along the way. 

After the rest stop we headed back still going along at a fast pace. I guess the ice cream promised at the end was giving us reason to push it. During the last 8 miles we had a few moments of rain which I knew was a possibility. It was intermittent and light so it wasn't really a problem. 

Once we got back we put the bikes in the car and walked over to get the promised ice cream. It was a good way to end the ride. 

 

 

A Happy July 4th Weekend

 

I always look forward to long weekends as I can usually get an extra ride in. The weather for this weekend was actually close to perfect with no chance of rain. I attribute this to the use of the holy kickstand last week.

 

Last week I almost had to cancel my Saturday ride because of a possible rain storm. Luckily the rain stopped before the ride started. To make sure we won't get wet on the ride I used the kickstand and held an umbrella over the it and asked for relief from the rain as well as a safe ride. The holy kickstand does have magical powers but the rider using it must be pure of heart and only used it for the good of the peloton.

The 4th was on a Friday and I ended up doing a ride on my own down to the beach to meet my wife. It was a cool morning with light winds so it was a pleasant ride to the beach. Being the July 4th weekend it was a little crowded as I rode through Mansquan and up Ocean Ave into Belmar. After the ride I relaxed for a little while in our condo in Avon before heading out to the beach to join my wife and her friends. Normally my wife doesn't go to the beach on weekends because of the crowds but she was there on Thursday and decided to stay because some of her friends were going to be there on the 4th. 

When I got to the beach I had a hard time finding my wife because of the crowd. The beach was packed wall to wall with people.

 

However my wife and her friends were right by the water and had space for me. So once I found them I spent a couple of hours hanging out and talking to her friends. This is the third time I have been on the beach this year which is a lot. Although it was fine hanging out for a little while I probably won't be back on weekends anytime soon. 

Saturday I led a ride out of Bull's Island. I hadn't been up that way in a while and wanted to do a hilly route in that area as it is usually quiet on holiday weekends. I had planned to do a route that Blake design years ago and was one of the first hilly rides I did on my Synapse where I felt how well it climbed. The route just flows well. It does start out with a long climb on Upper Creek just past the covered bridge but then just has some rolling hills. There are a lot of quiet roads and good scenery on this route as well as some long gradual downhills. 

Our rest stop was in Frenchtown at the Bridge Street cafe. After the stop the plan was to cross to the Pennsylvania side and head up to Stover State Park. However the bridge to PA was closed to westbound traffic and pedestrians. 

Even though I'm a master at getting over closed bridges, short of hiring a motor boat there was no way we were getting across the river. Instead we stayed on the NJ side. I knew the roads good enough to make something up on the fly. We headed down 29 then up Warsaw and stayed up above the Delaware. I set my GPS to find the shortest distance to the starting point of the ride then ignored most of it's suggestions. It did tell me about how many mile we had left to get back to the starting point so I used it to tell me when we should head downhill to 29 and back to the starting point. I had a general idea in my head where I wanted to go. I knew we would probably go down Federal Twist but when we pass the road I thought we could go a little further before circling back however it looked like we were going in the wrong direction so we turned around and just took Federal Twist down(I looked at the map after the ride and realized we could have kept going straight). Federal Twist is a steep downhill and if you're brave you can let it rip, which I did. I got up to 47.8 mph which is faster than I should go but it felt good. Jack made it down the hill a little slower but made it down safely. We ended up with 41 miles and a little over 2000 ft of climbing which was 3 miles shorter and 500ft less of climbing of the planned route. I do want to do some riding our in PA around Frenchtown so will have to find a different place to start and cross over to PA from NJ. 

After getting home from Saturday's ride I relaxed for a few hours before heading down to Avon again. This time to see the fireworks at Belmar and Bradley beach. Avon is between to two so we just sat on the beach and watch the Bradley fireworks to the north before turning around and watching the Belmar fireworks to the south. We were luckily to find a parking spot close to the beach. It was strange seeing this many people on the beach after sunset but it wasn't as bad as it was on the 4th. Each firework show was about 20 minutes and they coordinated them so that Bradley firework show ran first before the Belmar show started. There was also a show in Asbury but we were not able to see that. 

I did manage to get a few good good pictures of the fireworks. 

 

If you want to see all the firework pictures click this link.  

It was a long busy weekend but I had a lot of fun so it was a good 4th of July for me.