This past Tuesday I looked at the weather forecast and saw a perfect weather for Saturday. It was going to be in the mid 70s with sunshine and not much wind. This summer's weather has been mostly raining or hot and humid so there have only been a few rides where I didn't have to worry about getting wet or melting from the heat. The question was where should be ride? Flat or hills?
I wanted a long ride to take advantage of the weather so I decided in a flat ride. I thought let's go out of Etra Lake Park and head towards Farmingdale or Belmar. I usually don't like to ride to the beach in the summer months because it can be crowed but I wanted miles so put out the word I was doing a ride to Belmar on Saturday. This I knew would have Laura contemplating adding miles to the beginning and end of my ride to my ride to do a century. She wavered a little but eventually decided to do it and got Martin to join her.
Those of use not doing the century option met at Etra Park. When I say met we actually all pulled in to the park with military precision with in seconds of each other even though we all came from different directions. I guess we all know the location of the starting points and the time it take to get there well enough to always get there about the same time.
Laura and Martin rode into the park a little while later as the rest of us were all set to start the ride and off we went. I have done this ride many times over the year so the route was familiar and I didn''t really have to think about the turns. I knew this was going to be a long ride so I kept a relaxed pace. Still with made good progress towards Belmar as the weather was as good as predicted and the riding was easy.
Because of the crowded roads expected by the beach we took the Edgar Felix bike path to get into Sea Girt. We were then on some busy roads on the way through the town. There was lots of traffic and some kind of festival and walk going on be we made it through unscathed.
Then it was a few miles up Ocean ave to our normal rest stop in Belmar. We spent some time there fueling up and watching the beach goers.
It was not as hectic as I expected. The only annoying thing is that the Trump train road by while we were sitting there.
We headed out of Belmar on 16th street which is a one way street and we went the wrong way on it on purpose. I could have went up one of the other streets that is one way in the correct direction but that would have meant that we would have to have ridden on Main street to get back to 16th street once it was a two way street again and Main street has a lot of traffic with no real shoulder to ride in so it's not a good option either given the traffic at the shore today.
In any case there wasn't any problem going the wrong way on the one way street and soon we were out of Belmar and heading back. We made our way through Farmingdale and then on to Freehold. The wind was mostly from the north east so we didn't have the normal headwind we usually do on the way back from the shore. We had a second stop at a Duncan Donuts. I grab a glazed donut to get some sugar for the last 12 miles back to the start.
The weather was still pleasant. It only warmed up a few degrees from the start the the humidity was low so although I was tired at the end of the ride I didn't feel wiped out as I did other times. After we got back to Etra Laura and Martin left to finish their century. They looked good so I doubt they had any problems finishing.
This was a perfect ride for this perfect weather day. Hopefully we can have a few more like this as the summer continues.
