Tom's Bike Adventures

Snow Biking 2012

2012-01-28T11:35:00.000-05:00

I haven't really minded the lack of snow this winter and the lack of having to remove it from my driveway. Last weekend we did have a little taste of winter. The 2 inches of snow was nothing more than a minor annoyance but it did make the landscape look nicer.

Even before the snow stopped falling I got an email from Chris to go snow biking. Riding around the woods and over logs is tough enough when the ground is clear and dry. Add snow and ice and mountain biking becomes even more challenging but is also a whole lot of fun.

Unfortunately I couldn't make it out with Chris and Mike because snow biking is fun but it is even better when your friends are laughing at you as you fall on your ass. Last year my second mountain bike ride was snow biking with Chris and Mike and although I came away with some bruises it was one of my favorite rides of the year.

With the lack of snowfall this year I wanted to make sure I got out in the snow since this may be my only opportunity this year. 2-4 inches of snow is perfect for snow biking any deeper and its almost impossible to ride through. Riding on snow is not easy because you have a lot less traction so as I started out of the Edinburg parking lot at MCP I ask questioned my ability and wondered if this was going to be as fun as I remembered.

After a few hundred yards I adjusted to the conditions and started to relax and enjoy it. I still am not very good a mountain biking but I did manage to hop over a few logs and not have any major falls. Snow makes everything look better especially the small creeks in MCP park so I made sure I stopped to took a few pictures. I wasn't the only insane person out in the ice and snow I ran across a number of people walking their does and even a couple of people doing some cross country skiing. I was only out for over an hour but it was enough to reaffirm the joy of biking in the snow.

Winter has been very warm and snow free which has made it easy to keep riding on the road but I hope we get a few more small storms this year because I would like to do a little more snow biking this year.

It was suppose to be a towpath ride

2012-01-16T21:21:00.002-05:00

This winter has been a lot nicer than the last few. Last year at this time there was over a foot of snow on the ground. This year has been much warmer and there hasn't been a hint of snow yet. That was until this past Friday when the temperatures dipped to the low 20s and we got a quick snow squall. This meant that I wouldn't be going out on the road on the weekend but instead I would head to the canal towpath with the mountain bike

Its much easier keeping warm on a mountain bike since you are in usually in the woods away from the wind and working a little harder making your way over the obstacles. Last year even at 25 degrees in the snow I was warm.

The plan for Saturday was to head up the towpath from Kingston to Amwell and back. An easy ride just to get out for a couple of hours. I was joined by Chris and Mike. As we headed up the towpath we had it mostly to ourselves and only encountered a few other walkers and runners. After we passed Griggstown Mike had to turn back and head back home but Chris and I decided to keep going.

When we got to Blackwell Mills Chris mentioned that there was another trail Six Mile Run that he wanted to check out. I hadn't hear of this area before so I didn't know much about it but according to Chris it had a couple of nice single track trails but he thought it would be too flooded to try. Since we were here he wanted to check out the first part anyway.

I hadn't planned on doing any real mountain bike riding but I figured we'd go a little ways the turn around and head back down the towpath. As it turned out the trail was in better shape than expected. It was muddy in a few spots but because of the cold temperatures most of it was hard and easily ridable. What started out as a quick ride through some single track keep going and going and before long we were 3 miles into the trail.

Chris has been on most of the trails and usually has some idea of where he is going although he usually rides first and worries about where he is after the fact. We ended up following the blue trail all the way to South Middlebush Road. The trail had a interesting mix of terrain and features. Some of the trails were in open fields others through the woods. The trail was easy to follow and had some interesting bridges over and around some of the rivers that flowed through the area. Some of the bridges like the one shown in the photo must have been damaged a little by the hurricane we had it August. Because of the tilt of the bridge Chris almost fell into the river while walking across it.

For the first part of the ride I was able to keep up with Chris although I know he was taking it easy on me. When we hit South Middlebush Road I was getting tired so I wanted to find a take a shorter route back. We didn't have a map so we took our best guess and eventually found our way back to a road that let us to the canal although it was harder to keep up with Chris since he was much better at getting around the twisting trail and up some of the muddier hills.

By this time we had found enough mud so that both us and the bikes were encrusted in mud. In fact I had to kick my front derailleur a few times to get it to shift because all of the mud had glued it into low gear. The ride back down the road and towpath helped clear some of the mud.

What started out as an easy towpath ride turned into a surprise muddy single track ride so I was really beat when I got back to the car. I also felt like pigpen as I was cleaning the mud off myself and bike. Although this wasn't the ride I planned I'm glad we made the detour into 6 mile run because I now have another place to go when the weather gets cold.

Merry Krampus

2011-12-23T22:30:00.000-05:00

Its has been a long time since I have posted mostly because I haven't had a lot to say. I have been spending most of my free time trying to finish up the book. The writing is done but putting all the pieces together. manuscript, maps, pictures, etcs takes a lot of time.

I still have been riding. Although the weather has been cool we haven't had many days below freezing or any snow so getting out on the roads for a ride has not been a problem. Most of the rides that I have been doing have been local as I don't venture far from home during the cold weather. Local rides for me usually involves heading east and south and crossing the Turnpike a number of times. Work on widening the Turnpike is in full swing which has closed a number of bridges that I normally use so I have been doing a lot of detours. Some of the new bridges are closed to being finished but I suspect it will another year before things are near normal.

Christmas Eve day I got out for a fun ride with most of the usual gang and evey a few people, like Mike, who hasn't been around much this year. A few people, like Cheryl pictured here, were dressed with antlers or like Jim had a santa hat on. I actually had planned to add a wreath to my bike but didn't have time because of a flat tire. It was a cold and windy ride with a couple of detours to get around the bridge construction but still fun.

With all my spare time going to finishing the book the holidays sort of snuck up on me. I was talking to a friend of mine who lives over in Europe about different Christmas traditions and he mentioned Krampus who is basically an anti Santa Claus and goes around at Christmas time punishing bad kids by stuffing then in a sack taking them home and eating them. That's a lot worst than getting coal in your stocking.

Enjoy your Holidays...

Philadelphia Bike Expo

2011-11-02T22:38:00.000-04:00

Bicycle advocacy is alive and growing at least that is the message I took away from the seminars that I attended at the Philadelphia Bike Expo this weekend. The Expo is mostly a bike show with different vendors selling bikes and accessories but it is also a chance for some presentations on different initiatives the various bike advocacy groups are working on.

The first presentation was on bike trail development in South Jersey. It was mostly about new bike trails and bike lanes being adding around the southern part of the state. It's amazing the number of towns adding bike path and bike lanes to try to create a better environment for getting around on bikes. I didn't realize there was that much improvements going on in the state. One of the more interesting parts was when they talked about all the trails and parks that they are adding around the Camden waterfront. The guy giving the presentation was real excited about all the new development and he actually made Camden sound like its actually going to be nice place to bike? I'll believe it when I see it but the drawings of the parks did look cool.

The next seminar I attended was by the deputy head of the department of transportation of Philadelphia. She had a really dry sense of humor and gave a pretty funny talk about how she and her team have worked hard to convince both the politicians and people of the city that bike lanes and path are good for everybody. For example one of her most recent projects was adding a dedicated bike lane on Spruce and Pine. These bike lanes actually removed a lane of traffic from the street but she had data that showed that travel time for cars was actually quicker, accidents for bikers when down by 40% and car accidents were down 25%. I like her pragmatic approach and she and her department should be able to continue to keep improving the bicycling environment in the city.

There was also a good presentation on the Schuyykill trail. Over a million bicyclist use this trail every year and the city is continuing to spend a lot money to improve and expand the trail. In the next couple of years they are going to take back some industrial land south of the Art Museum that will make a nice extension to the trail.

The last talk I attended was by the Bike Snob. If you've read Bicycling Magazine over the last couple of years you probably caught some of his articles. He is basically a bicycle comedian and did a 40 minute talk with pictures about the strangeness of mountain biking his style was a little Seinfeld like... "So what's the deal with a recumbent mountain bike?" I didn't realize there were so many strange and funny things about mountain biking.

The only thing disappointing thing about the day was the weather. The snow made walking around the city hard and messy and the drive home wasn't a lot of fun either. It also keep the outdoor vendors away from the show so although there were a lot of bike shops and custom bike makers there there wasn't a lot of people selling used bikes and parts. I did get to talk to a few people from the Philly Bike Club and I also got to meet the author of "Where to Bike Philadelphia" It's a really good book that is a little different than the one that I'm working on but it shows the interest and demand for these type of books. It was also nice to talk to somebody else who understand the work required to publish a bike book.

Of course the snow meant that there was no riding this past weekend but hopefully this was just an anomaly and we can have a few more weeks before it starts getting really cold and crappy

The Murals Of Philadelphia

2011-10-10T21:33:00.000-04:00

Click Here for More Pictures

As I have biked around Philly I have tried to take some pictures along the way that would be good enough to put into the book. The problem this summer was the the weather has been pretty bad. When it was nice enough to ride and I was in Philly it was either hot and hazy or overcast. This weekend the weather was finally perfect so I headed to the city for a photo ride.

The more I bike around the city the more cool things I see and discover. Philadelphia has this program called the Mural Arts Program that connects artists with members of a community to create murals to beautify the urban landscape. As I have ridden around Philly this year I have notice a mural here and there but when I actually started looking for them I couldn' believe the sheer number of them and what great works of art they really are. If you ride down Spring Garden they are almost on every block. The picture above is the Bicycle Mural which is at Spring Garden and 2nd. It's a very colorful and abstract piece of art that actually wraps around two sides of the building. This is one photo that will definitely end up in the book.

My ride this weekend took me on a 35 mile loop from the top of Wisahickon Park to the Ben Franklin Bridge and back. We hit a number of the major sites along the way including the Art Museum, Schuykill River, Independence Mall and Fairmount Park. This was a good route that I really enjoyed. I'll post the route in the near future so other people can enjoy the ride. I was joined by Chris on this ride which was good since it gave me a subject to put in some of the pictures. I got a couple of good shots of him by the Art Museum steps including one of him doing a Rocky pose with his bike.

Unfortunately Chris's rear tire had a major spoke problem by the Ben Franklin Bridge. He hopped a curb and twisted his back wheel. He tried to work the spokes but couldn't get it to get much better. He opened the rear brake and rode for a while but after some more tweeking the rear break rubbed against the tire and wore through. At this point his was done and we were into another episode of Tom and Chris's Excellent Misadventures.

With Chris out of commission I left him at Independence Mall while I headed back to the car on my own. I felt bad leaving Chris but with out a spare tire there was no way to get the bike ridable so it was the logical choice.

It took me a little over an hour to get back to the car. I stopped a few times along the way to get a few more pictures for the book. Once back at the car the hard part was getting back to Chris. Although it took me an hour to get back to the car on bike it took over a hour and a half to drive back to him. This was because all the traffic and road closures in this city this weekend. There was some big event in Germantown then a regatta that closed Kelly drive for a stretch and then there was the Occupy Philly by City Hall. As usually in most major city riding a bike is a much faster way to get around than by car.

By the time I got back to Chris he had actually worked on the wheel some more and it gotten it mostly straightened out. I think the lesson here is that it takes patience to fix the spokes of a wheel. So when it happened we tried to do a least amount of work to get the bike barely ridable whereas we should have just taken the time and approached it like we were truing the whole wheel and maybe we might have been able to get the bike ridable.

Despite the mechanical problem it was still a good day. Philly is a gritty urban landscape that can be a little challenging to ride in at times. If you just look at the roads and trails that are crowded with people and car traffic you might be discouraged to ride here. However if you look around at the art, architecture, landscapes and monuments you can find a lot to like here. There are few better places to ride a mountain bike than Forbidden Drive, The roads of Fairmount Park are filled with interesting buildings and sculptures. Boat House Row and the Art Museum are just fun places to hang out and on Saturdays and Sundays it is just plain cool to ride down the car free MLK Drive. Philly is a great place to ride on a nice sunny day.

Ambler Ramble

2011-09-20T21:32:00.000-04:00

This week in my exploration of Philly I joined the Philly Bike Club for their Ambler Ramble. This is one of their most popular club rides like the PFW's Cranbury ride. The is a nice 45 mile ride that starts at the Art Museum and makes it out to the country in back. Like most of the rides in Philly it was a combination of back street neighborhoods and park roads.

One of the thing that makes this ride possible is the large number of streets with bike lanes and the lots of little parks sprinkled through out the city. There were a few busy streets along the way but this route has been perfected to over time to reduce the need to do much urban riding.

Of course a good ride would not be complete with out a decent rest stop and when we got to Ambler there was a nice little sandwich shop with good food and comfortable tables both inside and out.

After the rest stop the group broke up into a fast and slow group. I headed back with the fast group as we wound our way back into Philly. The last 10 miles were along River Road and the Schuykill River. There were still signs of the flooding of the past weeks and people were still cleaning up but at least the roads and trails were clear. The last 5 miles were on MLK Drive which is closed to car traffic on Saturdays and Sunday. It's pretty cool to ride on the empty MLK Drive with all the other bikers and made the last part of the ride a lot of fun.

Biking in Philly is a little harder than the outlying suburbs because of the traffic and congestion of the city but what I have learned in my travels here is that with little determination and careful route planning its not to hard to find a good route to enjoy here. If you're interested in trying the Ambler Ramble I suggest you join the Philly Bike Club some Saturday morning or you can do it on your own with the route posted here http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/448390

Lake Nockamixon

2011-09-06T22:31:00.000-04:00

Although my vacation was great it feels good to be back on the bike again. I was planning to do the Suburban Cyclist Lake Nockamixon ride last weekend but decided against it because of the approaching hurricane. I managed to get out during the week for a couple of short rides but finally got back on the road again this Labor Day weekend and did some longer rides.

On Saturday Laura, Cheryl, Jeff and I joined me as I explored and mapped out my Lake Nockamixon ride. We started from Peace Valley on the other side of Doylestown and made it to Lake Nockamixon and back. I pasted the route together from the cue sheets from previous Lake Noxkamixon rides and some guesses after looking through Google Maps. Although I planned a 52 mile ride it ended up at 58 mostly because we put some extra miles exploring the actual park around the lake.

Nockamixon State Park is a hidden gem of a park. Not only does it have a large 7 mile long lake with a real marina but also has a swimming pool with a couple of slides and lots of place to picnic, hike, bike and ride horses. It even has some cabins you can rent. We spent a little time by the lake watching all the sail boats then made a quick stop by the pool and snack bar before heading back out on the roads. You can see my pictures from the lake HERE

There is some strange stuff on the roads around lake. On Clymer road it started out with a bunch of houses where every house had a motorcycle and guy with long hair and beard (Hell's Angle Hideout?). Pass that there was a place called Rock Ridge(after the town in Blazing Saddles?) that looked like a retirement home. Next to that was a couple of wellness centers where I'm sure homeopathic witch doctors try and milk the old people in the retirement home out of their money. Then just down road from that a big white building with large columns that looked like a greek temple. All in all a strange road.

When we got around the south side of the lake we saw a bunch of cars off the side of the road and wondered what they were looking at, then we saw it. It was the dam and spillway that forms the lake. The spillway is like a terraced waterfall. We stopped for some pictures then moved made our way back home.

We ended up going through the town of Perkasie where the downtown area streets are layed out and named exactly the same as downtown Philly. Laura was calling out the name before we got to each street. The last few miles were slighly uphill and we were getting tired but made it back in decent shape.

Although I had not been on 80% of the road we did ,this turned out to be a good route that we all enjoyed so I will definately be doing this one again.

Alaska

2011-08-28T09:31:00.013-04:00

Click Here for more Pictures
I haven't posted in quite a while mostly because I have been on vacation in the great state of Alaska. It was a phenomenal trip where each day we found something new, beautiful and exciting. It is hard to put into word all that I have seen. I got some great pictures and some cool stories to tell. Although you have probable seen some of the many national geographic specials or reality shows about Alaska until you visit the state you can't appreciate how beautiful, bazaar and different this state really is. Alaska is a place of extremes its very seismically active with extreme weather (Much like New Jersey this past week). This will be a long post of my trip if you don't want to read the full details just check out the pictures HERE and you will get an idea of what a great trip this was.

Alaska is 1/3 the size of the continental US with only a population of about 750,000. You see the words "The Last Frontier" on Alaska's licences and they are not kidding. Go a little over 100 miles away from the major cities like Anchorage or Fairbanks and there is no power, roads or any service what so ever. Unless you have survival training going out to the rural parts is almost a certain death sentence. Towns like Juneau, and Ketchikan which are in the warmer parts of the state can't even be reach by car because the terrain is too rugged to create a road.

Although I shy away from organized tours it is probably the best way to explore this state. We tour a 12 day cruise/tour which started with a 5 day land tour to see the interior of the state followed by a 7 day tour through the glaciers and south east part of the state.

Day 1 - Our tour started in Anchorage which took us the entire previous day to get to from NJ. We spent the morning in Anchorage walking around the small center part of town. 40% of the population of Alaska lives in and around Anchorage because of its relatively mild climate and access to easy transportation by land, sea and air. One surprising thing about Anchorage is that the food here is pretty dam good with a lot of variety.

During the afternoon we took a tour to the portage glacier which is about an hour outside the city. On the way we learned the history of area and how the glaciers carved out the mountains and valleys around here as well as how all the silt deposits clog most of the bays and harbors and make the bottom like quick sand. In fact if you step off the rocks on to what looks like a dark sandy beach you will sink up to your knees and not be able to get out and die when the 20 - 30 foot tide comes in. This is just one of the many ways to die in Alaska.

The main purpose of our day trip to the glacier was to take boat ride up to it's face and get a close look at it. We ended up about 100 feet away and even though it was one of the smaller glaciers it was still impressive. It was a little overcast which made it appear a little bluer than normal. You can see the pictures HERE

Besides visiting the glacier we also made a couple of side trips. One to see the salmon starting to swim upstream to spawn and another to visit a ski resort. At the ski resort we took a tram to the top of the mountain to get a better view of the bays. Because of its northern latitude Alaska has some very large tides shifts 20-30 feet. There are also some strange currents in the water which causes a vortide in the bays when the conditions are just right. A vortide is a 5 - 10 foot wave that slowly rolls down the bay from the ocean to the end. We were actually lucky enough to see one from the top of the mountain.

Day2 - We headed from Anchorage to Mt McKinley. On the way we passed through the town of Wasila and saw Sara Palin's house. One nice thing to note is that most Alaskans I talked to seem to have the same contempt for her that we have here although they know enough tourist like her so every gift shop has cardboard cut outs of her and her 2012 calendars and other crap to buy.

It took about 3 hours to get to the lodge at McKinley and as we got there the clouds were just clearing and we saw our first view of McKinley. Because the mountain range has a lot of high peaks and creates it's own weather McKinley is only visible 30% of the time. As our bus driver said we were blessed because for the pass two weeks they had not seem the mountain at all.

After a quick lunch at the lodge we headed to the town of Talkeetna. Talkeetna is basically a train stop with one semi paved street with a couple of gift shops and places to eat. This is a place where a lot of people start hunting or fishing trips out to the wilderness. There is also a small airport here which is the main place all the climber start their ascent of McKinley.

During the afternoon we took a scheduled sightseeing flight around McKinley. The flight was amazing and was like living inside an IMAX movie. I got to ride in the co-pilots seat of a small 8 seat DeHavilland Otter. I got some of the best pictures I have ever taken but they don't capture the feeling of being at 12,000 feet and looking up at the 20,320 top of Mt McKinley. You can see my best pictures HERE

Day3 - We took a jet boat ride on the Talkeetna and Susitna (silt) river and again were blessed with cloudless skys. This only happens 10% of the time here so I got some great views of the mountains again. We also saw some wildlife along the way. Eagles are almost as common as Turkey Vultures in NJ so you can't help but see a few every time you go out. We also actually saw a small black bear along the river. Included in our boat tour was a stop at model of a native fishing shack used by the natives to catch salmon in the summer season. In this part of the state and north there are still a good number of people who live off the land. After the boat ride we boarded a bus and headed further north to Denali state park.

Day 4 - We took a 5 hour wildlife tour through Denali park. Except for a few Dall sheep on top of the mountains we did not see much wildlife but it was another cloudless day and the scenery was great. We got yet another view of McKinley. In the afternoon we visited the kennel for the sled dogs used in the winter by the rangers in Denali and got a demonstration of the dogs pulling a sled. We also saw some two week old puppies.

Day 5 - We took a 9 hour train ride in a glass covered train car. This was to get us from Denali to our cruise ship. The weather had turned cloudy with a little rain but train was comfortable with some nice views along the way. I even managed to spot a couple of moose. It was nice getting to our cruise ship in Whitter which meant that we would not have to be moving our suite cases for the next 7 days.

Day 6 & 7 - The first two days of the cruise were spent heading south east along the coast and visiting a few glaciers along the way. The first day we stopped at Hubbard Glacier for a few hours then on the second day we entered Glacier Bay national park and cruised passed 5 or 6 glaciers. The two main ones being the Margerie and Lamplugh. No matter how many glaciers you see each one is different and cool. It never gets boring. It is hard to convey the size and imposing mass of these things most of them dwarfed our 1000 ft long cruise ship. It is just something that has to be experienced. The weather was overcast with some light rain but it didn't hurt our view or enjoyment in any way. You can see some more pictures of them HERE

Day 8 - We docked at the town of Skagway which was the launching point for the gold rush of 1898 where over 100,000 people headed to the Yukon to try and get rich by finding gold. Of course the only people that made any money were the people selling the supplies. The town looks much the same as it did then except that it is now mostly a shopping meca for the cruise ships. We spent the morning walking around the town then in the afternoon took a jeep tour that got us over the famous White Pass and about 60 miles into the Yukon basically tracing the path of the prospectors. We went through a number of different valleys and each one was a little different from the next. It was pretty now in August but I would imagine in the winter even this well maintained road would be dangerous to drive. In town I saw an old train that was used to keep the train tracks over the pass clear and it looked like a large drill bit that would be used to drill a tunnel to the center of the earth.

Day 9 - Docked in Juneau the capital of Alaska. We didn't have much time to see the town because we took an all day tour to see the Mendenhall glacier and then a whale watch. At this point I'm like yea great another glacier but this one was as cool as all the other and different enough to be glad I saw it. Besides the glacier I also got with in a few feet of a black bear. I was walking down to the beach and spotted what I though was a dog in the woods. After a closer look I realized it was a black bear so I backed away a little and got a picture or two. The bus driver had said that we might see some bears here and said they were use to people and harmless as long as you didn't approach them. I figured I was safe because the bear was headed the other way, besides there were 15 other people near me including a few small kids who I knew I could out run if the bear charged.

The whale watch was a transformational experience. Not only did we get to see killer and humpback whales but we got to see a whole pod of the killer whales just playing around in the water and breaching left and right.

The humpback whales were all around the boat and at one point we saw 12 of them perform what is called bubble net feeding. This is where one whale goes down and creates a stream of bubbles around a school of fish then the other whales come up through the net and gobble up all the fish. This is something I have only seen on TV and when you see it live it is powerful and strangely emotional. Even the tour guide on the boat was awe struck and at a lost for words. At one point the 12 humpbacks were about 50 feet from the boat and you could feel and hear them breathing as they dove under the boat. It was defiantly one of the highlights of the trip. You can see some of the pictures of the killer and humpback whales HERE

Day 10 - Docked in Ketchikan, the southern most town in Alaska. This is one of the best places to do salmon fishing and most of the non tourist economy is based on fishing of sort or the other. At this time of year the salmon were heading upstream to spawn so we walked around town and along a stream to watch all the salmon try to make it upstream. These fish are powerful swimmers we watch them head up rapids and small waterfalls and have no idea how they can make it up river in the fast currents.

In the afternoon we headed out on the Deadliest Catch tour. If you have ever seen the show you would love this tour. They took an old crab boat the Aleutian Ballad and added a bunch of seating to it so they can take about 100 people out on the boat and show them how they fish for crab and salmon and other fish. We got to see them haul fish on long lines, king and opillio crab pots, as well as an octopus. The best thing was all the stories they had about fishing and few insights to the Deadliest Catch show.

Day 11 - We spent this day at sea going through the inside passage toward Vancouver. The scenery was nice and the weather was also getting warmer. We also spotted some more killer and humpback whales from our balcony.

Day 12 - Arrived early in the morning in Vancouver and got off the ship. We took a tour of the city which included a trip to Lynn Canyon where we walked over a suspension bridge as well as a visit to a salmon hatchery. At night we found a cool little part of town called Granville island where we had a nice dinner.

All in all this was a great trip and much different from anything we have done before. Alaska is a place that is hard to understand until experienced so I highly recommend you put this on your list of vacations because you won't be disappointed.

Too Hot to Ride

2011-07-24T15:54:00.004-04:00

I'm usually pretty tolerant of the heat but this past weekend it was almost too hot to ride. Friday and Saturday's peak temperature was well over 100 degrees as shown in the picture. For me riding in the low 90s is not a problem as long as I take it easy but once it goes above the mid 90s I stay indoors.

At these extreme temperatures you usually see the local news showing you the old sidewalk is hot enough to fry an egg demonstration. I found a different way to show how hot the sidewalk is.

I didn't ride on Saturday because of the heat so when I put my dog out the early afternoon I threw and ice cube on the side walk because she likes to play with ice cubes. The ice cube not only melted really quick but the water also evaporated almost as quick. Since I was just hagging around the house on Saturday I decided to do a little time lapse photography. You can see the video here

What I did was to set up my thermometer next to a few ice cubes and then setup my camera to take a picture every 15 seconds. It took only about 10 minutes for the ice cubes to melt and another 10 minutes for most of the water to evaporate. Its not a great video but it was a good distraction on a Saturday after noon.

I did manage to get out on Sunday. It was still 81 degrees when we started at 8:00 am but we managed to get a little over 50 mile in and were back around 11:30 am. It was in the low 90s but we had cloud cover a lot of the time which really helped. In fact at a 17 mph average is was one of my fastest rides this year. Hopefully it will be cooler next weekend.

You Can't Always Believe the Internet

2011-07-10T20:39:00.005-04:00

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The Internet is an invaluable research tool and has helped me find cool places to visit and good roads to ride on as I continue to work to my way around Philadelphia. I've done 3 more rides around the city over the last couple of weeks. Before each ride I usually spend an hour or so working out the route and finding information about the what I'm going to see along the way.

Google Maps is one of the main tools I use. Between the satellite view and the street view feature I can do a virtual ride of the route and find which roads to avoid and which roads are bike friendly. Although I use Delorme's Topo USA to map out the ride and make a cue sheet I just found a new free tool that can take a route on a Google Map and automatically make a cue sheet or GPX file. Its called Google Cue and you can find instruction how to use it here.

The pre ride research has allowed me to have a good idea of what the ride will be like ahead of time and what to expect along the way. So when I rode the route I had planned to the Bryn Athyn Cathedral I saw exactly what I expected. The roads were through some quiet residential neighborhoods with not too much traffic. There were a couple of busy intersections in Jenkintown that I new would be there but confirmed that they were no problem to bike through. And the cathedral was a magnificent as was described on Wikipedia.

Likewise my ride through Pennypack park's paved trail proved that is was as nice a place to ride as many people on yelp.com had described. The trail is wide and smooth there are plenty of cool bridges and views along the way. The state penitentiary was at the end of the trail as expected. Of course what I didn't expect was for the escape alarm to sound while I was next to the prision so got the hell out of there before the inmates got over the wall.

This past weekend I decided to do one of the mountain biking rides for the book so I headed to Wharton State Forest. According to a couple of web sites on mountain biking there is a well marked trail by the Atison Ranger station call the Quaker Bridge Hampton Furnace Loop Trail that sounded like an easy ride along the sand roads with a couple of cool things to see along the way.

So I got to the Atison Ranger station around 9 am on Saturday and the map there seemed to confirm what the map I saw online said so I headed off down the road. It had rained heavy the night before so although I was riding on sand roads that usually drain well I still had to go through a few puddles of water. The sand on the roads were a little deep in spots so it was a little tough getting traction at times.

The first problem I noticed was that the trail had no markings. There were suppose to be blue blazes to mark the trail, but no matter, the route I had mapped out was pretty simple to follow there were 4 or 5 turns so as long as the miles worked to where the sand roads crossed I could find my way around. I also had my GPS just in case.

As I continued on through the wet loose sand roads I notice there were a lot of sand roads crossing and it would be very easy to get lost in here if you didn't have a GPS. The bugs were also becoming a problem. They were Jurassic in size and no matter how fast I pedaled I always had a swarm of 10 or 15 trying to bite me. The last straw that made me decide to abort the ride is where I came to the river crossing and all that was left of the bridge that I was suppose to use to cross the river was a couple of large posts sticking out of the river.

I retraced my steps back to my car and scratched this ride off the list for the book. I through I would have to head back home to do some more research to find a new ride to do down here but as it happened I ran into another mountain biker in the parking lot who said I should check out the trails down in Batsto which was just a few miles down the road.

So down to Batsto I went where I found 4 different interconnected trails to choose from. These were all single track trails from 6 miles to 19 miles long. I did a 10 mile loop that combine a couple of the trails. It was a nice single track trail that wasn't really challenging but it was fun to ride. It was exactly what I wanted for the book. So although research can help you find some good rides sometimes you can't always trust what you find. Sometimes you just have to go out and ride and be open to change your plans and explore other opportunities.

Ridley Creek State Park

2011-06-26T15:26:00.005-04:00

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This weeks effort to learn more about the roads in and around Philly led me to Ridley Creek State park. This 2600 acre park is about 16 miles south of the city and looked like a cool place to check out. The Philly bike club had a ride from center city to the park and back so I took the opportunity to tag along and learn some new roads.

I ended up doing a 45 mile ride and found some good roads. The nice thing about Philly is that it doesn't take too long to get out of the main city and on to quieter roads. The ride to the park was nice and a little hillier than I thought it would be but there was nothing real steep or long just a lot of ups and downs.

The park itself is nice and has a 5 mile paved trail with a pretty good hill at the start, a 200 foot climb in 3/4 of a mile. The park is mostly heavily forested land with a few open areas. The park also contains an old stone mansion, an arboretum and of course Ridley Creek. The pave trail is one big loop so the group I was riding with sort of split up and road at different paces until we all met up back again at the beginning of the trail.

The ride back to Philly a little more direct. A few people in the group were getting tired so we had to wait at the top of some of the climbs. Eventually as we go closer to the city a few people decided to go ahead on their own to get back a little quicker. Since I was in a little hurry myself to get home I decided to head back with them.

I am enjoying my exploration of Philly and learning new roads. Today's route was one of the better rides I did and one I would probably do again.

Center City

2011-06-19T20:11:00.008-04:00

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The more time I spend riding in and around Philadelphia the more I understand it and enjoy it. Although I have ridden the roads and trails outside of center city I have never really spent much time riding around the city itself. So this past Saturday I headed to the city to do a few rides. I ended up doing three loops. The first loop started at the Art Museum and headed to Penn's Landing and back.

Riding in the heart of any city is hard with the crowded streets, traffic and the general impatiences of both drivers and pedestrians bad things can easily happen. I must say through that riding around the Philly really wasn't too bad. This city is made up of a lot of little neighborhoods and as long as you stay away from the main thoroughfares like Market and Broad Street you can ride along most streets. I ended up going down the Schuylkill river trail which got me down to Locust Street where I headed east towards Penn's Landing. I took a couple detours along the way to see some sites like Rittenhouse Square, Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. Independence Hall didn't look quite right and if you look at the picture you can see what I mean.

When I got to Penn's Landing I took a quick detour south to Old Swedes Church which is the oldest church in Pennsylvania to take a few pictures before exploring Penn's Landing. Penn's Landing was a little disappointing. As waterfronts goes there is not much going on here compared to Baltimore's inner harbor but I did get a few pictures of the scenery along the river. The trip back to the Art Museum was an easy trip down Spring Garden. The city has a lot of bike lanes which makes getting around by bike pretty easy. Of course like any city the bike lanes are some times blocked by double parked cars or other obstacles but as long as you have so good urban riding skills getting around the city is no problem just watch out for the occasional cobble stone road which are harsh even on a mountain bike.

For my second loop I headed to Forbidden Drive which is about 5 miles north from the Art Museum on the Schuylkill river trail. Forbidden drive is a wide gravel path along the Wissahickon river. This is an unbelievably beautiful river gorge and being so close to the city is a very popular place for bikers, runners and anybody looking to enjoy the outdoors. There are also a number of interesting bridges and features along the trail. I really enjoyed this ride. One of the best features was the Valley Green Inn which is an old hotel built in the late 1700's that is now a restaurant and snack bar. It was a good place to take a break and talk to a few other bikers.

There are also a number of mountain bike trails that go off of Forbidden Drive. I have heard from a few people that they are pretty fun. I didn't get a chance to explore them this time so but will try to get back here again to explore them.

My last loop was around Fairmount Park. Fairmount Park is the main park in Philly. Unlike Central Park in NY which is one large park, Fairmount Park is a sort of a series of smaller some what interconnected parks that have grown over time. The park has a series of athletic fields historic houses and museums that straddle both sides of the Schuylkill River. There are a lot of roads that criss cross the park and even on a nice Saturday the roads were pretty quiet. There were a lot of interesting builds and statues along the route I took. I also got some good views of the city from the top of a few hills. It was a little hazy so the pictures weren't perfectly clear but I now know the city skyline for a couple of different angles.

I spent about 40 miles touring the city and feel I'm starting to understand it from a biking point of view. I still have some more exploring to do but so far I am finding a lot to like about biking in Philly.

A Day at the Races

2011-06-05T21:08:00.003-04:00

Although I don't follow bike racing that closely I have always wanted to see the Philly International Cycling Championship. I have seen pictures of the riders going up the Manayunk wall, Lemon Tree Hill and zipping along Kelly Drive and just wanted to see it in person.

This year I joined the Philly bike club to get to know the area in and around Philly so when I saw they had some rides on the race day I decided to make the trip in to see the race.

Since I didn't want to deal with the crowds and parking I took the Riverline from Bordentown to the Aquarium in Camden and then rode over the Ben Franklin to get to Philly. The ride over the Ben Franklin was actually easy and nice. The weather was a little cloudy so the pictures I took didn't come out to great but the view was still nice.

Philly has a lot of roads with bike lanes so it was no problem getting to the Art Museum near where the race started. I got there about a half hour before the race so I had a chance to ride the course a little and see some of the hubub going on. There were a lot of vendor selling and giving away stuff. There were a lot of people milling around but it wasn't real crowded.

They cleared the roads around 8:45 am and the race started at 9:00 am. The first 3 lap go around the Eakins Oval to Logan Square and back then they head out on the 14.4 mile course which takes them out to Manayunk and beyond.

After the first 3 laps were over I headed out with the club for a ride. We headed through Fairmount Park and stopped along to course the see the racers a few times before heading out for a ride around town. When ended up at Lemon Tree Hill where the club has an area set up to watch the race which included food and drinks. I hung around for a little while talking to some people from the club before heading back home. All in all it was a good day and something I may do again next year.

It's the End of the World... or Not

2011-05-21T20:44:00.007-04:00

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As some of you may have hear today, May 21st, was suppose to be the beginning of the End of Days according to predictions made by American Christian radio host Harold Camping. These type of predictions aren't new and are usually made by some megalomaniac crack pot who thinks they knows the mind of God. Although there are a few hours left until May 22 I'll go out on a limb and say this one is as bogus as all the other ones.

Even though I didn't get swept up in the Rapture today I did find a small piece of heaven on my ride today. I was down in the Brandywine region of PA checking out some rides for the book. This is a beautiful area just north of Delaware on Rt 1 that was the sight of one of the battles of the revolutionary war and still has a lot of its rural charm. There is a lot of preserved land and farms in this area so it is not real built up except along Rt 1. There are also plenty of quiet roads, rolling hills and nice vistas that make this a popular place to ride. This is a hilly area. There are no real tough climbs but there are also is not a lot of flat spots so you are going up hill or down hill for the most part.

I have not biked much in this area before so I didn't know what to expect. I was lucky to have a nice clear sunny day so when I was on the top of the hills I was able to see the valley below and beyond. Although I did this ride on my own I was never really alone as there were plenty of other bikers around. There was a nice combination of forested and open land I would go climb up a hill to a clearing with a nice view then descend through a forest along a stream. The Brandywine river winds around this area and it seemed like I crossed it 5 or 6 times on my ride. It kinda reminded me of the Raritan river.

The 40 miles of my ride went by quick and when I was done I actually wished the ride was longer. The Brandywine area is a bit of a hike to get to but I will try to get back here again when I can.

After the ride I went to Longwood Gardens which is probably one of the best botanical gardens in the country. I had been to Longwood Gardens a few times before in the winter during Christmas so since it was so close to where I started the ride I wanted to check it out during the spring. Longwood Gardens is a massive place with numerious well maintain gardens, many different fountains and a large conservatory filled with any kind of plant you can imagine. It took me a couple of hours to work my way through the gardens and snap a few pictures. It was Lilytopia week so the main room of the conservatory was filled with hundreds of varieties of lily's. It not only looked good but also smelled great. If you have any interest in flowers or gardens you owe it to yourself to make a visit here.

Attack Turkey Must Die

2011-05-08T09:03:00.015-04:00

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This past weekend Chris, Jeff and I headed to the Quad County Metric in Green Lane PA. I wanted to do this ride to map out some rides in this area. The weather was good so there were already a lot of people there when we arrived.

We decided to do the 45 mile ride with an option to add 8 more hilly miles if we wanted. The first few miles were pretty hilly nothing really steep but there was a lot more up than down.

At around 8 miles at the top of a long slow climb was a turkey who seemed really pissed will all the bikers going by. I stopped, took a few pictures then had to quickly pedal away as he started coming after me. I told him that I'll see him on Thanksgiving... on my plate.

After the first 10 miles things leveled off and we even had a few down hills. Jeff was complaining that there was some thing wrong with his gloves since the gel pads were on not on the palm side of the gloves. "Umh, maybe you put them on backwards" I said. Which is what he did and felt a little stupid about it. The main reason I knew he had them on backwards was that I had the same gloves and knew it was easy to put them on backwards since the closure is on the bottom of the wrist instead of the top. I took a picture of the gloves on wrong just to make sure Jeff can not deny this in the future.

At mile 13 we had to make a decision whether to do the extra 8 hilly miles or not. NOT! Its just too early in the season and we didn't know how hard the rest of the ride would be. The middle of the ride wasn't bad and had some killer downhills. The food was pretty good at the rest stop with a lot of home made food including potatos which is something I had never seen at a ride before.

After the rest stop we had some nice rides along some rivers and some more climbing here and there. It was a clear sunny day and the scenery was nice. There were a couple of long slow climbs. Nothing really difficult but this route had very few flat spots we were either going up or down hill and I don't think I ever shifted more on any other ride I have done.

By the end of the ride we had done around 3800 feet of climbing in 46 miles. We were tired but didn't feel real bad. They had some decent food when we got back and we ended up meeting a few people from the Princeton freewheelers after lunch. All in all is was good day and I'm glad I did the event. It is always fun to get out and do different rides. The Suburban Cyclist did a good job with this event and I'm looking forward to doing the Lake Noxamixon ride at the end of August. If you are intested in joining me you can check out the ride at their web site

The Bridges of Buck County

2011-05-01T21:18:00.007-04:00

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Anybody wanting to see a some covered bridges can take a tour through Bucks county PA which has 11 of them scattered around. As part of exploring and mapping out rides in PA I took a couple of rides this week to check out some of these bridges.

The first ride I did was to explore the area around Newtown. As part of this ride I rode through Tyler Park which contains the Schofield Covered Bridge. Unlike other cover bridges in Bucks county this one is no longer used by cars and now is only used by hiker and horses in Tyler Park

While checking out the bridge I also rode some of the 10 miles of bike paths in the park. Tyler park is pretty nice there are a lot of wooded areas and fields and some nice paths along the Neshaminy Creek. There is also a nice picnic and beach area. All the bike paths are paved so it was easy riding around.

After Tyler park I headed north along the ridge towards New Hope and did a few hills before eventually making my way to the Van Sant Bridge.

On Saturday I headed to PA again. This time I started from Bulls island and headed up to Doylestown. I had one tough climb up Wismer then cruised along the ridge. The PA side has a lot more ups and downs than the NJ side so it was slow going. On Wismer I ran into the Loux Bridge and then headed downhill to the Frankenfield Bridge.

Eventually just before I made my way back to the Delaware river I checked out the Erwinna Bridge which really is kind of ugly and beat up.

After this I crossed over to NJ and took a break in Frenchtown. I had only 27 mile in at this point so from Frenchtown I headed up the ridge and road along on 519 before making my way back to Bulls Island via Federal Twist. I did a lot of climbing in this ride so coming all the way down on Federal Twist was my reward for all the climbs. I actually hit 45 mph which felt great but dangerous.

There are still a lot of covered bridges I didn't get a chance to see so I'm sure I will visit this area again to try and see a few more.

Say Cheese!

2011-04-17T19:38:00.006-04:00

This Sunday I headed to the Sourlands for some hill training as I try to get into shape for the "Ride the Quad" which is a hilly ride in Montgomery County PA. It was also way too windy to ride in the flats today.

I ended up riding by myself because I decided to do this last minute and didn't see any rides in the book that worked with my schedule.

I always have my camera with me when I ride so I can capture an interesting sights along the way. As I came through Mount Airy I saw a bunch of cows just sitting by the fence. I won't have taken a second look expect for the fact that it looked like they were waiting for somebody to take a family photo. They were arranged almost perfectly with the small calfs in front and the bigger cows in the back and exactly in between the fences posts. So I took the shot and moved on.

Spring is Here

2011-04-07T20:28:00.004-04:00

It's finally starting to feel like spring out there. You know its spring when you start worrying about dressing too warm, start putting sunscreen on, and seeing flowers along the road.

Spring is also the time I realize that I need to do some work to get back in shape as the inclines along the ride feel like hills and doing 40 miles feels like a metric. No matter what I do over the winter to try and stay in riding shape I aways loose some aerobic capacity.

I know this is normal and part of the cycle of riding but when I feel the first warm days of spring I am anxious to get into shape so I can start expanding the length and type of rides I do with out having to worry about if I'm in good enough shape to do the ride.

The Streets of Philadelphia

2011-03-17T20:50:00.004-04:00

The winter weather has faded away and I've been able to get back on the road again for the past 3 weeks. I really enjoyed trying to bike through the snowy winter on a mountain bike and do some different type of riding but it's been nice to get back on the road an catch up with some people I haven't seen in a while. I actually rode with George this past weekend. It was good to see him riding again after the accident he had in the fall. Even though he said he is only about 70% recovered he rode good enough for me to have to switch to the big chain ring to catch him a few times along the ride.

March is the beginning of the riding season which makes me start to think about new rides I want to try and setting my goals for the season. Last year I decided to do more hilly rides and work at becoming better at climbing. 2010 was a good year and all the hills I climbed got me into really good shape.

This year is going to be a lot different than last year mostly because I'm going to be working on a new book "Best Bike Rides Philadelphia". This book is going to have the best road and mountain bike rides in and near the city of Philadelphia. The rides will mostly be in the 15 to 30 mile range and meant for new or less serious riders. I've already started doing the research and doing some of the rides for the book. What I'm discovering is that Philly has a lot of nice and cool places to ride. For example they actually close MLK drive on Saturdays and Sundays in the summer just for bikers and runner to use to ride along the Schuylkill River. There is also various parts of Fairmount park which has a lot of good paved and dirt trails some of which they actually plow during the winter. I was able to ride an 11 mile trail along Pennypack Creek even through there was over a foot of snow on the ground. This is going to be a fun project but is going to take a lot of my normal riding time.

I still plan to do some rides with the club but I won't be leading as many rides as last year since I will be riding outside of the usual club areas. As I did with the Road Biking NJ book some of rides I will put into the freewheeler will be rides to explore the areas I need to get the book done. These will include areas from Doylestown to Wharton State Park to Newark Delaware. So keep and eye on this blog and the rides I put in the freewheeler and join my as I explore some of the roads in and around Philadelphia.

Winter Thaw

2011-02-21T20:54:00.004-05:00

It looks like Punxsutawney Phil prediction of a early spring may be correct as the pass couple of weeks have been warm enough to melt most of the snow. It's still been a little hard to get out for a ride as the weather is still a little crazy. This past Saturday was over 50 degrees but with 25 mph steady winds gusting to 40+ there was no way I was going out for a ride.

Luckily Sunday the wind died down. It was below freezing but was sunny. Some people wuss out in the cold weather but I have become a little braver this season. I still won't go out on the road if it is much below 40 but on a mountain bike if I dress right and stay in the woods I can ride down to 25 and be comfortable.

So Sunday I decided to ride the canal path from Princeton to Rocky Hill and back. Even though I have lived in this area for over 20 years I have actually never rode along the canal path so it was a fun ride. There was still some deep snow in a few spot which I had to walk around but the trail was mostly clear and easy to ride. The warm weather of the past couple of weeks have me itching to get back on the road but for now I am happy to be able to get out any way I can.

Thunder Sleet...WTF

2011-01-26T19:57:00.011-05:00

So I'm just sitting in my house relaxing after dinner. It is another snow/rain/sleet snowpocalypse type of day. I'm watching the news and listening to NBC 10's weatherman, Glen Schwartz, explain how he was "surprised" by the amount of snow we had this morning..... Wait a minute here, isn't it your job to predict the weather. You have Doppler ten thousand, a team of meteorologists and claim to have the most advance weather prediction algorithms know to man and the best you can do when we get 5 inches of snow when you predicted a little bit of rain is to say "Well that was surprising"

He then goes on to show his prediction for the overnight snow storm with the expected snow amounts, which at this point I have no faith in. He even says that we may see some "Thunder Sleet". OK now he is totally making crap up. "Thunder Sleet"?

A half hour later sleet is pounding on the windows and all of a sudden I see a bright flash of light. Was that lighting? No it can't be. Then comes the thunder. Wow that was strange it's like the worst storms of summer and winter combined. I guess the locust will start falling from the sky tomorrow.

This strange winter weather has given me the opportunity to take a few interesting pictures. I'm sure I will have more soon as the weather doesn't seem to be getting better anytime soon.

Here is a nice one I took the morning after the snow storm right after Christmas.

In early January we had a really cold day. Our sun room is unheated and because of the pool the humidity can get really high. So the morning when it was 3 degrees we had a little ice build up on the inside of the room.

Here is a picture of Chris while riding around Lebanon

At the end of the same ride my camelback ended up freezing up. It was late in the day and getting colder. I now know that when it is around 20 degrees I should wear the camelback on the inside of my coat.

Snow Biking

2011-01-09T09:02:00.012-05:00

So far this winter is shaping up to be a cold and snowy one a little like last year. We had a big snow storm right after Christmas and a few small ones since. This have left the roads unrideable and with the temperatures not getting much above freezing it could be a while before I am able to ride on the road again.

This has lead me to try out mountain biking in order to continue biking this winter. Chris, Laura, Mike and others have been doing this for years and it looked like fun so I decided it was time to give it a try. I don't have a mountain bike and did want to keep borrowing other peoples so I went the Trenton Bike Exchange. The Trenton Bike Exchange has a lot of old used bikes that are relatively cheap $25 to $200. They didn't have a lot of choices in mountain bikes that fit me. I ended up getting an old Giant mountain bike that is at least 10 years old and a little beat up but is good cheap bike that will let me try mountain biking an see if I really like it.

After cleaning up the bike and adding some new pedals I headed to Mercer Park this past Sunday. We had just gotten a couple of inches of snow which was enough to be fun but not too deep to make riding impossible. Chris and Mike M joined me for the ride which is good since they know the trails better than I do. They called me a snow virgin and did seem to take some joy at the fact that I hadn't ridden in snow before which meant they were going to enjoy watching me fall on my ass.

Riding in the snow was fun but hard. I don't have a lot of experience riding mountain bikes so my handling abilities are not that good on smooth dirt let alone slippery snow. Keeping my balance was tough especially in deep snow. I went down a number of times which I'm learning is just part of mountain biking. As Mike said "when you fall on a road bike its called a crash, when you fall on a mountain bike it is just a fall". Luckily the snow was still soft and fluffy.

It was really pretty riding through the snow although I was concentrating on keeping from falling. We ended up going around the other side of the lake and for the most part the snow was only a couple of inches deep but there were spots where the drifts were deep so we did a bit walking. There were also spots where there was a lot of a ice under the snow which were impossible to ride through.

Chris's mountain bike skills again impressed me. He seems to be able to ride though almost any thing and was a lot faster than I was. It was cold and windy but being in the woods blocked the wind. Riding a mountain bike is hard work especially in the snow so I warmed up pretty quick and was never really was cold.

By the time we got to the other side of the lake we were a little tired so we took an easier way back. We ended up on the paved bike path which was snow covered but ridable until we got near the tennis courts where the drifts were too deep to keep riding. We switched to the road for the rest of the way back to the boat house. This was the only time on the whole ride that I felt how windy it really was.

We ended up spending over 2 hours riding/walking in the snow. I was a little tired and sore. My wife thought I was crazy to go riding in the snow but it was a fun time. I got to test out the bike and do a different type of riding. I can't say I'm a mountain biker yet but I am not longer a snow virgin I am a snow novice.

Chris and Tom's Excellent Mountain Bike Adventure

2010-12-19T20:13:00.006-05:00

Whenever its got too cold to ride on the road some of my friends get their riding fix by doing some mountain bike riding. It sounds and looks like fun but I've never joined them mostly because I don't own a mountain bike. I have done some mountain bike riding out west in Moab on vacation and few other times have and enjoyed it but never really went any further than that.

This past Saturday the high was only suppose to get to 35 degrees which is too cold for me to ride on the road. Lucky Chris emailed me asking me if I wanted to join him in Mercer County Park for a mountain bike ride and I decided why not.

Chris has an extra mountain bike so I didn't have to worry about finding or borrowing any equipment. We met at the boat house at 9am and the temperature was all of 25 degrees but it was sunny with no wind so it wasn't that bad. The bike Chris had for me fit pretty well and after a quick ride around the parking lot we were off.

Before I got use to the pedals and gears we were in the woods and I was more concerned about not hitting the trees than learning how to shift. I was a little surprised how narrow the trail was but got use to it. I consider myself to be expert at handling a road bike but mountain biking requires a slightly different mind and skill set. It did take me long to realize that I would need to learn some new skills to not fall on my ass and keep up with Chris. Things that you avoid at all cost on a road bike like sand and tree limbs are just part of normal mountain bike trail. So when I come over a small rise and see a sandy path with roots and tree limbs across it the road biker in my mind tells me to stop and walk the bike along the trail. Then I see Chris breeze through it and I tell myself that this is a mountain bike and it can handle it.

Mercer County Park has a wide variety of trails that could keep you busy for a good part of the day. There are narrow deep wood trails along small streams, sandy trails along the lake and some open grass land. Chris lead me through a number of different trails and I lost track of where I really was but I starting to relax and enjoy it. I was still cautious but Chris gave me some good tips and as I practiced some more I was got use to jumping over tree limbs and handling the twisting trails. There are a couple of cool areas in the woods. One is called the bowl which is a little like a half pipe on a ski slope where you can ride in and out of a sandy bowl shaped area. There is also a place along the trail that has some ramps and other man made obstacle. I didn't try any of them but Chris tried the pivoting ramp out a couple of times. The first time up the ramp it didn't pivot correctly because it was frozen to the ground so Chris had to bail but made it OK the second time.

After about an hour and a half I lost sight of Chris and must have made a wrong turn because he was no where in sight. I figured Chris would give me up for dead at some point and come back to his car so I headed back towards the parking lot. Once I got there I saw John P who also decided to do some mountain biking. Ten minutes later Chris was back. I decided I had enough for today but John and Chris headed out for another loop. All and all it was a lot of fun and something I think I would like to do more of.

Road Closed

2010-12-01T21:24:00.003-05:00

For the past 3 weeks every ride I have done has involved a detour of some kind. This usually involves adding a few more miles to the ride which is not a problem in the summer but when the weather gets cold the extra miles mean that it will be a little longer until you can warm up again.

The roads that are closed are Windsor Rd. The bridge over the turnpike is under construction so from Rt 130 you can take Perrineville to Allens to get around this.

Iron Ore Rd is closed just south of McCaffery so you can't get to Daum Rd.

Sweetmans Lane has a bridge out just west of Kinney Rd. To get around this from Kinney you can take Thompson Grove to Mill to Oakland Mill Rd.

Most of these closures should be gone by spring and aren't hard to get around but it is always nice to know about them so you can plan your rides accordingly. Since they have started widening the turnpike I suspect there will be a number of intermittent road closures around the bridges crossing for the next few years.

Home Improvement

2010-11-20T20:53:00.006-05:00

This pass summer saw some construction at my house as we added a sunroom over an existing patio. We have been thinking about this for a few years and finally decided to go for it. We wanted the sunroom so that we could extend the summer and enjoy the outdoors when the weather starts getting colder. So we now have a sunroom and when the sun is out the room heats up quickly and we can sit in the warmth and feel like we are sitting outside. The room has floor to ceiling windows and a couple of skylights so it feels very open.

As with any construction project it took longer than we expected and cost more than we wanted to spend but the results were what we wanted. Although this will improve the value of my house this expense was definitely a unnecessary luxury but one we will really enjoy. The other unnecessary luxury we decided to spurge on for the room was an indoor pool. Now this is not a large built-in pool like you would see in a hotel but more like a portable above ground pool. It was relatively affordable and is going to make this winter a lot more fun.

My wife is a water aerobic instructor and loves the water. During the summer she lives in our pool. The saddest day of the year, for her, is when the pool is closed for the winter. I'm don't enjoy the pool as much as my wife but there is nothing better after a ride to take a dip in the pool to sooth my tired muscles.

So now that we have an outdoor room and an indoor pool winter is going to be a lot more enjoyable because when I get home from a cold winter ride I will be able to take a soak in a pool no matter what the weather is outside.

The Long Cold Winter

2010-11-14T17:11:00.005-05:00

Although my Vegas trip was fun I rode by myself so it’s been nice to get back home where I can ride with my friends again. The days are getting shorter and the weather is getting colder. This usually means shorter rides closer to home as I try to maintain some level of fitness through the winter. Riding to me is more than just exercise it also very social as I usually try to do a least one ride each weekend with some of my friends. I have been with the Princeton Freewheelers for almost 20 years and have come to know a lot of people in the club. Even though I don't see most of these people out side of biking when you ride 3 or 4 hours a week with some one over the course of many years you get to know them pretty well and become good friends. I am lucky because I have a good core of people that I ride with that I really enjoy being around.

During the winter I don’t see as many of these people because of my shorter more local rides. It’s always fun in the spring to reconnect again. This year unfortunately I will not be able to reconnect with one of my friends, Joe McBride, who was killed in a tragic bike accident just over a week ago. Laura posted a good Eulogy about Joe in words and pictures that describes him pretty well. There is also a Facebook page that has similar words about how much he will be missed. I really can’t add much more about Joe that hasn’t already been said. He was a great guy who's colorful language and sarcastic nature made him unique and fun ride with. Although riding during the cold weather can be fun and interesting in its own way, it is a little tough at times and makes you wish for the longer days and the warmer weather of the spring and summer months. This winter will be a little tougher as I know during some of the rides my thoughts will turn to Joe and how much I will miss him.

Vegas Baby !!!

2010-10-29T22:25:00.006-04:00

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When most people think of Vegas they think of gambling, extravagant shows, CSI, and maybe a few of sinful things that this town is famous for. Vegas is a gaudy congested mess of a city that is fun, in its own way, for a couple of days. Its one of the most popular places for business conferences so chances are if you attend these types of things you will make it to Vegas at some point in your career. If you travel a little outside of Vegas you will find some beautiful desert terrain and some nice mountain ranges. This makes for some good mountain biking and some decent road biking so when I had to attend a conference this week in Vegas I added a few days to the front end of the trip to explore some of the roads.

One of the most popular places to ride outside of Vegas is Red Rock Canyon. Red Rock Canyon is nestled in the mountains north west of Vegas it’s only about 20 miles from the strip. Planning the route to ride was pretty easy because there aren’t many roads out by Red Rock. You basically just get on Rt 159 and head towards the mountains. I started my ride from a shopping mall where interstate 215 and Rt 159 meet. There is a bike lane here that turns into a wide shoulder so although Rt 159 has some traffic you really don’t have to worry about the cars.

I started my ride early in the morning to take advantage of clear skies that were supposed to cloud up latter. The first couple of miles were a slow constant climb to get over a small hill that was in front of the mountains. I was on a rented bike, a Cannodale Synapse 5 Alloy which is the next model down to my Cannodale Synapse 5 Carbon so if felt pretty familiar although it took a little bit to get used to the gearing which was a compact.

Once I got over the hill I caught the full view of the mountains. As I rode the next 4 mile I watched the sun slowly light up the mountains. This was a really cool effect. What happens is as the sun rises and shines more light on the mountains the colors get more and more vivid and it looks like the mountains are being painted before your eyes. It was partly cloudy so the sun was going in an out and the effect was some what muted but still cool.

I had a 5 mile ride from where I started to get to Red Rock. Although the road looked flat it was actually a constant shallow climb. Red Rock Canyon has a 13 mile scenic road that is run by the park service. This scenic road takes you up into the canyon to get a closer view of the mountains and the valleys. From my research I knew the terrain would be hilly and require some climbing but it wasn’t anything tougher than I have done in NJ just a lot longer. The first 5 miles of the road is mostly uphill where you climb a little over 1000 ft in 5 miles. The grade is 4-6% with some small spots in the 10 percent range. What’s different here is the perspective. The mountains that surround the canyon are tall and steep so when you see a road next to then that is going up at a 10% grade it looks almost flat. So as you are riding you are reluctant to down shift because you mind is telling you that the road is flat.

Once I understood this though I was better able to grind my way up the canyon. I stopped 3 or 4 times to take pictures and let my heart rate come down but it wasn’t too tough of climb. I don’t know if I could do it with out stopping with the compact gearing I had but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. There were only a few cars on the road and maybe 3 or 4 other bikers so it felt as I had the place to myself. When I reached the top of the climb I looked back to where I came from and saw a smoky haze in the valley below. The smoke obscured the mountains but was pretty. The pictures I took don’t really convey the size or majesty of the view but it made the climb worth it.
The rest of the scenic road was mostly downhill with a few small climbs here and there. The scenic road is one way but I saw a constant stream of runners coming at me. When I left the scenic road and got back to Rt 159 I saw a rest stop for what looked like a marathon run. As I headed towards the town of Blue Diamond I ran in to more and more runners and a lot of support vehicles cheering them on. Most of the vehicles where decorated with a theme “Secret Ninja Monkey”, “The A Team”, “Saturday Night Fever”, and many other bizarre ones. This made the ride to Blue Diamond entertaining.

Blue Diamond is only about 20 miles out side of Vegas and it’s a totally different world. The sign welcoming you to town Reads:

The town itself has a bike shop, a little food store and a few small houses spread around a couple of streets that make up the town. The town makes you feel like you are in the middle of the desert hundreds miles away from any civilization. The bike shop was the satellite branch of the one I rented my bike from and had some Gatorade, food and a couple of nice chair out side. I spend about 20 mins there talking to some people working at the shop and a few other bikers.

After the break I headed back the way I came along Rt 159 back to where I started. The wind and elevation was against me most of the way so it was a slow going but the mountains surrounding the roads were pretty so it was a nice ride. By the time I got back to the car I had done a little over 40 miles and around 3000 ft of total climbing. It was a fun ride mostly because of the scenery.

Sunday I headed towards Lake Mead which is on the south east side of Vegas. They just completed the River Loop Trail which is a paved bike trail that is a 35 mile loop that goes through the mountains of south east Vegas and along the west side of Lake Mead, I was a little unsure of the exact route because the information that I found online was a little vague about the details of the trail and so I had a hard time finding the where to park to get on the trail.

I ended up just parking close to where I thought it would be and heading towards Lake Mead on Rt 146. Worst case I would end up riding along the roads instead of the trail. After 7 or 8 miles I was at the entrance to the Lake Mead recreational area and found access to the trail. I looked over information about the trail and it looked like a good route to take. The one thing that gave me pause to getting on the trail was the warning about mountain goats. Apparently according to a biker I ran into later there are quite a few mountain goats in these parts and every now and then they will try to head butt some passing bikers.

The spot where I hopped on the trail was right before a small hill that I needed to climb to get to the valley where Lake Mead is. Although the trail was paved it was laid out like it was a mountain biking trail with switch backs, hairpin turns, and shear drop offs on both sides of the trail. The path was very twisty, steep and windy both going up the hill and down the other side. With the shear drops on both sides and no barriers it was fun in a scary kind of way. Once I was at the valley and riding along the west side of Lake Mead the trail got straighten out and got a lot easier to ride. There had actually been a lot of rain the week before I got to Vegas so although the trail was wider and flatter there were a number spots where dirt and rocks covered the road and required me to walk the bike acrossed some of them.

I meet a few other bikers riding the trail and spend about 5 miles talking with one of them. Lake Mead is really low, the lowest it has been since the 1930s when it was first formed by the Hoover Dam so the lake looked really empty and not real pretty. Eventually I saw the point in Lake Mead where the Hover Dam starts. I was going to take the road to Hover Dam and try out the new bridge over the dam since I hear it was open but couldn’t get any reliable information about it. Since Sept 11th 2001 no trucks have been allow over the Hover Dam because fear that some one might try and blow it up. This caused all trucks to have to take a 20 mile detour which added a lot of time to each trip. Nevada decided to build a new bridge and road about a mile south of the dam. This new bridge had just opened this past weekend. It was suppose to be an engineering marvel as well as provide a great view of the dam.

It might had been cool to try and ride over the bridge but by the time I get near the dam I was running a little late and wasn’t 100% sure how to get to the dam and back. Some of the biker I ran into said I could take a rail trail off the River Loop Trail that was paved others said it was still dirt and a few others suggested to just take the road. I decided I didn’t want to risk getting lost so I just continued on the River Loop Trail.

From Lake Mead the trail heads to Boulder City which is on the top of the mountain above the lake. Getting to the top of the mountain required a 1000 ft climb that lasted 3.5 miles. The climb didn’t look bad from the map I had looked at but actually doing it was tougher than I thought. Again the mountains make the road look flatter than it is. The hard part wasn’t the grade which was 4-5% it was the fact that the hill just keep on going and going. It was more a mental challenge than a physical challenge. The scenery here wasn’t as nice as the somewhat similar climb in Red Rock I had done the previous day. I had no problem keeping the pedals moving or keeping my heart rate in check the problem was that after 10 mins of climbing I was only half way up the hill. Getting to the top was satisfying though. It was probably the longest continuous climb I have ever done and something that just can’t be found in NJ.

After riding along the top of the ridge for a while there was one more little climb to get over rail road pass. There was a train going over the pass when I got there and I was able to actual pull ahead of the train at the top of the pass. Of course the train was pulling a couple of hundred tons over the pass where I was just getting my fat ass over it so it was a hollow victory but these are the strange games you play when riding alone.
After the pass I continued along the trail for another 5 miles of mostly gentle down hills before leaving the trail to go back to the road to find my car. I ended up with 37 miles and 3700 ft of climbing. The River Loop Trail was actually one of the nicer bike trails that I have done and I would like to do it again someday and hopefully explore a little more.

Riding around Las Vegas was a good change of pace. The scenery is a lot different than I’m used to and the climbs are longer. Although I road the roads around Vegas I ran into a lot of mountain bikers as well who told me how good the trails are so if I come back to a conference out here again I might try to do a little mountain biking.

Where is Everybody!!!

2010-10-14T21:06:00.007-04:00

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This past Saturday I had a planned a beautiful fall foliage ride through Califon. Unfortunately the weather wasn't idea for the ride. It was overcast and really windy. I usually don't get a lot of people when I ride up in Califon but I knew I was in trouble when I pulled into the parking lot and nobody was there.

At 9am still nobody, oh well I guess I'm riding this one alone. I thought about bagging the ride because of the conditions but I am headed to Las Vegas next week for work and plan to do some rides in the canyons out there and wanted the hill work.

I knew the ride was going to suck as made a right out of Raritan college and had to pedal down the hill. The wind was ferocious but got a little better as I got into the more wooded areas. The wind was at least a constant 20mph with gusts close to double that. I almost got blown over a couple of times.

Going up Rockaway road was pretty as always and the leaves were at their peak. It was also cool the way the leaves were being blown around in the wind. There were mini tornados of leaves everywhere. Of course I was being constantly pummeled by acorns, tree branches and other flying debris but the worst thing was the sound of the wind. It was a constant hum like a freight train approaching.

Towards the top of the hill there is a wide angle mirror where Rockaway meets Still Hollow. I snapped a picture as I went by that made a cool self portrait.

I made my way through Califon and then climbed up Schooleys mountain and made a stop at the general store up there. One thing I realized is that although the hills block some of the wind when you get to the of the hill it only gets windier. I did see one other biker along the way and he looked about as happy as I was but a least I knew there was another person crazy enough to go out in this wind.

After the rest stop the wind got a lot worst. The wind went from ferocious to down right ridiculous. This did give me the chance to solve one of the worlds most important philosophical riddles.

"If Tom curses at the gale force winds and nobody is around to hear it does he make a sound"

The answer is NO! because the f#*king wind is so loud it drowns out any other sound.

I did get a couple of breaks from the wind on some of the down hills. I went down Middle Valley with and its hairpin turn with a 25 degree down slope. This hill is scary fun and as dangerous as it sounds but its was too cool to pass up. The other break I got was the last 5 miles when I finally had a tail wind. I actually hit 35 mph on the flat with almost no pedaling.

By the time I got back to the college between all the hills and the constant wind I was really beat. Even though it was a lonely tough ride it was still fun. Which goes to prove that even a crappy bike ride is still better than most other things.

Bicycle Science

2010-09-28T20:33:00.006-04:00

I realized that I had barophobia (fear of gravity) about two thirds of the way up Dutchtown Zion when I saw my hear rate at 10 beats over what should have been my max. Gravity is great for keeping stuff stuck to the ground but sucks when you fight against it by climbing up a hill on a bike. Although a hill is just a geological formation we tend to personify them by describing them as annoying or rude and usually add some profanity as they get steeper and longer. This only adds to the phobia.

The best way to treat barophobia is to gain a better understanding of the forces that make it hard to climb hills so the fear can be rationalized away. This means understanding the science behind bicycling.

This pass summer I bought a new bike specifically for the hillier rides that I do. One of the first questions I had to answer is do I want a triple or a compact. If you search the blogosphere you will see passionate opinions on both sides which tend to sound like political arguments with no facts to back them up. To cut through all the noise I ended up turning to physics, math and a good book “Bicycling Science” by David Gordon Wilson to get some real answers.

There has been a lot of research on the science behind the bicycle and the equation below can answer most of the questions about the forces that act on a bike. With this equation and a little knowledge of physiology you can make some good decisions what type of gearing you want for your bike.

The equation:

Pr = Cfriction x V x P + Cair x (V + Vwind)^2 x V+ 9.81 x P x Slope% x V

Where Pr is the power generated by the rider
Where V is the speed of the bike
P is the weight of the rider and bike
Slope% is the steepness of the slope in percent
Cfriction is the coefficient of friction of rolling resistance
Cair is the coefficient of drag

For those who have arithmophobia (fear of math) let me break this equation down in to some simple explanations so you can you can understand how to use it to make some decisions about setting up the gearing on your bike. If you don’t care about the actual math you can stop reading and head to the Bicycle Science section of my web site which has some calculators that you can play with to get a feel of physics behind bicycling.

The equation has 3 parts:

The first part (Cfriction x V x P) calculates the power needed to overcome the rolling resistance of the bike. This includes the friction of the gears, bearing, tires, and other parts of the drive train that slow you down. The rolling resistance of a decent quality road bike is very small especially once you are rolling and up to speed. Usually only 3% to 5% of power generated by the rider goes to overcoming the rolling resistance so this part of the equation can usually be ignored.

The second part (Cair x (V + Vwind)^2 x V) calculates the power needed to overcome air resistance. The drag coefficient (Cair) is usually between 0.25(racing tuck) to 0.4(sitting up). The important thing to note here is that the power needed to overcome air resistance goes up by the square of the speed. So assuming a drag coefficient of 0.4, cruising along at 16 mph takes 146 watts going 2 miles an hour faster takes 208 watts, a 62 watt increase. Another interesting thing about air resistance is that weight doesn’t matter. Whether you are 100 lbs or 200 lbs it still takes the same amount of effort (146 watts) to cruise at 16 mph.

The third part of the equations (9.81 x P x Slope% x V) calculates the amount of power needed to climb up a hill. When you are climbing what is happening is that you are fighting the force of gravity. The two main factors here are the weight of you and the bike, and how quickly you are gaining altitude. The rate that you are gaining altitude depends on how steep the slope is and your speed. Not all 350 ft climbs feel the same. Climbing all the way to the top of Federal Twist you climb a little over 350 ft in a little less than a mile and the last half has a 15% slope. It’s a tough climb. On the other hand the climb up Rockaway Rd is also around 350 ft but it is 3 miles long and the slope stays mostly in the 3% to 4% range with no really steep spots. It’s actually an enjoyable climb.

A rider can only produce and maintain a specific about of power so as the slope gets steeper the rider speed decreases which is what the equation is telling you but you need to go beyond the math to understand why it feels so bad to climb a tough hill like Federal Twist. This is where you need to understand a little of the physiology behind riding.

This is a simplification but, the human body has basically two types of muscles, slow twitch and fast twitch. Slow twitch muscles are the ones that are used to generate slow continuous power so these are the muscles that you use as you cruise along that flat stretch of road. Slow twitch muscles are very efficient so as long as you each and drink correctly these muscles can generate power all day long.

Fast twitch muscles have the same strength as slow twitch muscles but as the name implies can apply their strength much faster. These are the muscles that kick in when you sprint away from the pack or climb a tough hill. The quickness comes at a price because Fast twitch muscles fatigue quickly so they can only be used in limited bursts. This is the problem will climbing steep hills.

As you start to climb you usually need to apply more power to the pedals. You only have a limited amount of power so as the slope gets steeper you need to slow your speed. If you stay in the same gear the force you need to put to the pedals increases and you switch from using slow twitch muscles to using fast twitch muscles. You can mitigate this by switching to a lower gear to keep the force on the pedals to a comfortable level. On steep hills you may run out of gears and have to stomp your way up the hill. In this case you will quickly use up your fast twitch muscles and eventually run out of power. Most of the time you will make it to the top before this happens but it will use up some energy and the next hill will feel harder.

This is where the science comes in. What you want to do is to find the gearing that will let you maintain a comfortable level of force on the pedals without having to use up your fast twitch muscles. This may sound hard to determine but can easily be measured by your cadence. When you are climbing the slower your cadence the more fast twitch muscles you are using. Everybody has a preferred cadence some a little faster some a little slower but the rule of thumb is that you want to try to maintain a minimum cadence of around 60 rpms as you climb.

Knowing this you can now use the information to calculate what gearing to need to get yourself up a hill of a certain grade. Let me take you through the calculation to show you how this work.

The first thing you need to know is how much power you can generate. To get a rough estimate of this find a few miles a flat road on a windless day and ride along this road as fast as you comfortable can. This shouldn’t be an all out sprint but you should be pedaling level that you think you could maintain for a half hour or so. Your average speed over these few miles gives you an idea of how much continuous power you can generate. To calculate you power just plugin the speed, V, into the equation (Cair x (V + Vwind)^2 x V). For example let’s say your average speed was 20 mph and you were riding pretty low on your handlebars giving you a drag coefficient of 0.3 your generated power would then be 214.4 watts.

Now that you know your max continuous power you can then calculate how fast you can climb a hill of a certain slope. To do this you use the equation 9.81 x P x Slope% x V and plugin V (the speed you are going), P (the weight of the rider and bike) and Slope% (the steepness of the slope in percent) to calculate the power required for the climb. Since your weight and the slope of the hill are unchangeable what you will have to do is to adjust the speed so that the power calculated is less than or equal to the power that you can generate. For example let’s say you and the bike weigh 180 pounds and the slope you are trying to climb is 10%. To climb that slope at 8 mph would require 285 watts of power which is more than you can generate but if you lower your speed to 6mph it only requires 214 watts of power which is doable.

Knowing the speed you can climb a hill still doesn’t tell you what gears you need but if you know what cadence you want to maintain you can determine the best combination of gears. To do this you need to understand what gear inches are.

Gear inches is the number of inches your bike moves for each rotation of the pedals. For example if you in a 52 tooth ring in the front and an 11 tooth chain ring on your cassette, then your gear inches are 128 which means you back wheel travels 128 inches for each rotation of the pedals. This translates in to 4.7 rotations of a 27 inch wheel.

Calculating gear inches is pretty simple. All you do is divide the number of teeth on the front chain ring by the number of teeth on the rear cassette then multiple by the wheel size. So the formula is.

Gear inches = front chain ring/ rear cassette * rear wheel diameter

You then can use gear inches to calculate your cadence for a given speed and gear ratio using the following formula.

Cadence = speed/(gear inches*Π*60*0.0000157828)

For example if you are going up a hill and can maintain 6 mph, for a 39/28 (front ring/rear cassette) gear ratio your cadence (rotations per minute) will be 54 rpm which should be a hard but doable pace. However if you are going up a steeper hill and can only maintain 4mph the cadence for a 39/28 gear ratio the cadence will be 36 rpm which is going to require a lot more strength. At this cadence you may not have the strength to push the pedals and if you do you won’t be able to keep riding for long. What you need in this case is a lower gear ratio. If you are going 4mph with a 30/32 ratio then your cadence will be 53 which you probably can handle.

If you are still following along you now have everything you need to determine the best set of gear for the type of terrain you ride. First you determine how much power you can generate. Then use your power number to determine the speed you will be able to climb the type if hills that you are going to ride. Then use the speed to determine the gear ratio you need to maintain the cadence you want. This will give you the lowest gear you will need. To make this easy for people who are not good with a calculator or spread sheet I have added a Bicycle Science page to my web site that you can use to do all the calculations I described here.

The math that I have shown here can be used to give you a good idea of the best gears to get you up the hills but there is no substitute for training and experience. Although the correct gearing will help you get up the hill if you don’t do some hill training or understand the how to maintain a comfort pace as you climb you will still feel like crap when you reach the top.

Sandy Hook

2010-09-16T19:56:00.003-04:00

The past Saturday we took what is becoming our annual ride to Sandy Hook. It was suppose to be a bright and sunny day but started out a little overcast.

This is a good time to head to Sandy Hook because most of the summer crowd is gone but it is still warm enough to enjoy a ride to the beach.

This ride has a few spots that have a bit of traffic so I am always concerned about it but it turned out to be very light because of the Jewish holiday.

On last years ride getting into and out of Sandy Hook was a little tough because of the construction of a new bridge on Rt 36. The construction is still there but almost complete so there were no problems this time.

We took the usually ride around Sandy Hook and had a fast ride back because of a gentle east wind. I didn't take many pictures because it was still overcast. You can click Here for some pictures from last year.

Scenery and Stones

2010-09-04T08:26:00.008-04:00

Click Here for more pictures
Although I like to take pictures on my rides I try to not let it interfere with the ride itself. Sometimes however I like to plan a ride just to take pictures which is what I did this past Sunday. I decided to ride from Hillsborough to Califon and back and was lucky enough to have Laura and Jeff join me.

I try and do 2 or 3 rides in Califon a year since it is has a lot of scenic views but I have never really taken any great pictures there. On the way up to Califon we stopped by Solsberg airport where we saw a experimental airplane and a WWII trainer.

Once we got north of 78 the hills began as we headed up Rockaway which is one of the prettiest roads in NJ. The only problem here is that the road was freshly stoned. For those of you who don't know what stoning a road is, it is when they dump small pea size gravel on the road and let the car traffic press the stones into the road. It's a cheap way to pave a road but it makes it very hard to ride a bike on. It usually takes a few weeks before most of the stones are pressed into the road.

Despite the stone we make it up Rockaway and managed to take a few good pictures of the river and the Tulip house which is now for sale. The Tulip house is a really pretty house in the spring when all the tulips are in bloom but this time there weren't many flowers out.

At the top of Rockaway we took Water street which was also stoned. From there we worked our way over to Hoffmans Corner which has a nice view of the Califon valley. We stopped a couple of places to take pictures and realized how windy it was as we saw how much the trees were moving.

We headed down hill to Califon and made the usually rest stop at the general store. When I walked it I saw that they had some blueberry muffins that just came out of the oven so I had to have one, which was great.

Leaving Califon always requires a climb so we went up Academy to Guinea Hollow. The plan was to take a left on Sutton but it was also stoned so we vetoed that and took a left on Sawmill instead which let us get a picture of the abandon water wheel there.

At the end of Sawmill we headed towards a new road Fox Farm. A lot time we come this way we head down 517 because it has a great down hill but Fox Farm goes down the same hill and has less traffic so I decided to give it a try.

It proved to be the most scenic road of the ride. You can't speed down the hill like you can on 517 but the views are tremendous. There are 2 or 3 places where the tree cover road opens up and you can see the valley and the hills beyond. At one point I hit a clearing and immediately stopped. Laura was a little behind me and when she saw me stop she said "why are you stopping..." then looked to the left and said "WOW". It was one of those views you just had to stop and stare at. It was a clear day and the sun was at the perfect angle to light up the hills and valley. We of course took some pictures but it is hard to capture the full affect of the view.

We took a few other pictures on the way down then headed back to Hillsborough. I did manage to get a few good pictures out of the ride but acknowledge that I am no photographer. This ride did make me spend more time looking around at the scenery which was the real run of the ride.

North Jersey Trip

2010-08-23T20:45:00.015-04:00

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There are some inviting bicycling trips in the back of Bicycling Magazine, each month, but you don't have to travel far to find a nice bike trip. This past weekend I headed to North Jersey for a weekend to do a couple of rides I have been wanting to do for a while. I did a lot of exploring in North Jersey when I wrote the book but haven't been back up since.

The north west part of New Jersey is very rural and if you don't mind doing some hills there are a lot of nice roads to ride. It's a 2 hour ride for me to get to this area so instead of doing a long day trip I decided to make a weekend of it so I could get a couple of rides in.

I have talked up the trip for a couple of months and had a lot of people interest but when I finally picked a weekend I only got 3 other people to join me (Laura, Cheryl, and Lynne). The plan for the weekend was to drive up early Saturday to Milford PA and ride from there to High Point and back. Sunday we planned to ride around Newton NJ including the famous Shades of Death road. (High Point ridesheet here, Shades of Death ridesheet here)

We got an early start on Saturday morning. Laura, Cheryl and I started out a little after 6am and despite some detours made pretty good time to Milford where we were met by Lynne. We planned to start the ride from Milford Beach but there was a fee to park there so we parked at the Grand Union in the middle of town.

The first part of the ride was relatively flat as we crossed back over the bridge to the Jersey side and headed down Old Mine Road along the Delaware. We continued through Peter's Valley towards Walpack and then had our first real climb through Stokes State forest. Before the climb began we saw a bunch of people standing in the field. We thought they were bird watching but it turns out they were watching butterflies.

The climb through Stokes was long but not too tough and the scenery was nice. We then headed through Layton and some more rolling hills and had a nice rest stop at a deli and bait shop when we crossed Rt 206. A few miles after the stop the real climbing began. Most roads that lead to Highpoint State park are continuous 600 or 700 feet climbs that have a couple of steep spots. The easiest way up is to use Deckertown Rd to Sawmill. You do the same amount of climbing or even a little more but it is a series of climbs that give you some breaks to recover in between.

As we started our climb up Deckertown there was a sign that said the road was closed in 4.5 miles which was exactly how far it was to our turn so I though it might be OK. It turned out there was a bridge that was out about 500 feet before our turn. There was actually a section of bridge missing. If we couldn't cross the bridge there was no way we could make it to High Point.

Even though a section of bridge was missing there were two large cement pipes a few feet below the road so it looked like it was possible to walk across the missing section. After talking about it for a few minutes I decided to give it a try and lowered myself down to the pipes walked across them and jumped up to the road on the other side. We then moved the bikes over the missing section and all made it across to the other side.

We were back on course again and when we make the left turn on to Sawmill there were a couple of Motorcycles that saw us coming over the closed bridge. They asked if they could make it across the bridge like we did. I said that I doubted that they could carry their "bikes" over the missing section like we did. The only way the would get across it was if they jumped it like Evil Kenevil.

We continued slowly climbing and made it to entrance to High Point State Park. The monument was in sight so we continued on to the top. The last quarter mile to the monument is the toughest part. Its very steep with a couple of short section that are around 20% grade but with the monument so close you just suck it up and do it.

It was a little overcast when we got to the top but the view was still pretty good and we hung out for a while to rest our legs. We lost Cheryl for a little while and didn't know where she went until she returned from climbing the 6 flight of stairs to the top of the monument I guess she still had some energy left.

We relaxed by the monument and took some pictures to prove we made it then started to head back to our starting point. Since we were at the highest point in the state we had a lot of downhill ahead of us. We headed out of the park and down Rt 23 and went from 1800 ft to 600 ft in about 5 miles which was a lot of fun. We were then back in the valley and had a few more rollers(which felt tougher then normal because of all the climbing) to go over before we made back to Milford Bridge. The bridge has a pedestrian walkway that we used on the way back. It was a metal walkway that vibrated as we rode across and didn't feel real stable.

The original plan was to get a hotel in Milford but Lynne's sister, Mira, had a house in Milford and was nice enough to let us crash there. Mira and her husband Ron were really great hosts. Not only did they provide us a place to stay but also made us a dinner. We had a nice evening with good conversation and great food. It was a perfect end to a good day.

The plan for Sunday was to drive to Newton NJ and do a 50 mile less hilly ride but unfortunately the weather took a turn for the worst. On Friday when I checked the weather the forecast for Sunday was slight chance for afternoon showers so I did think it would be a problem to get the ride in. I could go on and on about how Accuweather isn't but the truth is weather is unpredictable.

Because we couldn't ride we just hung around a little longer and then headed home. We made a quick stop on the way out at Raymondsskills falls and took a quick hike to the falls and back since the rain had let up a little.

On the way home we hit some traffic caused by all the people leaving the Poconos we also hit some really heavy, wrath of god, rain in spots. Despite the traffic and rain we did OK on time on the way home. Even though we didn't get the Sunday ride in it was still a good trip and something I would like to do a little more often.

Pineland Cruise

2010-08-13T09:50:00.000-04:00

I have been spending a lot of time in the hills this year and only been down to the Pinelands a couple of times. The first time was a few weeks ago during one of those 90+ degrees days so we only did a little over 50 miles and really didn't get to far into the Pinelands.

This past weekend we had some nice riding weather so we were able to do a longer ride(62 miles). We also started the ride from Columbus which is a little farther south and let us get down to the heart of the Pinelands. This let us make a rest stop at Nixon's General store. Its a nice stop with decent food and comfortable rocking chairs in front.

I'm heading to North Jersey to do some more hills this weekend but plan to head back to the Pinelands a couple more times this year. If your interested in heading down this way you can check out the Bordentown and Columbus rides on my Ride Sheet Page or join me on my next club ride.

It's Just a Flesh Wound

2010-08-01T10:24:00.000-04:00

Riding is very safe sport if you keep your equipment in shape and follow some common sense. If you ride a lot however eventually you will make some mental mistake or come across something in the road that will cause you to take a fall. The result is usually a little road rash and a new story to tell.

This past Saturday I did an adhoc ride with Laura, Cheryl, Chris and Blake. This was a route that Blake came up with that gave me a chance to continue to break in the new Cannondale since it was going to be a hilly ride. The route started in the CVS in Lamberville and went up to Milford on the Jersey side then came back on the PA side. If you want the details of the route I have posted a ridesheet here

For once the weather was perfect, clear mild and no wind. From Lambertville we climbed up the familiar roads to the ridge then cruised along some roads that I hadn't been on before. It was just a perfect day for a ride and the route and the group made this a really enjoyable ride.

At Milford we crossed over to the PA side and had a rest stop at nice general store on Bridgeton Hill Rd. After the stop we headed up the toughest climb of the ride. It's a 400 ft climb that has grades in the ~10-12% range. I totally flub the down shift at the start of the climb. I tried to switch to the lowest front chain ring while trying to up shift on the rear cassette. I ended up in way too high a gear and came to a complete stop. After I got the bike back in to the correct gears for the climb I continued up the hill which was pretty tough. Still I am getting use to the gearing of the Cannondale and really starting to get a good feel on how it climbs.

The PA side of the Delaware has a lot more ups and downs than the Jersey side after a while on the ridge we had to come back to the river and then head back up to the ridge on Dark Hollow. Dark Hollow is a long shallow climb that never seems to end but I actually enjoyed it once I got into a rhythm.

We headed back down the ridge down by Stover Park. Blake warn us that this was a tough decent and to be careful. I kept is slow but probably not as slow as I should because I came around an inside of one of the corners and ran into a pile of gravel. I tried to wrestle the bike through the turn but I had too much momentum and the gravel was too deep. I went down in a semi controlled way and tried to keep the new bike from hitting too hard. It was a relatively slow fall and I slid for about 10 feet in the gravel sand mix. The fall really didn't jar me too much but I came down pretty hard on my elbow and hip and could feel the burn of some road rash.

I yelled back to the rest of the group about the gravel. Luckily Chris took the turn slower and wider than I did so he missed the gravel. The only thing worst than falling is having somebody else ride over you. Chis also yell back that I was down so everybody else missed me and the gravel.

I got up and dusted myself off. The slide had caused some gravel to slide up and into my shorts which didn't feel good. I had a deep gash on my elbow that was bleeding but not real bad and some road rash on my thigh and side of my knee. After every asked me if I was OK their next reaction was hey let's take some pictures of bloody Tom to post on the Internet. This makes be think that if I every have a more serious accident on the road, there would be a chalk outline of my dead and mangled body and bike on Internet before my wife got word :-)

I cleaned my self up as best I could. I had some bandaids but they won't stick though the sweat and blood on my arm. The road rash burnt a little but it really didn't stop me from continuing to enjoy the ride. The most important thing here was the bike was fine and only had a little tear in the handlebar tape as a result of the fall.

In another 5 miles we were in Carversville at another general store where I cleaned most of the sand and gravel out of my wounds. Cheryl was getting tired of climbing since she had taught a spinning class the night before so we took the easy way back to avoid the hills.

The hot shower after the ride got the rest of the dirt out of my wounds and felt great. The road rash is still ugly. It feels like a mild sunburn and will take a few weeks to heal. Despite the accident the bike and I are doing fine will be back in the road in a couple of days.

The New Bike

2010-08-01T10:12:00.001-04:00

Anybody who really gets into riding usually owns more than one bike. I bought my first real bike over 18 years ago. It was a Miyata 7-21 It was a relatively low end bike but it was so much better than an the 10 speed Schwinn I had. It was the bike that allowed me to actually keep up with the people on the B rides and start to become a serious rider. On the Miyata I went through the usual progression of a new riding and slowly increased my mileage until I did my first century. I also learned how to ride with a group and improve my bike handling skills.

After 8 years on the Myata I was a serious rider and was looking for an upgrade. I was looking for something lighter with better components and after a lot of research I was lucky enough to run into Tom at Speedway in Hightstown. He showed me the Feather and after a test ride there was no doubt that is was going to be my new bike. The Feather is a very light titanium bike with Dura Ace components and handles like a sports car. I was amazed how much better it felt than my Miyata and with it I was able to increase my average by a couple of miles an hour.

The Feather became my everyday bike and the Miyata was used only occasionally on vacations or on the rare instances when the Feather was in the shop. 10 years ago when I started doing hillier rides I would take the Miyata out on the tougher hillier rides because it had a triple and allowed me get up the tougher hills without my heart rate hitting its max or blowing out my knees.

The last few years I have started doing more hilly rides as I explore the areas around Califon and Schooley's Mountain. There are a couple of tough climbs on these rides so my Miyata is getting used more. The bike is showing its age and needs some upgrades if I am going to keep putting miles on it. The wheels bearing are shot and need to be replaced. The brakes also need replacing and the index shifters no longer indexes. I thought about stripping the bike down to the frame and building it up again will all new components but the Miyata is a pretty old and although a decent frame it's really not worth rebuilding.

This started a search for a new bike. It is amazing how many different bikes there are to choose from. I thought that the fact that I had some pretty detailed requirements for the hill climber I wanted would help narrow the field but it really didn't. I spent over a month looking around the Internet and stopping into bike shops to look at bikes. I narrowed it down to the Specialized Robaix, Cannondale Six or Cannondale Synapse. I considered a couple of the Bianchi and Trek models but none of them seem to be exactly what I wanted.

A couple of weeks later I test drove all the bikes and finally decided the Cannondale Synapse was the bike for me. The Cannodale Six was almost as good but the Synapse seemed to fit me a little better and the model I wanted came standard with most of the components I wanted.

So a week later I had a new bike a Cannondale Synapse Carbon 5 courtesy of Hart's. The bike is an all carbon frame. I was never a big fan of carbon because 10 years ago when I bought the Feather carbon bikes were a lot heavier and tended to have structural problems after a few years of riding. Today however the technology of carbon frames have really advanced and they are as reliable as any bike frame. They also can really tune the frame to be stiff and comfortable all at the same time. They have also been able to make carbon bikes a lot more affordable.

The Synapse is the most comfortable bike I have ever rode and is amazingly compliant yet has great power transfer so its also very efficient. Cannondale has really done a great job designing this bike and has really advanced the state of art here which is why it has got a lot of good reviews.

The bike has Shimano 105 components which is a good compromise between performance and price. If this was my one and only bike I might have sprung for Ultegra or even thought about Dura Ace but since this is my hill climber which I will ride about 30 % of the time the 105 components should be just fine. As with bike frames components keep advancing and the major difference between the 105, Ultegra and Dura Ace is weight and the difference is not real important for a recreational rider like me.

I opted for a triple on the bike since this bike will see a lot of tough hills. I have heard all the arguments about a compact versus a triple and the trade offs between each. For me it wasn't that hard a decision. A triple gives me a bigger set of gears to get up the hills. Yes I do have more overlap than a compact and yes it weights a little more (1/3 pound) and makes shifting a little more complicated but the lower gearing will keep my heart rate down and my knees happy when I'm headed up a 15 or 20% grade. If I had gone with a compact it would have been fine for 90% of where I go but for some of the real tough climbs I would either be standing or walking which I don't want to do.

To make this a bike that could climb ANYTHING I even changed out the rear cassette from the standard 11-28 to the new SRAM 11-32. This may seem real extreme to some people but I'm not one of those super thin 140 pound zero % body fat racers so I need a the extra low gears on some of the tough hills I climb. As I have become more adventurous I have shed my fear of hills and will try any climb. This has lead me to some of the steeper parts of NJ. On my hillier rides I will now climb some hills in the 10-15% ranges and may even do a 20% grade every now and then. So although the gearing is extreme it allows me to spin up any hill no matter how steep without burning myself out.

So how does it ride. One word. GREAT!!!

I only have a couple hundred miles on the new bike but so far the it is exactly what I wanted. I'm still making a few minor adjustments to the bike but almost have it dialed in and I am starting to get comfortable on it. One of the nice things about the bike is how comfortable it is. It really soaks up all the little road bumps and makes for a very smooth ride. But one of the amazing things about the frame is that the cushy ride doesn't cause any lost in efficiency. When you apply power to the pedals it is completely transferred to the rear wheel. I can tell that the power transfer is very efficient because I am spending more time in the big gear on the front chain ring.

The efficiency makes the bike a great climber. This is especially noticeable on 3 to 5 % grades where I'm climbing a gear or two higher than I do in my Feather. It also has no problems on steeper grades but the difference isn't as noticeable. A couple of days after I got the bike I headed to one of Michael's hilly rides and as expected he went up a couple of steep grades including the top half of Federal Twist.

For those of you who haven't been up to the top half Federal Twist its a pretty nasty climb in the with parts as steep as 15 to 20%. It's a tough climb but with the triple and my extreme gearing I was able to spin up with the top of the pack. It still took a lot of energy to do the climb but I still had something left when I got to the top.

On the flats the bike also cruises pretty well. Laura pulled in front of me on the flats at the top of the ridge I asked her if she was actully pedaling at which point she gave me the finger. I then said "let's see what this thing and do" and shifted up a couple of gears and stood on the pedals and took off. The bike really accelerated quickly and I was able to maintain a good pace and leave Laura in the dust although she quickly caught up at the next light.

Going down some of the down hills I tested the handling . I didn't push it to the edge because I am still getting the feel of the bike and don't know where the limits are. One of the criticisms of carbon frames is that they sometimes feel like dead wood and don't allow the rider to get a good feel of the road. The cushy ride of the Synapse definitely deadens some of the road feel so it takes a little more work to carve the bike around turns at high speed but I suspect that this will get better as I become more familiar with the bike and become more tuned to is ride.

All and all I am very happy with the bike and know I made the right choice. I'm a little sorry to see my Miyata be retired after many great years and rides together but I suspect after a some more quality hours in the saddle of the Cannodale we will become good friends. My Feather is still my main bike and it's sports car like handling makes it a joy to ride. But when the roads get hilly and I want more of a luxury ride I will be more than happy to bring out the Cannondale.

Where's Herb?

2010-07-22T21:47:00.000-04:00

The Pineland Cruise ride that I do out of Bordentown always draws a bit of a crowd. It's easy flat 65ish mile ride that is always fun. Being one of the hottest days of an already hot year I thought that only a few die hard people would show up but I ended up with 14 people crazy enough to think that riding in 95+ degree heat was a good idea.

Because of the heat I started the ride at 8:00am and cut the ride to just over 50 miles. I tried to kept the pace easy so we would have something left for the end of the ride. Our first rest stop is a Wawa in Brownsmills and always has some interesting local characters going in and out.

It was hot but the riding wasn't too bad and everybody keep cruising along. Right before Vincetown Big Joe had a flat caused by a cut in his tire. We will probably be busting Joe for a few years about this since the cut in his tire wasn't new and for the fact that 4 miles later it blew again. Then a few miles later at the rest stop we put in yet another tube. Joe has these Campy rims that are almost impossible to get the tire off of and it was only with the help of Laura's super strong metal reiforced levels that we were able to get the tire on and off 3TIMES.

At the second rest stop Herb ended up leaving a few minutes early to get some Gatoraid at a deli a few miles up the road. Because of the 3rd change of Joes tire it was around 30 minutes before we headed out of the second rest stop to meet up with Herb. When we got to the deli we didn't see any sign of Herb so we figured that he gave up on us and headed back to the start. But when I got back to the start there was no sign of Herb. Crap, since I drove Herb to the start I need to find him because I didn't know how to tell his wife that I lost him.

I waited at the school in Bordentown for about 15 mins before heading out, by car, on the road to try and find him. I though that he might have gotten back to Bordentown and saw that we were not back and then decided to ride home. I knew which way he would have headed home but before I was going to drive that route I decided to retrace the roads back to the deli where he should have been. By the time I got to Chesterfield I saw Herb on Chesterfield Road and picked him up.

It turned out Herb was in the bathroom in the deli when we went by there which was unexpected because they never let us use the bathroom there. It as a strange coincident that caused us to miss each other. Herb ended up doubling back to the second rest stop to find us then realized we missed each other and headed back to Bordentown and would have ridden home if I he had to. Luckly we have ridden a lot together and know how each other thinks so I knew one way or the other I would find him or he would make it home.

At the end of the day despite the heat, flat tires, and loosing Herb it was still a good ride that gave us another interesting story to tell.

Schooley's Mountain

2010-07-08T21:12:00.000-04:00

The ride up Schooley's mountain is one of the hillier rides we do and definitely a challenge. I always wait a few months into the season to do this ride so I can get some hill training in. Originally this ride was suppose to be Saturday but we finally got some rain so I postpone the ride to Sunday. This meant that I had a small group just me Laura, Mike M and Jeff which was fine with me.

As we headed towards our climb up Rockaway Rd. Mike stopped to check his rear derailleur because he was having problems shifting to his lowers gears. When we got to the top of Rockaway Mike checked his gears again and found the problem. His rear derailleur cable was broken at his shift lever. We tried to see if we could fix it but there was no easy fix with out a new cable so we tied the cable off to one of the cable guides so that Mike was stuck in his next to lowest gear. This meant that he went from 27 speeds to just three. He could basically only shift his front derailleur. We thought about finding a bike shop but couldn't find one that was close and open.

Even with a slightly disabled bike Mike keep powering up the hills. I actually felt a little guilty every time I made a shift.

We slowly made our way mostly uphill to Califon where I took a few new roads to get around the backside of town and started the last climb up to Schooley's Mountain.

Once on top of Schooley's we cruised a few miles to our rest stop in Long Valley. There is an old general stop and post office with a nice picnic table that make a good place for a break.

After the break, single gear Mike took off to Hackettstown to meet his wife and the rest of us headed down hill back to the start. We did have a good down hill on Four Bridges Rd. and a few other places but was disappointed with the downhill on Black River Rd. Black River Rd use to be one of my favoritesa couple of years ago but the road has become so rough and strewn with potholes that it's not much fun.

Of course it wasn't all downhill. We climbed over 1500 feet on our way back to the start. The climbs on the way back weren't as bad as the climbs up to Schooley's Mountain but it was a hot and humid day and we were getting tired. On the bottom part of Four Bridges just before we got to Tanners Brook there is a tough little climb that had Laura telling how much she hated me.

We did get a few nice views on the way back and stopped to take the picture at the top of this post at the corner of Doolittle and Hackelbarney(You gotta love the road names in NJ). You can see more picturesfor the ride here. By the time we got back to the start we were pretty tired but were still glad we did the ride. This is definitely one of the tougher rides we do and but it is good to occasionally push yourself close to your limits to keep improving. I have included a profile of the ride with some stats to show how much climbing we did. Jeff had a Garmin and sent me the stats after the ride. His stats were about 100 feet lower than mine but its still close so it's good to have independent conformation that my legs have a right to feet bad after climbing over 4000 feet.

Click on the profile below to get see a larger view

Belmar and Back

2010-07-04T12:00:00.000-04:00

I haven't been to Belmar this year so when the Joe's led a ride there this Saturday I decided tag along. The Belmar ride is one of the more popular long distance rides we do. From Etra park it is at least an 70 mile round trip so you have to be prepare a 4 or 5 hours in the saddle. There are lots of variations to the route so it is never the same twice. The weather also plays a role so if you have a stiff west wind or hit and unexpected storm your going to have a tough ride back.

Saturday was a great day weather wise with light winds, sunny skies and relatively cool temperatures. George was planning to turn around when we got to Farmingdale but the riding was easy so he decided to go all the Belmar and back.

Even though it was the holiday weekend it wasn't as crowded as I expected. Yes there weren't any open parking spots and the beaches were full of people but Ocean avenue was rideable. After the stop in Belmar I split from the group and headed to the next town north, Avon, to visit with my niece who was on the beach there.

I only stopped for about a half hour at Avon then made my way back home. The wind was light so I didn't mind not having anybody to block the wind on the way home although it was a bit of a lonely ride. Because I rode from my house to Etra park the whole trip ended up being 80 miles and I was a little tired when I got home. It was my longest ride of the year and I was glad I made the trip since it was probably coolest day we are going to have for a while.

Thank You Mount Holly Bicycles

2010-06-20T20:56:00.000-04:00

Every bicycle ride is an adventure and some more so than others. This past Saturday I headed to the pinelands with Herb and Mike M for a long but flat ride. I have been doing a lot of hills lately and wanted to do something flat to work on endurance.

For the most part I do my own maintenance on my bike and try to detect problems before they occur. During my normal quick check of my bike before loading it in the car I saw that the sidewall of my front tire had a small bubble in it. It might have been fine for the 60 mile ride that I had planned but I grabbed my spare tire and threw it in the car. When I got to Bordentown where the ride started I quickly changed the tire and we all went on our way.

Everything was going great until about 15 miles into the ride. I went to start pedaling after stopping for a light and the TOP of my speedplay pedal fell on the ground. Speedplay pedals are the ones that look like lollipops The bottom of the pedal was no where to be found and neither were the two screws that held it together. About a half mile before the light I remember hearing something bounce off my bike. I thought it was just a rock but it must have been the bottom of the pedal.

Mike and I go back and find the bottom half, the metal plate the cleat clicks into and 1 screw. We can't put the pedal back together because we are missing the other metal plate for the top of the pedal and the other screw. Although I have lost a pedal I still have a spindle so I can ride but not real fast and I don't want to ride that way for too long.

At this point we have two choices. We can find a way to fix the pedal or we head slowly back to the start. Mike pulls out his Blackberry, hits the web and looks for a bike shop (Sometimes it pays to have a smart phone). He finds one about 4 miles away. So we head out pass Smithville then ride along Rt 38 to Mount Holly Bicycles.

When I walk in the door the shop owner ask what I need and I point to the pedal. He doesn't have any speedplay pedals or replacement parts but goes in the back to grab a few screws to see if he can jury rig something. I'm figuring worst case I have to buy a pair of SPDs. As I'm walking around the shop a metal plate pops off my shoe. It was the missing plate from my pedal and was stuck in my cleat. With the times I was off walking around looking for the other pieces of the pedal I'm amazed that it managed to stay there until I in the bike shop.

It was a lucky break because now with both pieces of the pedal, both metal plates, and one screw Steve at the bike shop was able to put the pedal back together. He found another screw that fit but was long and stuck out of the pedal on one side but this was OK. Now at least I had a working pedal with the only problem being I could only use one side of it. No big deal.

The guys at the bike shop were really nice and friendly, they didn't even want anything for the repair so all I could do was to thank them and head out back to the ride. The rest of the ride was uneventful. We had a good stop at Nixon's down in Tabernacle and then made our way back to Bordentown.

The incident reminds me that bike shops aren't like a lot of other business. Yes bike shop owners want to run a successful business and make money but most of them love biking and are very knowledgeable and helpful. That's why it is always a good idea to get to know your local bike shop and if you are in the Mount Holly area may I recommend Mount Holly Bicycles.

One other thing I would like to point out is that being able to use Mike's Blackberry to find a bike shop was a great thing and saved the day but what if you don't have a web enabled phone or are not in an area where you can get a web connection. Well the answer is GOOG-411. It's a service that allows you to call an 800 number and do a google search. All you have to do is call 1-800-466-4411 or 1-877-466-4411 and then you will be asked for the city, state and type of business. After that you will get a listing of the closest businesses of the type you want and be able to connect to them or have a text message sent to your phone with their address and phone number. The service is free and is a good number to have in your phone in case you loose a pedal and need to find the nearest bike shop.

Hill Training

2010-06-08T21:05:00.000-04:00

For the past couple of weekends I have been working on hills and improving my climbing. Last weekend I did my Lambertville Cruise which has a couple of moderate climbs up the Sourlands. This weekend I headed to Frenchtown to do Michael's ride to Bloomsbury. When you head to Bloomsbury you have to expect at least one tough climb on the way in or out.

Michael took it easy on us and headed up the Delaware and took the easy way into Bloomsbury. There were a few climbs on the way there but nothing major. On the way out of Bloomsbury we had the big climb up Turkey Hill. This is a 500 foot climb over a couple of miles. There are no really steep parts but it is one of those hills that just doesn't want to end. At the top of the hill I actually felt pretty good so I guess the hills and intervals that I have been doing are paying off. I still want to improve a little for some of the rides I want to do in July but I am close to being in good hills shape.

The best part of climbing out of Bloomsbury is the down hill afterwards. After Turkey Hill we head down Sweet Hollow which is one of the best downhills in NJ. It is a 3 mile downhill that follows a winding stream through a rural forest. At the bottom of Sweet Hollow we headed back up the ridge above Frenchtown.

We were a little short of the planned 50 miles so Michael decided a to add another climb to the ride. We ended up going up Hickory Corner Rd which I hadn't been on before. It was 340 ft shallow climb that we grinded our way up. From there we made a couple right turns and headed back down hill on Woolf Rd. This was another road that I hadn't been on before but it will definitely be one that I will do again. It is a screamer downhill that lasts for a while and made the climb up Hickory Corner worth it.

About halfway the way down the hill a kamikaze squirrel ran under Laura's bike. It went under her back wheel but luckily she only ran over its tail so it was able scamper away into the woods.

By the time we got back to Frenchtown we only had 43 miles and although it was a hilly ride it was actually easier than the usually ride lead by Michael. Its was a nice route. I have posted the ridesheet here if you want to check it out. This was a nice way to continue to build up my climbing ability.

Southern Sojourn

2010-05-19T20:35:00.000-04:00

Riding in southern Jersey is different than riding any where else in the state. Its very rural, flat and a little strange. There are a lot of empty roads with almost no traffic. I try to get down south a couple times a year just to explore a little and revisit some of the nicer roads I have found. This past Saturday I decided to do my Fort Mott ride again. This ride starts just north of the Delaware Memorial Bridge so it's easy to get to. I had done this ride a couple of years ago and wanted to come back and explore the area again.

There is really nothing special about this area. It is mostly composed of a lot of farmland an rural roads as well as some wet lands in and around the Delaware. There aren't a lot of towns in this area and the ones that are, like Salem are a little old and run down. Still it is a nice place to ride especially if you like flat roads with no traffic.

From our starting point at Fort Mott State Park it took us about 7 miles to get through the town of Salem and out to the farmlands. Along the way Mary picked up a hugh spike that went through her tire and stuck into her rim tap. Needless to say the tire when flat instantly. At least it was easy to find out where the hole was. A quick tube change and we were on our way again.

Once we got into the farmlands there was a lot of nothing but it was a good nothing. No cars no hills just quiet roads and easy cruising. We had a little bit of a head wind but this was a good sign for the return trip. Last time I rode down this way there was a house that had hundreds of polka dot pots strewn on the lawn. It was one of those strange things you see down here. This time most of the polka dots pots were gone. The weather was a little overcast so I didn't take a lot of pictures if you want to see the pictures from my last trips down here you can see them here and here

Our first rest stop was in the town of Alloway at Bud's deli. It's an old deli but is has all the usually stuff and a nice table to sit at. There aren't many places to stop down south so you don't have a lot of choices.

After Alloway we continued south and ran into some rolling hills. Normally I won't have notice the hills but the flatness of the first part of the ride make them seem steeper then they really were.

We made it down to the town of Roadster (yea, I never heard of it either). This was new territory for me and although I new exactly where I was on my map it felt like the middle of no where or actually we where 10 miles south of no where in to the territory of "where the heck are we"

Once we started heading back we had a really nice tail wind which felt good. The deli/bait & tackle/liquor store that I wanted to stop for the second rest stop was abandon so we just continued on. Luckily about 7 miles later we found a post office/deli to stop at. It was a real post office on the left side with a small deli on the right. When I say small I mean the entire deli was about 10 square feet. You take one step through the door and you hit the counter to your left is a cold case with drinks. On the counter is a box of doughnuts and to the right is a small two person table. That's it. But is was a perfect unexpected stop and after a quick break we were one our way again.

We had a tail wind all the way back which made the return trip back easy. All in all it was a good ride and something I will do again in the future. Maybe in the fall when all the farms are full of crops.

Vacation in the Cascades

2010-05-16T17:56:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted for the past couple of weeks because I have been on vacation. We went to the west coast and spent a lot of time in the Cascade mountains between Portland and Seattle. It was a great trip and I got a lot of good pictures. We spent a lot of time driving up and down mountains. It was like one long scenic drive. You can see more of the pictures from my trip here.

I did not do any biking on this vacation but saw a number of bikers while we were driving around and talked to a few. There aren't a lot of paved roads around the Cascade mountains so most of the biking is done on the county roads. They all have wide shoulders so riding with the traffic is not a problem. The view are spectacular as long as you don't mind long climbs of 1000 to 2000 feet.

The weather is very unpredictable it can be 60 degrees and sunny and then 15 mins later its 35 degrees and hailing. So as one of the bikers told me you can't depend on the weather report and have to be prepared for any type of weather whenever you go riding.

Now that I am back from vacation I miss seeing the beautiful Cascade mountain every day as it was almost like being in the Alps. It was a nice change of pace.

After 10 days of vacation it was nice to get back on the bike and start riding again. I went for a ride with Herb, Mary, and George down towards Bordentown and although the I didn't see any snow capped mountains the scenery was still nice. We ended up running into a Rotary club ride and saw a bunch of riders filing by. We ended stopping and checking on one of the bikers who had a fall. He had a couple of bad cuts on his face and some road rash on his arms and legs but he didn't appear to have broken anything. So after he called for the sage wagon we left him with a car that had stopped to check on him and continued on our ride.

Because I was on vacation I did not put in any ride in the book for June so keep watch on the blog here in case I decide to do some off the book rides.

Shades of Death

2010-05-02T12:29:00.000-04:00

This past Wednesday I had a presentation and book signing at REI in East Hanover. This is up in north west Jersey. Since I don't get up to this area to ride as much as I want, I decided to take the day off work and do a ride up in the area. I decided to do a ride around Allamuchy since this area is nice and quiet and isn't too hilly. I also wanted to ride on Shades of Death again since I hadn't done this in a couple of years. Although the name sounds bad Shades of Death is a nice rolling road with some good scenery especially by the meadow.

The last time I rode in this area the weather was a perfect 80 degree day with calm winds(see pictures here). This time however the weather sucked. It was an overcast 40 degrees with 20 mph winds gusting much higher. It didn't really rain but there were a couple of times when I got hit with a few rain drops. I event rode through some intermittent pea size hail. If I didn't have the book signing later in the day I would have canceled the ride.

Even with the poor conditions I still enjoyed the ride, which just proves that a bad day on the bike is still better than working. I didn't stop to take a lot of pictures this time because of the weather but I did see something strange that I couldn't help but take a picture of. It was motorcycle made out of logs. It looks like something I would see in the Flintstones.

The presentation at REI went well. The store in East Hanover is relatively new and very nice. They have a full bike shop and more bike merchandise then most big outdoor stores. The store even had a special room just for presentations and events. The staff was great and the bike mechanic was pretty sharp he noticed my stretched chain on my bike almost immediately.

I had around 35-40 people of all different levels of experience. After the talk they had a lot of good questions and even after the presentation was over a number of them hung around. It is always fun talking to other bikers and exchanging stories. It is something I never get tired of.

North west Jersey has a lot of nice places to ride if you don't mind a few hills so I hope to be back up in this area later this year for some more rides.

Raritan River Ramble

2010-04-21T21:13:00.000-04:00

This past Saturday I had a good group ride through the Sourlands. This marks the beginning of my hill training to try and get my climbing legs back. Although we climbed a few hills this route was relatively easy and I was even able to convince a few flatlanders to join me. This was a some what new route that I made up of some of the normal roads plus a few new ones I explored last year. This will definitely be one I will do again as it had some nice scenery. I will be posting the ride sheet soon to my web site but until then you can check out the route here on google maps. I have been experimenting with the new directions feature they added a little while ago and must admit the more I use it the more useful I find it. With google maps it is still a little hard to get to route to go where you want it but once you do the street level pictures at each turn are really cool and are very useful when trying to see what the road really looks like.

On the Road Again

2010-04-03T22:12:00.000-04:00

After a cold and snowy winter, spring has brought some really nice weather. For the past few weeks I have been able to get in some nice 40ish mile rides to start building my miles.

Now that the official riding seasons is beginning I'm looking forward to doing more exploring and catching up with everybody again. I already have a lot of ideas about places I want to go this year. I didn't make it up to northwest Jersey last year so I am thinking about a trip up there in late June once my legs are in good enough shape to handle the hills up there.

For the next few weeks I have a couple or Adhoc rides in the book so keep a watch here for details and come join me for a ride.

Google Maps

2010-03-13T08:35:00.000-05:00

It's another weekend where the crappy weather will keep me off the bike. I was able to get out last weekend for a nice 40 mile ride which felt good so I was hoping to get out again this weekend but it is not looking good.

I saw this week that Google added bicycle directions to their maps (http://maps.google.com/). My first impression after trying it was that it kinda sucked since it routed me down Rt 130, one of the major highways in the area, on one of the rides I tried to map out. However after playing with the map for a while I think it can be a useful tool for those who want to map out bike rides.

The first thing that is nice is that you can share the routes You can see my simple route by clicking here. This is just a simple route from Cranbury to Etra Park and back. To start creating a route I went to http://maps.google.com/ selected the Get Directions link on the top left then chose Bicycling from the drop down menu below the list of destinations.

To create a route what you need to do is to first decide where you want to go and then pick a few places along you route as way points. You then add the way points as destinations. For example on my route I first added Bennet Pl in Cranbury, then Disbrow Hill Rd, then Bennet Pl again. Longer routes will have more way points and with most routes you create the first and late destination will be the same.

Once you get the destination all set you will have the basic route. What you need to do now is to edit the route since a number of the roads that it takes you on aren't really roads you would want to ride a bike on. To edit the route what you do is to hover your mouse over the blue lines of route and drag the lines from the roads you don't want to ride on to the ones you do. I recommend starting at the starting point and working you way through the route road by road. This editing is a little twitchy because as you drag the blue lines around it sometimes does some strange things and starts putting some loops in for no apparent reason. With some trial and error and some patience you quickly get better at editing the route and it becomes easier.

After you finish editing the route by dragging all the blue lines around your done and have a complete bike route with a map and directions. There are a few nice things here. First you have a pretty accurate set of directions that you can now copy and paste into any document or spreadsheet so you can edit and take it along on the ride. The mile estimates are pretty good but I think the coolest thing is the pictures along the way.

If you look at the directions you will see a little camera icon to the left of the mileage on some of the directions. If click on this icon you will get a picture of the intersection. This picture is not static but is a panorama that you can zoom and pan to see the whole area. Pretty cool and useful.

Google maps is good but it still doesn't provide me everything I need to research and create a good bike route. First although I can print out the maps they aren't of the quality that I need. There is also no way to add comments to the map. In my mind nothing beats the maps from NJBikeMap. The other thing I would like to see shown in the directions is the total accumulated miles as well as the elevation change. This is why I will still use a mapping program like Topo USA for mapping out my rides. I like a lot of information when I plan rides and am more picky than most.

I still think Google maps is a good tool for planning a ride. The satellite maps and photos along the way are very useful. The roads it puts you on may or may not be ridable roads so you will have to double check and edit the route. This should get better as the product matures and people add comments to improve the map

Bicycle Repair Man!

2010-03-07T16:25:00.000-05:00

Although a bike is a relatively simple machine that is very reliable, it does occasionally break down and require some repair. That is way it is a good idea to have a relationship with a bike mechanic at your local shop or know how to do the maintainance by yourself. I am mechanically inclined so I do most of the up keep on the bike my self but there are still a few things I don't know how to do. That's why when I saw a course on bicycle repair at Mercer County College I decided to give it a try.

The course was taught at Bernie's Bikes in Hamiliton by Chris who is one of the bike mechanics there. Chris is a great guy and really knows his stuff. Chris spend 2 hours every Wednesday for 3 weeks going over the different items of the bike to repair. He start out by showing how to fix a flat tire and then moved on to harder tasks like how to adjust the front and rear derailleur. By the end of the last class he was showing us some pretty advanded stuff like how to rebuild the bearings in a wheel.

A lot of what Chris showed the class I already kinda knew and understood from already having done a lot of work on my bike but I still picked up a lot of useful information. There is a lot of details and nuances you need to understand to do some of the repairs on a bike and until you do them yourself or see someone else do them you don't truly understand how to do it.

For example I knew that changing the rear cassette was not a hard job and just involved removing a locking ring. I had actually tried to do this on my old bike a few years ago but couldn't figure out how to do it. Now after seeing Chris do it I was able to go home remove the cassette from my rear wheel in a few minutes.

Part of taking the course was buying Park's "The Big Blue Book of Repair" book which is a decent bicycle repair manual. Bicycle Magazine also has a good book on on bicycle repair "Bicycling Magazine's Complete Guide to Bicycle Maintenance and Repair" Repair manuals are great but nothing beats seeing the different repairs actually done.

I picked up a lot watching Chris do repairs and am glad I took the course. This helped me fill in some knowledge I was missing about bicycle repair and has given me the confidence to try some of the more difficult repair tasks. I now consider myself a Bicycle Repair Man. So whenever bicycles are broken, or menaced by international communism, Bicycle Repair Man is ready! (Monty Python reference)

Snow Dog

2010-02-14T09:31:00.000-05:00

Click Here for more Pictures

The cold weather and massive amount of snow that we have gotten has really put a cramp in my riding this winter. I am still getting plenty of exercise. In the past couple of weeks I have spent a few hours clearing the snow from the two large storms that we had recently.

Snow always makes the landscape look better (See my pictures of my yard here). After a snow storm is done and the sun comes out I always take a look around and say how beautiful it is. That only last for a few minutes once I realize that I have a couple hours work to do the clear this crap. Luckily I have a snow blower which has made clearing the snow a little easier. Most years I don't even start it up but it is years like this that make it a must have.

Even with mechanical help clearing the snow is a chore not only do I have to clear the driveway and walk ways but I have to actually shovel part of the back yard. This is because of my small dog needs a place to do her business. She has very small legs so once the snow is over 3 inches she is almost up to her chest. We got almost 2 feet of snow so this was about a foot over her head.

My dog may be small but she doesn't think she is. After I had cleared out an area for her in the back yard she saw a squirrel and quickly climbed up the 3 foot snow bank and headed to the unshoveled part of the yard. After a few steps on the snow she disappeared, under the snow, when she hit the softer stuff. She's tough so she climbed right back out but now had an extra layer of snow around her.

She shook most of it off on her way back to the house but as the picture shows her face was still covered when she got back to the door. She really enjoys playing in the snow so I know that this will not be the last time that I will have to clean her off.

Puxatony Phil predicted 6 more weeks of winter so I guess the snow and cold will be around for a while. We all the snow we have gotten I know I won't be riding on the roads anytime soon.

First Ride of 2010

2010-01-24T10:28:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted for over a month mostly because I have had nothing to share. Between the cold weather, snow, and work I haven't had much time to ride. In fact this past weekend was the first time I rode this year. The weather so far this year has been very cold and hasn't gone above freezing until the last couple of weekends. Although I am willing to ride in cold weather, my limit is some where around 35 degrees. Any colder than that and I will think twice before going out.

I hadn't been out since the end of December so when the weather hit 40 this past Saturday I jumped at the chance. I ended up heading to Bruce's ride which was at noon. He had a big crowd and a lot of the regulars showed up including Herb, Ira, the Joe's and Mary. I hadn't seen Mary since before her accident so it was good to see her riding again and to catch up with everybody.

We had a leisurely 40 mile ride. Since I hadn't been riding for a while I was happy with the slow pace. It also gave me a chance to take some pictures. The landscape is pretty barren but I did take pictures of some vultures and a frozen lake. My winter pictures can be seen here.

It is not as nice or fun to ride in this weather but it is always good to be able to get out for a quick ride.

Winter Has Arrived

2009-12-17T20:51:00.001-05:00

This December has reminded me how cold and stormy winter can be. I have only been able to get out a few times this month because of the weather. I am more than willing to push the limits of riding in the wind and cold but if it is below freezing or there is snow on the ground I'm not riding on the road. Last Saturday I had a ride in the book that got cancel because of a snow storm that dropped 12 inches of snow on the ground. The picture below shows what my back yard looked like after the storm.

After the storm I thought it would take a couple of weeks for the snow to melt enough for the roads to be safe to ride again but because of a couple of warm days and a massive amount of rain the snow was gone a week later. I was amazed at how fast the snow melted. The next picture shows my back yard a week after the snow storm with no snow left.

The warm temperatures this past weekend let me do a comfortable 40 mile ride but the weather for the next week looks cold with a chance of more snow. If this is going to be one of those cold and snowy winters I may have to try mountain biking because that my be the only way I will be able to ride through out the winter.

I don't any rides in the book for Jeb-uary (Jan-Feb) but will post here when I plan a group ride.

Happy Thanksgiving

2009-11-28T14:11:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving marks the start of winter riding for me. Most of my rides from now until March will be close to home. Although there is always to the possibility of a warm 60 degree day, most of the weather from here until spring will be in the 30s 40s and 50s with usually some type of wind.

This weekend for example I ended up going out on Saturday. At 45 degrees it wasn't too cold but the 25 mph wind was a little tough at times. Luckily I found 3 other people crazy enough to ride in the wind and take turns in front.

Although staying close to home means doing a lot of the same old roads I have been doing for years its still fun. For example I went to Cranbury last Saturday to try and catch up with some people I haven't seen in a while. I did end up seeing Ira and Marilyn but most of the other people I really didn't know. I ended up leading the ride, because Ira is not feeling well, and chose to do the standard Rue's Road route that Don taught me years ago. I hadn't been that way in about 6 months and forgot how much I enjoy that route.

A couple weeks ago I went on Ken's ride and ended up going to Delicious Orchards which I had never been to on a bike. It was a nice ride and I see a couple of other people are heading there also so I may go back again over the winter. Here is a route to Delicious Orchards that I came up with.

So even though I am staying close to hope in the winter it doesn't mean that riding is boring just a little colder and windier

Camera Tricks

2009-11-11T20:38:00.000-05:00

This falls has been disappointing from a photographic point of view. The weather has been rainier and colder than normal which resulted in less then spectacular foliage. I went out to the hills of the Sourlands this pass weekend for a ride but the only thing I took pictures of was a few cows. Laura had on these funky tights that have a weird sequence pattern on them that kind of look like tiny fireworks going. While taking a picture of the cows I snapped a picture of the tights but to accentuate there brightness I made changed some setting on the camera to make the tights look brighter then they really are.

Over this year I have been experimenting with all the setting on my camera and now have a good understanding of what you can do with aperture, shutter speed, ISO and all the other settings on my camera. I don't know if this has help me take better pictures or not but I do have fun experimenting. One thing I tried the other day was some long exposure shots which you can see here. With my camera I can take up to a 15 second exposure. Using a tripod you can get some interesting shots.

For Halloween we had a flashing light that we put inside the pumpkin. The light flashes in different colors and if you swing it around it creates a rainbow effect. I took this light into a dark room then set up my camera on a tripod then moved the light around in front of the camera a different speeds. As you can see this produced some interesting pictures and made up for the fact that the fall colors weren't that good this year.

Halloween

2009-10-21T19:52:00.000-04:00

Click Here for More Pictures
This time of year is one of my favorite times to ride. Its usually not too hot or too cold and with the leaves turning its a lot of fun just to cruise around and enjoy the view. This year the weather hasn't been too good. We have had a very wet fall so far so it's been hard find dry days to get out. We have also had a lot of wind which means the leaves have been coming off the trees faster than normal. All this has lead to a somewhat disappointing fall season.

So far the best ride I have had was last week with Chris. We did a 45 mile loop from Bordentown. It was a little cold but sunny and the leaves were close to peak. We stopped at Smithville and took a hard packed dirt path about half a mile to the lake where we got a nice view of the lake and the surrounding trees. We ended up riding back through Mt Holly and saw some of the Halloween decorations the town put up. If you look at the pictures I took you can see the witch hat lights they had on one of the side streets.

From Mt Holly we ended up making a lot of twists and turns to get through town and back to quieter roads. On the way back I through Bordentown. Bordentown has a Halloween parade and also gives out prizes for the best decorated house. It was the day of the parade so I expected to see a lot of Halloween decorations but didn't see many. It was disappointing.

I was hoping to get to the Sourlands this weekend since this is probably the last weekend the trees will look good but the weather again has been windy and rainy. Hopefully I can get out later so I can burn off some of the Halloween candy I ate last night.

Mayhem in Middle Valley

2009-10-09T17:50:00.000-04:00

Click Here for More Pictures

I try lead well planned and organized ride but sometimes events conspire to cause the ride to become a bit chaotic. Ken and I had a ride in the book, this past Sunday in Califon. We got lost up that way a little over a month ago and found some new roads that I wanted to explore further while I was still in good enough shape for some tough hills. I have posted the route here if you want to see the planned route

Sunday turned out to be a slightly cool but very clear day. Although the leaves aren't at peak yet they are starting to turn so I was looking forward to some nice views. We had a good group of the usual people including Ken, Laura, Chris, Lynne and Michael. Bruce and John also decided to join us. I was a little cold as we started out from Raritan Valley College but I knew I would warm up as soon as we started climbing.

Unfortunately we didn't get to far before we had our first incident. Just before the turn on to Rock Rd Lynne hit a rut in the road and went down. She got up pretty quick and didn't appear to be too hurt. She had hit her elbow and had some scraps there and on her leg. Her bike also got a little banged up. We moved to the side of the road. After a few minutes she said she didn't feel in too much pain but to be safe it would probably be better if she didn't continue on with us.

We were only a few miles from the college so Ken rode back to the starting point and got his car so he could bring Lynne and her bike back to the college. All this took about a half hour during which Chris realized that he had both his tires had slow leaks so he had to change them. After Ken drove Lynne back to the college he road back and we started the ride again.

It took a few miles to warm up again but eventually we were starting climbing. We took Rockaway Rd to Bissell. I hadn't climbed Bissell before but Ken said it wasn't too bad even though on the map its a 550 ft climb. It's not a continuous climb but is a step climb with 3 main bumps up. None of it was tough but is was long and the group got spread out.

It is always harder to ride as a group in hilly terrain because everybody climbs at a different pace. This usually means to keep the group together we stop at the top of the tough hills. I also try to let people know where the next turn is so if they loose contact with the group they know where we will be waiting.

We wound our way up some more hills. My goal was to get to Hoffman Corner Rd which is just above Califon. There is a really nice scenic view of the valley from the road and since it was such a clear day I wanted to get some pictures. The view was great and there is also a nice down hill that brings us into Califon along the Raritan river. The ride along the river into Califon was nice and the only flat part of the ride.

From Califon we started climbing again up Sliker. Its about a mile and a half of mostly up hill that get a little steeper just before the turn on to Pleasant Grove. We are close the top of Schooley's Mountain on the western side. At the turn I wave the others on and waited for Bruce and John. I didn't want them to miss the turn. After 10 min I realized that they must be lost. They were right behind us when we turned on the Sliker so I don't understand why they are not here now. I pull out the cell phone and get Laura to call John. Some phone tag ensues. I hear from Laura that John missed a turn but that doesn't make sense since there was no turn. I try to call John but don't get through.

Eventually I go back down the hill looking for them then climb back up and meet up with Laura and the rest of the group. I know John knows the roads and will be able to find his way back. Just as we are about to give up on finding them I get a call from John. They are now on Pleasant Grove about a half mile away. It turns out they saw some bikers turning off Sliker and assumed it was us and followed them. If wasn't us of course but another group of bikers.

We are finally all back together but we wasted another 40 minutes waiting around. Between John and Bruce getting lost and Lynne's fall at the beginning, the ride is running really long. At this point everybody wants to shorten the ride so we don't get back too late. I take a quick look at the map and find the quickest way off Schooley's. We go down Zeller which is turned out to be a nice road. This leads us to Middle Valley road which has a really steep downhill hair pin turn. There is very little traffic on the road so although its a tough turn it's relatively safe if you are careful and can actually be fun. Although as Bruce mentioned your hands do hurt a little from have to keep on the brakes most of the way down.

At the bottom of the hill Michael (who's idea of fun is climbing steep hills) turns to me and said "That would probably be a fun hill to climb". Which is what I expected him to say. Of course the climb would be a 20 degree up hill grade for a least a half mile with some short parts even steeper. It doesn't sound like fun but if I get really strong next year I may do it just to prove that I can. I realize that even thinking of climbing a hill that steep means that I have been hanging around Michael too long.

After coming down from Schooley's Mountain we had one more tough climb over Beacon Hill. I had originally planned a more scenic route back but everybody was tired and just wanted to get home. So we took the quickest way back which meant riding down Rt 517 Old Turnpike Rd. This is a busy road but it does have a small shoulder most of the way so if you stay to the right it's rideable especially on a Sunday. It also has a killer downhill right before Tweaksbury.

We stopped at the general store in the middle of Tweaksbury. It was a quick stop since everybody wanted to get home. We got back to the college just before 2pm with just over 40 miles. We didn't end up doing the ride I had planned or see some of the scenery that I wanted to but that just means I will have to come back again some other day.

I got some email from Lynne. It turns out that the fall was worst it appeared. She got home ok but her arm starting swelling up so she ended up going to the emergency room and found out that she actually has a broken bone. I hope it's not too bad and she will recover quickly.

Its been a bad week for some of my friends. I heard Henry got hit by a car. Mary fell and broke her collar bone and hip and now Lynne broke her arm. Luckly all are on the mend will be riding again soon.

Sandy Hook Adventure

2009-09-17T20:29:00.000-04:00

Click Here for More Pictures

The best time to ride to the shore is usually in the early fall just after Labor Day. This is when the weather is still nice but most of the crowds are gone. Normally I head to Belmar but this year I decided to head back to Sandy Hook since I haven't been there in a couple of year.

When you put a ride in the PFW book a month in advance you never know what the weather is going to be. I was lucky because the weather this past Sunday was great. It started out a little cold around 50 but is was sunny with almost no wind with temperatures heading towards the mid 70s. There was much discussion on how to dress for this weather. (i.e. Should I wear a jacket and/or tights or just go with the arm warmers). I always try to travel light so since it was sunny and I knew it would warm up quick. I decided to go with just the arm warmers because I knew if I took a jacket I would just be taking it off in an hour and have to carry it for the rest of the ride.

I had a good crowd of some of the regulars along with a few new people. We started from Monmouth Battlefield Park and headed out through Freehold. The roads from the park through Freehold aren't really nice but early in the morning there wasn't much traffic so it wasn't too bad.

I wasn't paying attention on the way out of Freehold and made a wrong turn. I tried to get back on track by going though a side street but ended up hitting a dead end. Needless to say I got the usually ribbing from the group (i.e. Joe) for making a wrong turn.

After a half mile back track we were back on course. When I ride to Sandy Hook I try to stay on low traffic back roads but there are a few spots where we have no choice to go on roads with moderate traffic. This is no big deal it just means there are times when we have to ride single file and be on the look out for traffic. Everybody was riding at the same pace so it was easy to keep the group together. Until we hit Navisink Rd.

Navisink Rd is a set of rolling hills that aren't really steep or hard but it did spread out the group. The rollers stretch out for about 3 miles so at the end I decided to stop at a turn to gather the group. This ended up having the opposite effect. I stopped at an intersection and wasn't exactly sure if we wanted to go straight or turn right. As I was deciding which way to go some people ended up going straight others went right. After a few minutes I determined that we wanted to make the next right not this one. I thought that everybody that made the right had come back but when I got to the next corner I realized we were missing a couple of people. I also did not see the people that went ahead.

I ended up going back to get the people behind us and Joe made a call to the people ahead to tell them to come back. Eventually we all got back together but then in the next mile somebody dropped a chain and somebody else stopped to take a leak. So for about 10 mins the ride was a little chaotic but at least I didn't loose anybody. Another couple of miles we were at the Quick Check on Rt 36 for our first stop.

Right before we left a tire spontaneously blew on Marks bike while it was just sitting there which was kind of strange but it was a front tire so it was a quick fix.

We then headed down to Sandy Hook. There is a bridge you have cross to get to Sandy Hook which doesn't have a shoulder so you just have to watch the traffic as you cross the bridge and take the exit to into the park. I have done it a bunch of times and knew what to expect. Or at least I thought I did. It turns out they are putting up a new bridge into Sandy Hook so the traffic pattern has changed. Half of the old bridge is now gone to make way for the new bridge and there is only one lane in each direction with no exit into Sandy Hook. To get to Sandy Hook you just go over the bridge and make a left at a T at the end of the bridge. The exit ramp has been removed to make way for the new bridge.

The made it a little messy getting into Sandy Hook but there were only a few cars on the road so nobody seemed to mind when we had to block the lane to get over the bridge and into Sandy Hook.

Two years ago I took a good picture on the way into Sandy Hook when you're on a little hill heading into the park. From here you get a view of the beach with New York in the background. I was going to try and take this picture again but new bridge now blocks the view and this shot is no longer possible.

Once we go into the park we stopped at the first parking lot to use the bathroom and get a view of the beach and New York. We were ready to ride again when we realized Mary was still in the bathroom which was strange. Five minute later Mary comes out and says she actually go stuck in the stall because the door would not unlock so she had craw out underneath. Pretty funny.

Since the park wasn't crowed I decided to take the Multiuse path to start our tour of Sandy Hook. This is a more leisurely way to view the park and a nice change of pace. The weather at this point was perfect. It was warm enough that you didn't need a jacket and very clear. The last time I came to Sandy Hook I didn't get a chance to take pictures of some the interesting things in the park so this time I stopped to take pictures of the Nike missiles as well as the light house and and old cannon. At the Nike missles we got off the Multiuse path and just rode around the roads of Fort Handcock.

While riding along the roads I found that they extended the Multiuse path through Fort Handcock all the way to the end by the Coast Guard Station. So if you wanted to you could just use the Multiuse path to see all the sights.

The group spread out a little during the sight seeing but we all gathered up a the entrance again to start the trip home. Normally you just head south out of the park then take the exit to Ocean Ave to head to Shrewsbury. When we tried to do this we ended up going over the bridge that we came in on which is not the way home. After making an illegal left/U turn which brought more derogatory comments from Joe we were on Ocean Ave. I think the only way out of the Sandy Hook on to Ocean Ave is to actually take the Multiuse path into Sea Bright. Which I will do next time if I go back before they finish the new bridge.

The ride back to Freehold was uneventful. There was no head wind so we had a pace line moving at a good clip most of the way back. We made our usually rest stop in Little Silver. When we got back to Freehold the traffic was a little heavier so I took the back way around town with out getting lost which of brought another derogatory comment from Joe.

Wemrock Rd was bumper to bumper traffic because of something happening at the Deli there so it was a little hairy getting by the cars on the right.

We got back around 1:30 pm which was earlier than I expected. It was a good ride. I really enjoyed the ride around the beaches and fort in Sandy Hook especially in the nice weather. I will have to do this ride on a more regular basis.

Lost in Califon

2009-09-03T20:47:00.000-04:00

Click Here for More Pictures
If you don't mind the hills, the area around Califon NJ is a nice place to ride. Laura introduced me to this area a few years ago. Since then I try to get up this way a few times a year. This past Saturday I joined Ken for a ride in this area.

This was a ride of exploration for Ken so although he had a general idea of where he wanted go he wasn't always sure which way to go at certain turns. This meant we got a little lost at times but this is a fun way to learn new roads.

We ended up taking the usually roads from Raritan Valley College to Rockaway after that we did some climbing eventually ending up by the by the Raitain river in Califon. From there we started climbing and climbing. None of the climbs where real steep but it seemed that it would never end.

Eventually we ended up on Pleasant Grove although I didn't really know where we really were. The only thing that I did know that we were finally on top of some mountain with some nice views. We tooled along the top for a while then Ken made a turn that took us onto a dirt road. It was hard packed dirt with some gravel but it was ridable as long as we kept it slow. This lasted for a mile and a half before the road turned back to asphalt.

Then the road started going downhill at a pretty steep rate. It was a nice downhill that had this wicked hairpin turn that was both dangerous and fun at the same time. I learned after the ride that the angle of the road at the hairpin was 34 degrees. I definitely want to do try this again.

Of course after this great downhill there was more climbing ahead. We had a tandem in the group with us and I felt a little sorry for them because of all the climbing. But even though they were a little slow up the hills they just kept grinding away and didn't seem to mind too much.

We eventually ended up on Old Turnpike and had a nice downhill that took us to our rest stop in Tweaksbury. From there is was a short easy ride back to the start.

This is a great area that I still don't know real well so I plan to come back up this way in October to do some more exploring and find some more fun roads.

Plan B

2009-08-25T20:57:00.000-04:00

Click here for more pictures from the ride

This past weekend I had to go to a family party up in Long Valley NJ. It was a late afternoon party so instead of driving up I thought it would be fun to ride up and have my wife meet me there. There are a lot of nice roads up it that area if you don't mind some hills. I planned a nice 55 mile route that would take me on some nice roads. I had ridden in this area in July when I did my ride to Schooleys Mountain and wanted to go back to some of the roads on my own to take some pictures.

Unfortunately the weather was pretty bad on Saturday. I would have done the ride if it was only going to be scattered showers but it was a full out deluge so there was no way to ride. I was disappointed but oh well. I'll do it some other time.

Plan B was to ride with Laura on Sunday but I was tired from the party the night before and didn't get up early enough to get to Lambertville in time. No problem I saw that Ken had a ride out of Princeton going to the Sourlands so I headed out to his ride. The only problem was nobody was there. Although it wasn't raining the roads were a little wet and there was still a chance of some rain so I wasn't completely surprised nobody was there.

At this point I'm on Plan D which meant I was on my own. I really didn't have any route in mind but decided to go to Rocky Hill and start riding towards Round Valley. There were some roads up there that I wanted to explore so that was a good a plan as any at this point.

I headed up Hollow road over the Sourlands. The rain we got the previous day made the stream along side of the road run really fast I stopped along the way and got some good pictures. After getting over the Sourlands I headed north crossing the Raritan River a couple of times.

Some people have asked me if it gets boring when I ride for hours by myself. My answer is always no. For me riding by myself is very relaxing. There is usually some interesting things to see along the way, especially if I am exploring a new area or revisiting a place I had not been in a while. When you ride the roads on a bike things seem to slow down a little. You can heard the sounds of the animals running in the bushes along side the road, see the birds in the rivers or trees and just enjoy the scenery as it rolls by.

Riding by myself gives me a lot of time to think. During rides I have worked through some technical problems at work, planned some home improvement projects, and wondered why Jon Steward does better interviews on his fake news show than most of the real news anchors do (I'm not going to even mention the abomination that is Fox news).

My thoughts on this day, as I rode, turned to Howie who passed away this past Thursday. When I first started riding with the club it was him, Dennis, Don and a few others that really welcomed me into the club and made me feel like part of the group. I became a much better biker because of them and really started to enjoy the social aspect of the rides. That's when riding became fun.

I spent a lot of time on the ride thinking about all the conversations we had about biking, skiing, computers and life in general. I really enjoyed riding with Howie and have a lot of good memories. I hate the fact that I won't be able to enjoy his company any more.

When I got some where around Stanton I started to explore some new roads like Cole and Pinebark which were a little hilly but really nice. I ended up going past Solberg Airport and saw the Met life blimp. From there I headed back south along the Raritan again. By this time I was back in familiar territory and had my route all set for the way back.

That was until I went to cross the Griggstown Causeway. Which was totally flooded which meant an extra 4 or 5 miles back to my car. Nothing today worked out how I had expected or planned so this was just the order of the day. Although I love it when a plan comes together some days it can be just as much fun to roll with the punches.

All Roads Lead to Clarksburg

2009-08-15T16:29:00.000-04:00

When I first joined the Princeton Free Wheelers I did a lot of rides out of Cranbury. Even though there are many different routes you can do from Cranbury almost all of them end up with at stop at the Clarksburg Deli. The Clarksburg Deli is not the best Deli around but it has a great location that makes it a convenient place to stop.

I lead the HoneyDo ride out of Cranbury for a lot of years and know almost every rideable road in the area. I learn the roads from riding with Don, Norman and a few others. If you want a nice 40-45 mile flat to rolling ride this is a great area to ride in.

I don't lead many rides out of Cranbury any more. This is mainly because I have been adding more variety to my rides and exploring other areas. The size of the rides, out of Cranbury are also larger than I want lead. The B group can be 25 to 30 people which can make the ride very chaotic and hard to control.

I have seen a few emails recently complaining about pace and leadership of some the rides going out of Cranbury. Some of these are the usual argument about how to keep a B ride from becoming a B+ ride and dropping people who can't keep up or just want to do a "real B pace". These arguments are nothing new and part of the normal ebb and flow of a bike club.

Although there are some things a leader can do it can be hard sometimes to make everybody in the ride happy with the pace when you have a large group.

On thing that would help is if there were more ride leaders. This would give riders more options when deciding which leader to go with based on their ability. Of course people are fast to complain but slow to want to lead. Mostly their excuse is that they don't know the roads good enough. To take that argument away. I have just posted 3 of my favorite routes from Cranbury. You can find them on my ride sheet page for my book. These routes show some of the best rides around Cranbury and will give you a good start to understanding the roads in the area.

So if you don't like the size or pace of the rides going out of Cranbury stop complaining and do something about the problem by becoming a ride leader. It is good for the club and a can be a fun experience.

Quick side note:
I had not ridden past the Clarksburg Deli in a few weeks so after writing this post took a quick ride past it not to see the deli but because I heard the Clarksburg Inn burnt down. Here are some pictures of what the fire did. The fire department is next to the building so they got there quick but it must have spread fast because the entire inside is almost completely gutted even though the wall look mostly intact. It was a historic building that has been around for over 200 years so its too bad they will have to tear it down and build a new one.

Errata

2009-08-02T10:28:00.000-04:00

I have been on vacation for the last two weeks and have had a lot of fun but did not get a chance to do any biking. Now that I'm back I'm looking forward to riding again. This past Saturday was the PFW cycling event and it couldn't have been a nicer day. Usually I work the registration desk in the morning then do 50 or 60 miles while taking pictures of all the bikers.

This year I didn't get a chance to ride because I was doing a book signing with Barnes & Noble. They usually don't do many external book signings but the PFW event was the perfect place to sell the book to bikers so they agreed to come out.

I did sell some books which is good but I also got a chance to talk to some people who had already bought it and were using it. The feedback was very positive which made me feel good since I put a lot of work into the book to make sure it was accurate and useful. Even though I did my best to make the book error free there is always the possibility that I missed something or that some of the roads, or rest stops have changed. This is why I have added an Errata section to the website for the book I have also added an email link so people can more easily contact me and report any errors that they find.

Oshkosh B'Gosh

2009-08-01T20:45:00.000-04:00

Click Here for More Pictures

Although most people associate Oshkosh with the famous denim overalls, it is also the site of one of the world’s biggest airshows. I’m not a pilot or have any real desire to become one but I am an aviation enthusiast and enjoy the beauty and technology behind manned flight. I usually try to go to one airshow a year just to satisfy my desire to see some cool aerobatics. This year I planned our vacation to Chicago to end the day before the start of the Oshkosh airshow then put my wife on a plane home and headed north to Oshkosh.

The Oshkosh airshow is put on by the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association). This show started out as a bunch of pilots gathering to discuss and show off the best home built planes in the country. The show has been held every year for over 50 years and has grown in leaps and bounds. This year the attendance total will probably top over 700,000 people. This show is not only about home built planes but has become a world class airshow where you can come and see almost any plane that has ever been made. At the show I saw everything from Wright Model B to WWII Mustang to the Whiteknight II from Burt Rutan. If you love airplanes you owe it to yourself to get you ass to Oshkosh at least once in your life to experience airplane nirvana.

There are a lot of different aspects to the Oshkosh airshow. There are talks given on any aviation topic imaginable by the experts in the field, There are 10s of thousands of planes on display that you can look at and of course there is the daily airshow that show cases the best aerobatic pilots on earth. The scope and size of the show is overwhelming. It easily takes a few days to really see everything.

The highlight of the show was the arrival and demonstration flight of the Whiteknight 2 aircraft that was built by Scaled Composites for Virgin Galactic to carry SpaceShip 2 to 50,000 feet and air launch it into a ballistic trajectory to space. In the next 5 years this should allow a few hundred to a thousand people to fly into space and experience weightlessness for around 10 mins. This will be the beginning of the commercial space market and should start to allow the common man to experience space travel.

The other main highlight of the show was the arrival and demo flight of the new Airbus 380 the biggest plane in the world. The plane is huge but as the demonstration flight showed it is very maneuverable. The pilot did some very short turns and had the angle of attack at plus and minus 15 degrees. Nothing you would want to experience during a normal commercial flight but it was amazing how the nimble the big plane really was.

The amazing part of the show was the organization. Even with over 10’s of thousands of plane and 100s of thousands of people everything ran flawlessly. This was one of the cleanest places I have every seen and although it was crowded the wait for food or any other service was never very long. Also the service of every one of the staff from the bus drivers to the food service personnel was always friendly and professional. In fact they would go out of their way to do anything to make the event run more efficiently. For example when the air show let out the buses back to the camp ground (Where I was staying) were really packed as everybody was trying to get back to where they were staying.

Normally this would mean long lines and waiting times for buses but this was not the case. First they had a lot of buses which help but they also learn to run them more efficiently. After every one got on the bus they announced the stops they planned to make and asked who was getting off at each stop. If there were stops that no one needed they changed the route to eliminate that stop and get to the other ones quicker. All the bus drivers communicated to each other so that all the stops were always covered and they never missed picking any one up. It was a great system that was worked well and the most amazing thing was that it was an all volunteer system.

As I mentioned above I stayed in the camp ground. As you can imaged the small Wisconson town of Oshkosh is totally overwhelm by the hordes of people that attend the airshow. It is really hard to get a hotel room. However there is a huge field next to the airport where the airshow is held turns into a extremely large campground. My parents have a 5th wheel camper and were in the area so I meet them and stayed with them for the three days that I was there. The campground is a cross between a refugee camp and an army base. There were over 30,000 trailers, motor homes and tents here. It was an unbelievable site. The makeshift roads had a constant flow of traffic including, buses, bikes, scoters and people walking. It was chaotic, crowded and well organized all at the same time. Again the volunteers kept the camp really clean and their passion to help people was infectious because all the campers were really friendly and helpful. It was like living in a big commune and although I missed having my own private bathroom and shower it wasn’t a bad way to live for a few days.

This airshow attracts some of the best, brightest and even famous people. I attended talks by Sir Richard Branson, Harrison Ford (besides being an actor he is also a helicopter pilot), Miles O’Brien and Burt Rutan just to name a few. The best talk I went to was with Richard Branson and Burt Rutan where they explained how within a few years they plan to be flying people on sub orbital flights to space. I believe they will not only be able to do it but actually make money at it.

The Oshkosh airshow was one of those rare events which I had high expectations which were exceeded by the actual experience. I saw a lot of cool planes and learned a lot about the future advances of aviation.

The only thing that damped my high from attending the airshow was the flight home.. My 225 pm flight from O’Hare ended up leaving over 2 hours late because of bad weather at Newark. So although the future of aviation is bright they need to work a little harder to find a way to make the airlines run on time when it rains.

The Perfect Game

2009-07-24T11:04:00.001-04:00

I haven't posted for a couple of weeks mostly because I am currently on vacation in Chicago. Chicago is a great city and we are having a lot of fun here. You can see my Chicago pictures HERE. These pictures also include some from the town of Milwaukee which we also visited

While my wife and I travel we like to take in a baseball game when we can. Visiting the stadiums is fun since they are all different and have there own unique character. I usually don't remember much about the actual games themselves. For this vacation we visited the White Soxs, Cubs, and Brewers Stadium. Click on the links if you want some pictures of the stadiums

Yesterday however was a game that I will always remember. We went to an afternoon game at the White Soxs and saw a perfect game. There have only been 18 perfect games pitched in the history of baseball so the chances of seeing one is astronomical.

The game was relatively boring until the bottom of the 7th when everybody starting thinking this could be a no hitter. By the middle of the 8th the crowd was hanging on every pitch. Then in the 9th when DeWayne Wise made a heroic catch that robbed the Rays of a home run everybody in the stadium knew this was a historic moment.

This celebration after the game felt like the team just won a championship and went on for a while. Both my wife and I were pumped up from the experience and were high fiving strangers. It was a great feeling. Most baseball fans have two dream when they go to a game. They want to catch a foul ball (Did that at a Phillys/Met game 10 years ago) and see a perfect game. I know that I am one of the lucky few that was able to have both happen to me

Schooley's Mountain

2009-07-08T22:17:00.000-04:00

Click Here for More Picture
Schooley's Mtn is one of those places that I have been wanting to ride to for years. I first though about it when I read about the rides featured at the the Ramapo Rally ride that's out of Bergen County. The toughest ride that they have is a 125 mile hilly ride from Mahwah to Schooley's Mtn and back. I though about doing it a couple of times but 125 miles and hills is a little more than I really consider a fun ride.

When I was researching the book and trying to decide which rides to include I though again about doing a ride to Schooley's Mtn but limted space prevented me from including it. Finally this past weekend I finally made it to Schooley's Mtn.

This ended up being a great ride that I'm sorry that I didn't do it sooner. We had the perfect day to do the ride it was in the mid 70s with low humidity. Although we had rain the previous night it was mostly clear when we started. Since this was going to be a very hilly ride I expected 4 or 5 people but ended up with 9. It was a good group with a good hilly climbing attitude.

The first 31 miles where mostly up hill but it was a beautiful climb. I ended up starting the ride from Raritan Community College because of a road closure that would have made it too long if I started from the usual place in Pluckemin. This ended up being a good place to start.

After about 7 miles we were on Rockaway Rd which is one of the nicest roads in the area. It's a nice slow climb that takes you up about 200 feet in 4 miles. The grade is so gradual that you don't even realize you going up hill. There is a river that runs along side of the road which makes it a beautiful ride. The rain the previous night caused the water to run fast which made a strange rushing sound as we climbed our way up. The next road was Guinea Hollow which required some more climbing but also had a beautiful river next to it.

We continued to wind our way up the hills as we headed for the town of Long Valley. We had started at about 100 ft and when we got to Long Valley we were almost at 800 feet with a lot of ups and downs. None of the climbs were too bad and the scenery was nice so it was a real enjoyable ride.

After a nice downhill into Long Valley we headed towards Schooley's Mtn. This was where the toughest climb of the ride would be. There are a couple of ways up to the top of the mountain all of them require climbing around 450 feet in a couple of miles. I decided to go up Naughright because it looked like one of the better ways up. The climb started with a 15 % grade so its a tough start but after less than a half mile the grade deceases a little. There were also a couple of flatter section that let you catch your breath. So although it was a tough climb every body was able to grid there way up. The only problem with this way up the mountain was that there was a little more traffic than I was expecting. I had warned everybody to stay to the right so there were no problem with the cars going by it just meant that you had to concentrate on the traffic as well as the climbing.

Once on the top we regrouped and explored the top of the mountain. The mountain is covered with trees so unfortunately there were no clearings where we could see the view of the valley below. We did have a nice stop at the general store/post office. It was like something from the 50's. We also got to see a large carved eagle which is marked on Dustin's NJ Bike map. It's not something you see everyday.

From here is was mostly down hill or so I though from the maps but it turned out that there were always some climb getting in the way of a lot of the down hills. This didn't really matter as the roads where mostly traffic free and the views were nice. The worst part was on the upper part of Black River Rd which is strewn with pot holes. I hope they repave this road soon.

I was tired when I got back to the college but very satified with the ride. I had been looking forward to this ride for a couple of months and had done a lot of hill training to make sure I would be in shape for the ride. I also spend a lot of time planning the route. Although I had ridden about half the roads on this ride before there were quite a few that I had never ridden.

Both my training and planning paid off. I felt good during the ride and the route ended up being really nice. I also got lucky with the weather and had a good group of people for the ride. I may tweak a few of the roads but this is route I will do again.

For those interested here is the elevation profile for the ride. Click on the image to get a bigger view. The text on the profile are the names of the roads on that part of the ride. This is a pretty hilly ride for NJ but isn't extreme. If you have the right gears and do some hill training you should be able to do this ride. You can find the ride sheet for the ride here

Here is the elevation profile for Naughright Rd which was the toughest climb of the ride. The percent grade is indicated on the left click on the picture to get a larger view. The profile makes the hill look worst than it is. It was a tough climb but the hill had steps in it so it was possible to recover from some of the steeper parts of the hill.

You Know You're in South Jersey When?

2009-07-04T08:21:00.000-04:00

If you want a flat, scenic, traffic free ride there are few places better than southern Jersey. There are a lot of scenic farmland and quiet back roads that are fun to explore. South Jersey is a little different than the rest of the state especially when you head to the more rural areas. In these areas the music tends to be country, the pickup trucks all have gun racks and there are too many guys still sporting mullets.

Although you will not see any signs telling you've entered South Jersey you can usually tell by the surroundings. With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy here are a few tips that you entered South Jersey.

You know you're in South Jersey when?:

You see a gun club every couple of miles
Every front yard contain either a rotted couch, rusted car, or a Jesus Saves sign
The only stores you see are Wawas
You see bumper stickers for Piney Power
The only trees you see are pine trees
All the vehicles are pickup trucks with tires taller than you
The few cars you see have strange accessories (like the beer can hub cap above)

The strangeness of South Jersey may scary some people but for me it is just part of the fun of riding down there.

Me and My Shadow

2009-06-27T07:25:00.001-04:00

I had a very strange experience the other night during a ride. As I was riding along I noticed silhouette of some one on a bike riding next to me. The strange thing is that it mirrored my exact moves. What's even more strange is the sky was a weird color. It wasn't it's normal grey but a bright blue. There was also this yellow orb above the horizon that hurt my eyes when I looked at it.

I think this was all because we finally had a sunny day. Its hard to tell because I haven't seen the sun or a clear sky since the end of May. We have been getting two to three inches of rain a week in June. A good day in June has meant that it only rains for half the day. It has also been relatively cold where the average high is in the low 70s.

All this has made finding time to ride really hard. I hope this weather pattern changes soon. If not then I am just going to have to learn to ride in the rain.

It's Never Sunny in Round Valley

2009-06-18T20:58:00.000-04:00

I end up riding by Round Valley reservoir at least 2 or 3 times a year. In the past 5 years I think I have only had one ride past the reservoir where the weather was actually nice. Most of the time it's either hazy, hot and humid or overcast and cloudy. The weather this Saturday was no better for this years ride around Round Valley.

The temperature was in the mid 70s which was good but it was overcast with the humidity of at least 110%. I didn't expect a lot of people on the ride since it was in the book as a long hilly ride but I actually ended up with 11 people. Except for Chris, Hilda, and Cheryl I didn't know any of them so I was a little nervous about leading this many people around hilly terrain.

As the ride got going it was clear that we had a few pace pushers who kept wanting to go ahead but for the most part they were pretty well behaved. The route I took was mostly the same route I have in book only backward. This way is a little less climbing and we get a really cool downhill after the reservoir.

We quickly made our way through Bellemeade and Hillsborough and crossed 202 in South Branch on Old York Rd. From here we headed past Solberg airport and made our way into Whitehouse Station. We were 21 miles into the ride so I decided to stop here since there were no other places to stop along the route for a least another 20 miles since the Stanton General Store is now closed. I had never stopped in Whitehouse Station for a rest stop so I didn't know what I would find. We found a pizza place which was closed but there was a nice deli that was open that made a good stop.

After the stop we headed towards the reservoir and started to do some climbing. The group started to spread out a little as some of the faster rides started to push ahead up the hills. I stayed back with the slower group to make sure nobody got left behind or felt like they had to push it up the hills. When I lead hilly rides like this it becomes hard to keep the group together when you have a mix of fast hill climbers and the rest of us who take a little time to make it up the hill. I tried to keep the group up front aware of the next few turns so they knew where we were going because although I have no problem dropping people if they don't behavior I prefer to try to keep the group together if possible.

As we got to the real hills around Round Valley and started a couple of long climbs I was very happy with the way everybody made it up the hill even though a few of them said they hadn't really done much climbing. Nobody really had a problem with the climb although we spread out a little. The humid weather and overcast sky made it not worth taking any pictures around the reservoir. For what the reservoir looks like on a good day see these pictures.

The downhill after the reservoir is one of the best downhills in the state. I hit 40mph and I'm sure the tandem hit 50mph. After the downhill we passed the abandon Stanton General Store and took Dreahook to Springtown. We ended up dropping a few people off the front when we made the turn onto Springtown and when we headed down Barley Sheaf I had somebody cramp up so we had to stop for a few minutes until he could ride again. We slowed down the pace so the guy who cramped up could keep up but he kept falling back so I stayed back with him and told Cheryl Chris and the other so go ahead since they knew where we were now and they could find their way to Peacocks.

We were on Cider Mill at this time and when we cross Amwell the guy who was cramping and his friend decided to head back around the north end of the Sourlands instead of climbing over the Sourland like I planned. They said they knew where they were and could get back so I left them and went to catch up with the rest of the group.

It was strange riding by myself after leading a ride but I took the opportunity to take a could of pictures. I eventually made it to Peacocks where I not only meet up with the rest of the group but also with the people I had dropped so in the space of a half hour I had lost almost all of the group and then found them again.

By the time we got to Peacocks we were pretty tired mostly because it was so humid. After the rest stop some of the pace pusher crowd decided to go back on their own. The rest of us climbed Linburg and headed back to the canal. I ended up coming down Dutchtown Zion just to get in one last down hill in. We got back to the canal around 1:30 pm just about the same time that the guys with the cramps got there so I was happy to see they made it back.

Even though the weather wasn't great and I had some problems with the group it didn't diminish from the ride. I may never see Round Valley on a good day but it doesn't mean that it's not a fun ride.

My New Toy

2009-06-07T20:58:00.000-04:00

A couple posts ago I talked about my new mapping software and how it helped me map out my rides. When I go exploring new areas I always spend some time with my mapping software to plan out the route and create a cue sheet. When I actually do the ride I want to concentrate on the scenery and not trying to figure out where I am or which road to take.

For the most part most if I take the time to map out a ride I usually don't have to waste much time looking at maps during the ride. There have been a few times however, like my ride to Highpoint, where the route that I have mapped out doesn't work out because of a road closed or a mistake in the map. In times like these it would be nice if I could go back to my mapping software and replan the route.

Of course bringing my laptop on a ride would be ridiculous but some of the new GPS units on the market have gotten to the point that they can give me the ability to take my mapping software with me.

When I first started working on my book about road biking in NJ, two years ago, I thought it would be useful to get a GPS unit to record my rides to make it easier to verify the miles of each of the routes. At the time I couldn't find anything at a reasonable price that would fit my needs.

Today there are few good units that meet my needs. What I wanted was a GPS unit that I could use hiking, riding or in my car that I would upload my routes too. I looked at the Garmin Edge that is made specifically for the bike which is a good unit but it doesn't have any dedicated software that can be used to plan out the routes and its maps are not easily updateable. What I decided on instead was the Delorme PN-40. Delorme has been making maps and topo maps for a long time and no company has better map data. The thing I like about the Pn-40 is that it is fully integrated with the Topo USA software so uploading routes to the unit is just a one click operation. Also beside the routes I can upload the satellite images of the maps to the unit so not only do I see the map as I ride but also a satellite image. This makes it easier to understand exactly where I am and what is around me.

Besides displaying the map the the unit also has all the usual information about hotels, restaurants, hospitals, parks that you can get from most of the better car GPS units. The screen is excellent and easy to see even in direct sunlight and is the perfect size. Its big enough to see but also is small enough so it doesn't take up too much room on the handle bars.

After some tests around my local neighbor I took the unit on my Southern Piney Soujourn trip (see pictures here)where I when from the top of the Pine Barrens through Tuckerton and Batsto. This was a long ride (85 miles) though some very rural areas where making a wrong turn won't be obvious for 4 or 5 miles. I didn't really need the GPS on the first 20 miles of the trip because we were riding Rt 72 and Rt 539 because there is no other way to get to Tuckerton.

Once we got to Tuckerton we took a side trip to the ocean and then went through the town which was a little busy. I planned to take the first turn out of town but the road was under construction. Instead of having to take my map out I just kept riding and the GPS told me how to get back to my intended route. Once we got out of Tuckerton we headed toward Batsto. The roads out this way are nice and empty and easy riding. There are some nice forests, streams and rivers around but after a while all the places start to look the same. It would be easy to get lost around here if you didn't know where you are going. Even with the GPS I ended up make a wrong turn but it told me I was off course so we only went a quarter mile out of the way.

We cross two main rivers, the Wadding and the Mullica twice. Strangely all the bridges looked exactly the same and the other people on the ride thought we were going in circles but we were not. I had traveled some of these rivers when I was a kid and my parents boated this area of the inland water way. The bridges and rivers looked exactly as I remember them except for the fact that they are no longer operated manually. These bridges use to have cranks which the bridge tenders use to walk around like horses going around a merry go round. Now it looks like they have been motorized.

The weather and roads were good and we made good time, averaging 17.5 mph. I faded a little towards the end because of the pace but was happy with the ride and the route. This ride let me explore a few roads that I hadn't been on before. Although I could have easily done the ride with out the new GPS unit I was happy with the way it worked. It definitely help reduce the amount of times that I had to stop and look at a map. It was also good knowing exactly where I was and how far the next turn was. I won't bring it with me every time I go out but when I go exploring less familiar roads its a fun toy to have with me.

Roebling River Ride

2009-05-28T21:18:00.000-04:00

I am always on the look out for new places to ride in the area so a couple weeks ago when big Joe asked if any one wanted to join him for a his river ride I decided to join him. This rides starts in Mercer County park and heads south to the Roebling and Florence where you ride by the Delaware for a few miles. I had actually never ridden through Florence so this ride gave me a chance to explore a few new roads.

Even though Joe has done this route a number of times he still had to check the map a few times since little Joe wasn't there to guide him. We also had to shorten the ride a little since Herb had to get home by noon.

This all resulted in trying to find a few short cuts to get home on time. Some of our short cuts caused us to have to ride on Rt 130 and 206 a couple of times. We ended up getting back almost on time and including riding into the park I ended up with 70 miles.

Except for having to ride on Rt 130 and 206 for a couple of miles it actually ended up being a nice ride and not as urban as I thought it would be. After I got back from the ride I mapped out where we went and came up with a new route that I rode this past weekend. It is similar to Joe's ride without riding on any major highways and returns through the farmlands of Columbus.

Although this has a few urban spots its actually a pretty nice ride and a route that I will definitely do it again. It's always a nice surprise when you go exploring and actually find a new route. I have posted the ridesheet here for those interested in trying the ride.

Mapping My Rides

2009-05-23T19:54:00.000-04:00

It's been a couple of weeks since I made a post mostly because I was on vacation for a week in Bermuda. I didn't doing any biking there but did get some nice time on the beaches which are absolutely beautiful. You can see my vacation pictures here.

I also have been speeding some time getting familiar with a new piece of software for mapping out my rides. For the past 10 years I have been using the different versions of Street Atlas USA. Its a pretty good program that allowed me to map out routes and create ride sheets but recently I upgraded to Topo USA, another mapping product from Delorme. Topo USA is very similar Street Atlas USA but adds topographical information to the normal detailed street maps. This is a nice addition especially when I plan rides in the hillier areas of the state and want to decide which hills to take.

For example I am planning a ride to Schooley's Mountain in July. The first thing I do when planning a ride is take a look a NJBikeMap to get a quick look at the best roads to take. I then start mapping out the ride in Topo USA. This involves setting the start and stop location of the ride as well as adding way points to get the route to follow the road that I want to ride on. As I do this I get a good idea of how long the ride is going to be and can easily adjust to route to get the miles I want.

Once I get the route the way I want it I can export the directions to a text file which I can turn into a ride sheet. With Street Atlas USA this was all I could do which was fine but with Topo USA not only can I generate a ride sheet I can also get an elevation profile which tells me how much climbing I am going to do and the grade of each climb. You can see a sample below.

What's even cooler is that I can overlay the street maps with satellite images and get a really good idea of what I will see along the way. I use to use google maps to see the satellite data which was ok but it required me to switch between Street Atlas USA and google maps which made it a little cumbersome. Having the satellite view inside the mapping program makes it easier to get the complete picture.

Of course maps and satellite images are no substitute for doing the actual ride but doing the planning up front gives you a better idea of what to expect once you are on the road.

Some people don't want to bother to do a lot of planning before a ride and prefer to just improvise along the way. I respect that approach but for me I actually enjoy doing the planning and with tools like Topo USA planning a ride is a lot easier.

Rain Rain Go Away...

2009-05-01T21:57:00.000-04:00

My planned ride this weekend got rained out. I did managed to get out for a few hours Saturday afternoon as there was a small window where the rain stopped so it wasn't a total loss. Since then the rain has been almost non stop with no sign of letting up.

On rainy days like these I like to curl up with a good book. One book I would highly recommend would be my book Road Biking New Jersey. Ok maybe its not this years hot novel but it will help you plan your next bike ride once if stops frigging raining. The book is finally available and is shipping from amazon now. The funny thing is that the new book is priced at $11.51 where as used version of the book (which are at most 3 days old) are going for $32. Its nice to see that that the book only gets better with age :-) So not only is the book a great read it's also a great investment (End of blatant self promotion)

The truth is that the rain has given me some time to get familiar with a new piece of software I recently bought for planning my rides. This software lets me combine street maps topographical and satellite data all on one map. So even though this week is looking like a rain out I should have some new routes mapped out when roads finally dry out.

Trees in Bloom

2009-04-24T17:38:00.000-04:00

This pass weekend was the great weekend to see some of the local trees in full bloom. Besides the Magnolias and Cherry trees we also have some nice red and white flowering trees like the ones shown here. These trees are beautiful and great for the environment but unfortunately some of them will be turning in to saw dust soon so that my book may live. That's right I just got word from my editor that the book finally went to the printers.

I got an advance copy today and I think it came out really good. It should be out in stores by May 19th. The book has been a lot of work and I'm glad that the work is now complete. I intend to do some book signing to promote it but that should be fun.

Now that the book is done I can concentrate on riding just for the fun of it. The weather this weekend looks great and I have a ride in the book for Saturday morning out of Bordentown. It will be a nice flat cruise down to the pine barrens and back with a stop at a nice bakery near Smithville. It should be around 55 miles and a fun ride. Come out and enjoy the weather

(Disclaimer Falcon press prints their books on recycled paper, I think, so no actual trees were killed in the printing of my book)

Spring Photo Ride

2009-04-15T21:47:00.000-04:00

Click Here for More Pictures
Before I had to take pictures for the book I never really bothered to take a camera along on my rides. Although there is always some nice scenery along the way I never had the desire to stop and capture it. But now that I have spent the last two years with a camera with me when I ride I find that taking pictures has become part of my rides. I try not to let the photography interrupt the flow of the ride but there are always opportunities for a few nice shots.

During the winter I read a couple of good books on photography and now better understand how aperture, shutter speed, white balance and a number of other factors affect a photograph. I am still a long way from mastering photography but I when I look at my pictures after a ride I can tell what I did wrong on certain shots and am learning how to take better pictures. This past weekend was Easter Sunday and because of the rain on Saturday and the family gathering at my house on Sunday I wasn't able to get a group ride it. I was lucky enough to be off on Monday with decent weather and decided to take a ride by my self and concentrate on trying to get some good pictures.

I headed for the Sourlands and my goal was to try and get some scenic shots of some of the rivers and farmlands. I thought after all the rain we had last week that the rivers would be flowing full force and would afford some nice photos. Unfortunately the rivers really weren't as high or fast flowing as I expected but there were a few nice photo opportunities. You can click here to see all the pictures that I took.

I started off in Rocky Hill on the other side of 206 and ended up going to Stockon and back. I went over the Sourlands through Sergeantsville pass the Covered Bridge to Bulls Island and back. I tried to hit all the major rivers and stream that I always pass. Being by myself I took a little more time and stopped more than I usually do for pictures. It was fun experimenting with my camera and trying out different combinations of shutter speed, aperture and exposure. I learned a few things about my camera and how different settings affect a picture. Its still early spring so the land is a little barren but I still managed to a get a few good shots. I know the land will look a lot better in another month so I plan to dedicate a ride every now and then to photography. I may never be a great photographer but I have found that biking and photography go good together and it is something that I really enjoy now.

Wind or Hills?

2009-04-05T14:39:00.000-04:00

Spring is here is so is some crazy weather. Thunder storms this past Friday lead to 25 mph winds with gusts close to 50 mph on Saturday. I put my dog out on Saturday morning and even with four legs to steady her she was having problems standing in the wind. I have ridden in some pretty windy conditions but I didn't think it would be safe to ride on Saturday.

Luckily Sunday was a little better it was still windy but it was down to a 20 mph which although not fun is ridable. Laura had a ride out of Mercer park that I considered doing but she was headed south toward some of the more open and flat land which would have made dealing with the wind a little harder. I decide instead to head to the Sourlands and start doing some hill training. I hoped the hills would block most of the wind and even if they didn't the way the wind was blowing meant that it would be in my face on the way out not on the way home.

We started at Rocky Hill by the canal and went west towards the Sourlands. The wind was in our face all the way to the base of the Sourlands which made it slow ride but once we got to the mountains the wind wasn't a problem. I took the easy way up and over Sourlands, Hollow to Zion, then stayed on the ridge a little while before heading down to the Valley. The climbing was a slow steady grind but was a nice respite from the wind.

We did a little more climbing and worked our way towards Neshanic Station crossing the Raritan river a few times. The weather was cool but sunny and we had some nice views as we kept riding along. I took a few pictures along the way. My route took us along and over the Raritan river a few more times. The wind was there but wasn't too annoying although the direction kept changing. I think I made the right choice heading for the hills.

On the way back to the canal we got some nice tail winds on a few stretches and were easily pedaling over 20mph with out any effort. We can around the north end of the Sourlands on the way home so there were no major climbs on the way back. By the time we go back to the start we had done 45 miles. It was a good ride with some nice views. We did some climbing but nothing really hard. I think this was a lot better than trying to fight the wind.

Coffee Run

2009-03-13T08:03:00.000-04:00

During the winter months New Egypt is one of the favorite stops for a bike ride. It is a relatively easy ride and there are a couple good places to stop and warm up on a cool winter day. There are also may different ways to get to and from New Egypt from the Hightstown area where we usually start the ride so it is easy to keep varying the route.

This past weekend I lead my first official ride for the club. I ended up with a good crowed and we took a short ride to New Egypt. I have posted the route on my NJ Road Biking site here. This is my standard short route which will give you an template to vary on your own should you want to head to there for a ride. I will post the longer route later in the season so you can see some of my other variations

Indian Summer or Early Spring?

2009-03-08T15:25:00.000-04:00

Click here for more Pictures

What do you call it when it's 70 degrees in early March, Indian Summer?..Early Spring? I think Indian Summer only happens in the fall and I won't call Early Spring because there is still some cold weather ahead. In any case this past weekend was a nice reprieve from the cold winter we have been having.

For a change of pace this weekend I decide to take a ride to Pennington and do a ride with the Hill Slug gang since I hadn't seen some of them in a while. I also heard that Laura had attracted a bunch of Fixes to her ride and I wanted to see how they could climb some of the hills in the Sourlands with just one gear.

With the warm weather there was quite a crowd, 16 total, and all the regulars showed up. It was so warm some people were in shorts and short sleeves. I left my jacket in the car but still left the tights on.

I spent the first feel miles of the ride just talking to everybody I hadn't seen in a while. We eventually found the hills. Laura's plan was to do some long slow hills today. We ended up going up Province Line. It was a clear sunny day so the view was nice. Half way up the hill I stopped for some pictures. Although it was clear the hills in the distance still had fog rolling through them. This picture will be much nice when the foliage fills in.

About 3/4 of the way up as I was trying to catch up with the group I realized a couple of things. First I was actually "hot" which I hadn't felt while riding a bike for the past 4 months. The second thing I realized was that I'm really not in very good hill climbing shape as this climb was feeling a lot worst than it should. I eventually slugged up the hill with Marilyn who is always good company.

We then cruised along the ridge for quite a while before taking 179 into Lamberville. At the bottom of the hill where 179 comes into Lamberville Mike M took a quick hair pin turn to the right as a short cut to Rojo's. I followed him because I thought he knew where he was going but when ended up loosing the rest of the group as well as making a few wrong turns before we got there.

Rojo's was crowed and we ended up spending a long time there. By a strange coincidence we actually ended up running into Michael H and his wife there.

The climbed out of Lamberville wasn't bad and when we turned onto Harbourton-Mount Airy Road Laura said she was going to stop to get some pictures of Dinosaur Rock, which I had never noticed before. After the picture stop we took Rock Road to 579. We were close to getting home so the group stretched out as people started racing back. I was at the back with Marilyn and in no particular hurry. It is rare when I'm on a ride and not leading so I was relaxing knowing Laura always waits for everybody at the turns.

This was Marilyn's first ride of the season so she was a little tire by this time after all the hills. When she go caught at the light at 518 I waited on the other side until it changed not wanting her to get lost or ride alone. By this time we had lost sight of the group so I just continued on. I didn't know exactly where I was but I had a general idea. As we continued on I didn't see any sign of Laura or the rest of the group. So much for the, and I quote from the ride description here "nobody will be dropped" mantra Laura is so proud of.

At this point I knew we were on our own and that I needed to make a left to get to Pennington so when I saw Woosamonsa I made the left even though I knew it meant a couple of small hills. Although I have done a lot of rides with Laura out of Pennington we normally come back through Stony Brook which I am very familiar with. I have come back through 579 a couple of times with her but I'm not as familiar with the exact route back. If I knew she was going to drop my ass I would have studied the map before I left home.

I knew I could feel my way back to Pennington because I had a general idea of where I was and which direction Pennington was in. I was going to make the right on Burd but Marilyn said that 31 was straight ahead so I figured if we get to 31 I may be able to get by bearing a little better. We ended up on Titus Mill which sounded familiar. When passed the Bristol Myer Squib entrance I knew where I was and realized I was taking the long way back to Pennington.

At that point Marilyn's phone rang. I figured is was Laura who finally learned how to count again and realized we were missing. I told Marilyn to tell Laura that we were dying by the side of the road because I knew this would make Laura be all apologetic and worried.

In another 15 mins we were back in the parking lot and I thanked Laura for "dropping my ass". I wasn't really upset with her. With a group as big as she had it is easy to, unintentionally, drop some one. However I plan to remind her being dropped through out the year just to keep her humble.

Marilyn sent me an email later that said she came up with a great way described being dropped by Laura. The term is "Lynched". I agree with her but would like to take it one step further. Just like the term "Spragued" means dropping riders off the front of a ride I think the term "Lynched" should come to mean dropping people, "unintentionally", off the back of the ride :-)

When Animals Attack!

2009-03-04T20:10:00.000-05:00

Ok, I really didn't get attacked by any animals but did have a close run in with a few deer so I couldn't resist the title.

On our way out of Etra Park this weekend we ran into some deer as we cruised along Disbrow Hill Rd. At first we saw a couple of deer running across the road about 20 feet in front of us. Then a couple of more ran across the road. I slowed down and scanned both sides of the road. I saw a couple more deer ready to cross the road so I yelled at them. Although this stop them from crossing the road it made them more nervious. So now the deer were walking parallel to me as I kept creeping along. My yelling also had the unintended side effect of spooking out a few more deer in the woods who ran out a few feet in front of me.

At this point the others riding with me had fallen back so I was alone surrounded by about 10 deer on both sides. It felt strange having that many deer watching me. I kept both eyes open as I kept creeping along hoping they won't jump in front of me. After a slow couple of hundred feet they were behind me and we continued along. I have had a couple of other close calls with deer but have never seen this many at one time.

We also had another interesting animal encounter during our ride. As we road through Cream Ridge we passed a farm with a bunch of horses. Most horses I normally see are just grazing in the field. These horses however were all laying down. They looked tired and disheveled. I suggested that these horses looked like they just go beat up by the Budweiser Clydesdales. So we ride along another couple of miles and what do we see... a Clydesdale pulling a couple people in a wagon with a dog sitting in it. It looks like the Budweiser commercial where the Clydesdale is training to become part of the team. It was a pretty funny coincidence.

Left or Right?

2009-02-25T21:44:00.000-05:00

Most of my winter rides tend to be close to home. I don't usually take the time to map out these rides since I know these roads so well and can easily make up the routes as I go. A couple of weeks ago I did an afternoon adhoc ride with Herb, Mary and George and decided to head to Englishtown. I had the route all mapped out in my head but was not really paying attention and ended up taking a slightly different route than I was planning. No problem I just recalculated the route in my head and mapped out new route to get me on track. Part of this re routing had me taking a Gravelhill Spotswood road which I hadn't been on in years so I was a little disoriented but knew the general direction I was heading was correct. I eventually found the road I wanted but made a left instead of a right and got totally turned around. What I ended up doing was an unintentional 8 mile circle that got me no closer to Englishtown. It's really embarrassing getting lost so close to home and the others deservedly harassed me the rest of the ride.

At this point George wanted some coffee and Englishtown was too far so I just headed to Roy's in Millstone and then we wandered around back to our starting point. We never did make it to Englishtown but still had a nice ride.

The next week we all went out again and this time I was determined to get to Englishtown so before the ride I actually created a ridesheet just to make sure I won't get turned around this time. Although Herb and George kept doubting my abilities to get them to Englishtown we did eventually make it. This is not a route I would do with a big group because there a couple of spots with a little traffic but it is a nice ride to do for a change of pace with a small group. The ridesheet is now on my NJ Road Biking site in the ridesheet page in case your interested in trying it out.

Winter Projects

2009-02-08T14:50:00.001-05:00

Winter is usually the time when I spend more time doing projects around the house. I don't mind doing project around the house because I am pretty handy and can usually get the job done the way I want it in the time I want it done. It also saves me a little money and replaces some of the exercise that I'm not getting because I'm not riding as much.

This winter so far I have put up a shed, insulated the attic, built some cabinets for the basement and probably have some painting in my near future. The other big project this winter has been getting my book ready to publish. I have spent a lot of time proof reading the manuscript, making maps for each ride and number of other little things needed by the publisher to get the book to print. Its almost done and I finally got some of the proof pages of the actual book and I am happy with the way it looks. A few more passes of proof reading and the book should be ready to go. According to the publisher, Falcon Press, it should be available on April 14th.

To provide some detailed information about the book for people looking to buy it I have created a web site NJRoadBiking that explains what's in the book. The site is very simple doesn't contain much more than a description of the book. For those of you who follow the blog and ride with me there will not be much new information here. The one part that you may be interested in is the ride sheet page where I have some ride sheets for some rides that I have done over the last couple of years but didn't make the book. There aren't a lot of ride sheets here yet but I will continue to add more in the weeks and months ahead. I have always wanted to have a way to share my ride sheets with everybody in the club so now that I have the web site set up this will be easy to do.

Beautiful Desolation

2009-02-04T21:09:00.000-05:00

In this months Bicycling magazine there was an article about how riding in bad weather can be beautiful. This past weekend was finally warm enough to go out for a ride. I took my camera with me hoping to capture the beauty of the winter landscape.

The truth is that the landscape is pretty desolate in the winter. The farms are all plowed and empty, the trees are leafless, and the roads are filled with salt and sand. There really isn't a lot of beauty out there. I did get a decent pictures of some trees along the Millstone river but this picture and the rest of the landscape would be a lot nicer in the summer. So although I enjoyed getting out on the road this past weekend after a few weeks of being stuck inside. I really didn't see anything I would call beautiful.

Now its getting Cold!

2009-01-17T10:03:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I posted because I really have nothing to say. It just been too cold to ride or even go out and take pictures. I was happy a couple of weeks ago to get out for a few hour on the road. It was 35 degrees with no wind so it was cold but ridable. The last couple of weeks have been low 20s so I haven't even considered riding.

This morning it was in the SINGLE digit, meaning it was actually 1 degree. I have skied in tempertures this low and its not fun even if your dressed for it. I can't image trying to bike in it.

I have been watching the Hill Slug Chronicles with some envy as it seems that even in this cold weather they are riding and having some fun. I don't have the cold weather gear or mountain bike to join them but if the cold weather continues to keep me off the road I may consider it.

Should I Really Ride in this Weather?

2008-12-30T20:29:00.000-05:00

Click Here for More Pictures

As fall turns to winter and the days get shorter and colder we bikers are always looking for weather good enough to ride in. We each have some predefined temperatures and conditions that need to be meet before we ride. But as weeks go by and the weather doesn't let us ride we tend to relax our conditions take any chance we get to ride.

December has been colder and windier than normal and I have only been able to get out a couple of times. I don't go out if the temperature is below 35 degrees especially if it is windy. This pass weekend right after Christmas we had a couple of days with record warmth so it was a no brainer to go out this past Sunday when the temperature was 65. Yes the roads were wet and there was a steady 15mph wind gusting to 25 but you don't get many 65 degree days in the winter so deal with the wet and the wind and enjoy a warm ride.

This pass Tuesday was a much harder decision. I was off from work and it was 40 degrees and sunny this usually means I'm going for a ride. The problem was the wind. The long range forecast had the winds between 10 and 15mph but on Tuesday the winds turn out being forecast to be 20 to 25 mph with gust to 40mph. The people that were going to join me on the ride starting dropping out and questioning if going for a ride was really a good idea. They were right of course riding in this kind of wind is stupid but I went any way mostly because I would rather ride in this wind than sit at home on a sunny day and regret not riding.

Luckily Mike B was stupid enough to join me. Chris and Mike M bailed and did some wet mountain biking instead. So as Mike said there were three of us on the ride (Me, Mike and the WIND). We ended up going to the canal and back. The wind was bad but manageable. Our speed was slow but it ended up being a steady wind and the gusts weren't too bad. The worst part was just getting the boat house. Even on a good day riding into the park from Old Trenton Road requires going through that bizarre wind vortex on park road heading to the boat house. Today the vortex almost blew me off the road a few times.

I ended up with just over 50 miles and was really tired at the end. We got some tail winds at the end of the ride but it really didn't feel that good. I don't regret going out in these conditions but I accept the fact that it really wasn't the smartest decision that I have made. This had made me realized, again, that I am addicted to biking and will go against logic and reason in order to get my fix of riding.

Tucker's Island Lighthouse

2008-12-14T09:17:00.000-05:00

Click Here for More Pictures

New Jersey Bike Map lists 15 different lighthouses in New Jersey. I have visited at least 10 of them during my bike rides but there are still a few I haven't seen.

On Saturday, during a trip with my wife, I visited one I haven't been to yet, The Tucker's Island Lighthouse. It's on Route 9 in Tuckerton which is about 30 miles north of Atlantic City. Click here for a picture of the lighthouse.

The actual lighthouse is more house than light. If somebody hadn't told me is was a lighthouse I won't have known it. It also seem to be a strange place for a lighthouse because its at least two miles from the ocean. The truth is that the Tucker's Island Lighthouse that is on Route 9 is a recreation of the original one which was actually located 6 miles east of the current one. The original one was destroyed, in 1927, by erosion as the sea slowly took the island back piece by piece.

Tucker's Island no longer exists today and the area that is now Tuckerton is mainly low lying wetlands bordering the ocean. There is a lot of marinas around here and its suppose to be a good place for fishing, clamming and crabbing.

After the visit to the lighthouse we took a ride to the ocean just to look around. There wasn't much to see especially since it's the off season but the dock where we parked had a nice view of the ocean and there were a lot of seagulls. Seagulls are basically pigeons that live by the ocean and aren't the prettiest of birds but if you get them in the right setting it makes a good picture. I had my camera with me so I took a lot of pictures and ended up with a few good ones.

On our way back home we stopped at Smithville which is about 10 miles south of Tuckerton. I rode past Smithville last year as part of my Basto River Cruise. This time I got a chance to walk around Smithville and had a really good lunch at the Smithville inn. There is a small lake that the village surrounds. It the summer the lake is filled with people in paddle boats but in the winter it was empty except for a few very strange ducks. These ducks move there necks as they paddle in a really strange way. There is no way to describe it so take a look at the video here.

Pushing Through the Cold Weather

2008-11-20T20:42:00.000-05:00

The weather this time of year makes it harder to enjoy a bike ride. I use to be mostly a fair weather rider and not bother going out if the temperature was below 50 degrees. Last year was a warm winter and I ended up riding most of the winter. This involved riding in colder weather than I usually ride it. It was not always fun and some times I'm not sure I really enjoyed it but I learned how to ride in the cold with out getting too cold. I still won't ride when the weather gets below 35 especially if it is windy but I am hoping for enough warm days to get a few rides a month during this winter.

This past weekend was Thanksgiving weekend. I ended up riding on Friday which was in the low 40s. I put together an adhoc ride with Herb, Bruce, and Mary. We made did a Mendokas run which ended up being around 45 miles. At Mendokas I got something I hadn't seen before called ButterCrunch which was a crumb cake wrapped in a danish baked in deliciousness. It was the best thing I ever had there.

It was a little cold at the start of the ride but it warmed up towards the end. The worst part was heading back into Cranbury where we hit a nasty head wind. It was a tough 5 miles but after that the it wasn't too bad. I plan to continue to push my limits as the weather gets cooler. For those interested in riding with me just keep watching the blog and I will try to post the time and place where the ride will start. We usually start somewhere around East Windsor or Cranbury. During the winter we usually start around 11 am and do between 30 and 40 miles. It's usually not as fun as the summer rides but its a lot better than not riding.

Sourland Scenic Ramble

2008-11-05T19:52:00.000-05:00

This past weekend I actually had a couple of good rides. I was off on Friday so I ended up on Dennis's ride out of Etra park. Even though the roads where wet he had a good crowd, 9 people. It was relatively warm but the roads were very wet and it misted a little while riding so it was a little messy. It was fun riding with Dennis, George, and a few of the others I haven't seen in a while. I felt a little younger on this ride since the average age was probably in the mid 60s. Even though these guys are a little past their prime they can still move along at a good pace.

We ended up going to Freehold and back. Herb and I split off from the group at the rest stop to put in a few more miles. We ended up going through Turkey Swamp and by the time we got home we had almost 55 miles in. It was a good ride but the wet roads really made a messy of the bike so I ended up spending a good 2o mins cleaning it up after I got home.

Saturday's rain made it too messy to do my Sourlands ride so I ended up doing it on Sunday 11/9. I ended up doing the ride with just Herb and Mike M. It was a little cold with a stiff west wind but it was sunny so riding was pretty comfortable. We headed over the Sourlands the easy way up Hollow Rd then down Lindberg. From there I zig zaged around some of the farms and rivers in the area. Although the we are past the peak foliage there were still some nice colors to see.

We eventually made it to Stanton and enjoyed a chocolate cheese cake muffin. From there we headed back around the top of the Sourlands so there was no real climbing involved. We also had a tail wind some of the time which made the ride back a little easier then the ride out. It was a good ride I just wish a few more people had shown up. I probably won't be doing rides out this way until the spring since I usually tend to say closer to home during the winter months. I did not put any rides in the book for December but instead will use email and the blog to organize rides when the weather is warm enough.

It's Getting Cold Outside

2008-10-28T21:31:00.000-04:00

Click Here for more Fall Foliage Pictures

It's that time of year when the riding season is winding down. Even though we haven't changed the clock yet it's already too dark to ride at night. It's also starting to get cold.

I don't have a hard limit of what type of cold weather that I will ride in but once it gets down around 35 or 40 degrees I have second thoughts about going for a ride.

We have been relatively lucky so far on the weekends. A couple of weeks ago I had a ride out of Etra Park. It was about 45 at the start and didn't get much about 55 but the Sun made it feel a little warmer than it was. We did the coffee run to New Egypt which ended up being a nice ride except for the wind on the way back.

I was very busy this past weekend and didn't have time to organize or join one of the club rides so I ended up just going out on my own for a quick 50 miles on Sunday. Although it gets a little lonely after about 30 miles I do enjoy the occasional long ride by myself. I don't have to worry about dropping people or looking like I know where I'm going. I'm free to get lost at my own pace and just enjoy some solitude on the bike. Sunday started out a little cold with wet road from the night before but as the morning when on the roads dried out and it ended up close to 60.

The foliage is close to peak now so I took the opportunity to take some pictures to capture the colors. No picture can really do justice to the scenery but I keep trying any way.

Even though I was riding by myself I almost always run into other riders. I ran into a couple groups of people and road with them for 5 and 6 miles each. It's fun trading stories with strangers and sharing the road for a few miles.

Although we are closing in on winter I will continue to try to get out on weekends when I can. I have a couple of rides in the book for November as long as the weather is good. After I will just do ad hoc rides when the weather is warm enough.

Fall Foliage

2008-10-14T21:17:00.000-04:00

Sunday was one of those days when things just come together to create a great ride. Laura had a ride in the book around hills of Pluckemin to try and catch some fall colors but it is always hard to tell a month ahead of time how things are going to be on that day. The last time I did this ride, in the spring, the weather was cool, damp and cloudy so climbing the hills were just all work without the scenic vistas.

This time the weather a little cool but sunny and the leaves were just starting to turn. The views were great and I didn't mind the climbs as much this time. The ride would have been perfect if I had actually remembered to put fresh batteries in my camera. The first time I went to take a shot nothing happen and I realized that there would be no photos for this ride. I did take a few shots with my cell phone but the quality isn't great. Laura managed to get some good photos with her phone and Glen actually had a real camera with him that worked. You can see all their photos here and here.

I actually didn't mind that much that my camera wasn't working. It let me just relax and enjoy the views. Laura lead us on a nice route. I haven't been in this area much but there are some nice roads around here and I definitely need to come back and do some more exploring.

Belleplain Century

2008-10-05T12:49:00.001-04:00

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Last year while working on the book I tried to do a lot of different bike events all over the state to find the best roads in each area. One of the events that I was unable to do was the Belleplain Fall Century because it was cancel last year.

So this year when October rolled around I was happy to see that the ride was going to be run this year. I managed to convince Laura, Mike, and Cheryl to join me. Since the start of the ride was over 2 hours away we decided to go down the night before to a hotel close to the start.

Friday night we got a late start because nobody could get off work early. We meet in Allentown and ate at a decent Italian restaurant in the middle of town. From there we just headed down 539 to the parkway and straight to the hotel. It was almost 10pm before we got there so after checking in we headed to our rooms and went to bed.

The next morning got up early because we want to be at the ride at 7:30am. Last night in normal cloths I wasn't sure I actually knew these people but this morning with everybody is dressed to ride they are looking a lot more familiar. I tell them "Now I know who the hell you people are".

It's a quick 20 minute ride to Belleplain State park where the ride begins. There is a little confusion to where the ride actually starts since the park is big and there are no signs to where the event is. We end up following some other cars and find the starting point. Its colder than I thought it would be but the sun it out so I know it will warm up.

We end up starting around 8am and go past a Lake Nummy. There is some a mist going across the lake so I stop to take a couple of pictures. We get a little confused with the directions out of the park. The arrows are hand painted and look more like the markings the gas company puts on the road before they are about to dig it up. The arrows have the number 12 after them which after some discussion we determine means loop 1 & 2 for the two different loops for the morning ride.

The Belleplain Fall Century is a little different than other clubs rides. Instead of having a full 100 mile course they have 2 50 mile loops. They also have a 35 and 28 mile loop. This reduces the number of rest stops and the support they need on the course. For the morning there are 2 loops a 50 mile and 35 mile loop.

The first 50 mile loop goes out to the the East Point Lighthouse on the Delaware Bay. It's one of the few distinguishing features in this part of NJ. The ride out to the lighthouse is nice. The roads are flat and there is no real traffic. This area is mostly pine lands, a little marshland and some scattered farms including some horse farms.

To conserve energy we road in a loose pace line. Laura keep track of lead time and yelled out when it was time for the leader to peel off. This really helped keep us moving along at a good pace with out getting tired.

The lighthouse is on a road that dead ends into the Delaware Bay. There are some houses here probably for people who like to fish. They look like part time vacation homes. We spend some time looking around and take a detour down a packed sand road to see the actual lighthouse. For here we just head on back out along the course.

At mile 37 we stop at a Wawa for a break. Unlike most club events this ride does not provide any support along the course. They also don't include any notes on the queue sheet about where would be a good place to stop. Luckily I know the area a little and with my Wawa radar on I managed to find a Wawa that was just about a 1/4 mile off the course.

After the break it was 18 miles back through some of the pine lands of the Belleplain State Forrest. There wasn't much to see but pines for many miles. This area is flat, level, no change of elevation, horizontal, smooth, devoid of hills, can see a stop light 2 miles ahead FLAT. After 8 miles on the same road with no change of scenery and no elevation change Mike made the comment that "The only thing that changed in the last 8 miles was my odometer". The other thing that make this area a little monotonous to ride is the roads are straight in fact they usually have rumble strips at the end of a road to wake up or warn drivers that the road is about to end.

After 50 miles we were back at the stop. We shed some of our warm cloths. Chowed down on some of the available food and then headed back out. I was feeling more tired than I should at 50 miles which was strange since this is an easy ride. The one plus was that I was drinking correctly. I sometimes have a problem getting enough water into my system during long rides so for today's ride I brought along a bottle of pure Gatoraide along with my camelback which is filled with water. Drinking the Gatoraide as I was riding seem really help me keep hydrated correctly.

The second 50 miles ended up going east of the Belleplain State forest. I don't know this area really well but the arrows seemed to be well marked so it was easy to follow. There wasn't much to see on this loop except more pine lands and flat roads. At 75 miles we found another Wawa to stop at and took an extended break because Laura and Cheryl were getting tired. Cheryl was planning on just doing the first loop but after 10 miles on the second 50 miles loop she realized that she forgot to stop.

After the extended rest everybody was feeling better in fact it has hard to keep up with Laura for the first few miles. We stopped one more time at an actual rest stop that the club had set up which was just a bunch of cars by the side of the road. The second 50 mile loop was a little boring and I was glad when we finally pulled in to the park. I think we ended up going 107 miles at 16.3 which was a good sensible pace. I actually felt pretty good at the end and think I actually got stronger in the last 20 miles.

After the ride we cleaned up a little (There was actually a shower in the bathrooms at the park which we made use of) and headed out for dinner. We ended up in Cape May. By the time we got there it was around sunset so we headed to Sunset beach. I got a couple of good pictures of the sunset. Once the sun set we found a little restaurant on the way out of town and had a good meal.

By the time we finished dinner it was about 8pm and so I didn't get home until around 10pm. It was a long day but it was a lot of fun. If I did it again I would like to make it a long weekend and spend 3 or 4 days in the area.

Looking for the Perfect Photo

2008-09-24T20:51:00.000-04:00

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Since I started taking pictures on rides as part of writing Road Biking New Jersey I have learned how hard it is to take good pictures and have a greater appreciation for the work it takes to use a camera to capture a moment in time.

Over the past 2 years the I have taken almost 3000 pictures and actual got a few ones worth keeping. Most of my better photographs happen by luck so by taking a lot of pictures I increase my chances of getting a good photograph.

Taking photographs on a regular basis has given me the desire to become better photographer. I have definitely gotten better over the last two years but I still don't understand the real aspect of composition, lighting and a lot of other factor that can make a snapshot become a photograph that you want look at more than once.

Over this summer I had two really good photographic days while not on a bike. The first was at Thunder over the Boardwalk which is an airshow in Atlantic City. It was a bright sunny cloudless day and I got a lot of good photographic. Check them out. With the sun so bright the shutter speed was fast so I was able to capture the action with good clarity.

The second great photographic day was on my recent vacation to Cape Cod and Block Island. It was again another good weather day and I managed to get some great sunrise and sunset photos as well as some great scenic shots of Block Island. You can see the full set of photos here

This past weekend I went along on Mike's ride out of Rocky Hill. We road through the Sourlands with is always picturesque. I managed to take some photos. I got a couple of nice one of the canal early in the morning but else nothing really great. It was a nice ride. We took the northern route around the top of the Sourlands and then through Neshanic Station and ended up on Rainbow Road. Except for a small steep hill this is a nice road. I know Laura hates this road so I know as she reads this she will be glad that she wasn't on this ride. One the way back to Rocky Hill we passed by some farmland where the grass was florescent green. I joked it was probably a new food source Solent Green (Yes, I know Solent Green is people)

When we got back to the parking lot I kept going and put on another 8 miles because I wanted to do a few more miles and do a little climbing.

Taking photos is now part of going for a bike ride. I am hoping for a colorful fall so I can get some good pictures of the fall foliage

Belmar and Back

2008-09-16T21:08:00.000-04:00

This week was another ride to Belmar and back. I lead this ride the third weekend of Sept every year. This is when the weather is still warm but most of the crowds have left the beach so there is less traffic. Since this ride is late in the season I take the longer route to Belmar and the ride usually ends up being around 80 miles. This is always a fun ride and I always look forward to doing it.

Although the roads were wet at the start and the weather had a 30% chance of rain I still had good group of 7 people. The ride started from Cranbury so we headed out toward Federal Rd. We had to make a detour because the bridge on Federal Rd was under constructions and impassable. Luckily there are a lot of different ways to Belmar. With George leading and pushing the pace we make it quickly to Farmingdale. On the way we went around the Manasquan reservoir because there are some nice scenic views along the way.

George headed home after a stop in Farmingdale and the rest of us continued on the long way to Belmar pass Allaire state park and through Sea Girt before ending up on the beach in Belmar. The weather had gotten better as the day progressed so by the time we got to the beach the sun was out and it was getting humid.

The rest stop in Belmar by 16th street is always inviting with outdoor tables, a lot of places to get food, and plenty of activity to watch it is easily a place you can be temped to spend the rest of the afternoon.

The wind was lite so the ride back from Belmar wasn't too bad and we maintain a good pace. We had a couple of flat tires right out of Belmar but that is just par for the course on a long ride.

It was getting a little hot and humid by the end of the ride so but still wasn't too bad. We ended up with 82 miles even with the detour at the beginning and got back around 2:30pm. Joe ended up doing another 18 miles, with Mary, so he could say he did a century.

Although I have been to Belmar 3 times this year I still enjoyed the ride and may do another shorter one next month if the weather holds out.

Messy, Hilly but Fun

2008-08-31T20:45:00.000-04:00

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The area around Frenchtown is a nice place to ride as long as you don't mind a few hills. After accidently leading the Bloomsbury Boogie a couple of months ago I wanted to lead another ride in this area and try to improve the route a little.

Although the weather had been perfect most of the week we had some rain late Friday and overcast skys on Saturday so riding was a little messy. Only 3 other people showed up at the starting point so it was a small group. I found out later that I actually missed a few other people who were in the other parking lot. They eventually caught up and passed us.

We headed up along the Delaware for about 15 miles. Mike ended up getting a flat. After changing the tube and putting some air in the tire using my pump he tried to finish pressuizing the tube with a cartaridge. KA-POW!!!! went the tire about a second before I was about the say "I think you got enough air the tire." My ears were ringing for a few minutes while Mike changed the tube again. This time we just used the pump to put air in the tire.

After leaving the Delaware we starting to do some climbing. There were a number of 100+ foot hills we climbed as we headed for Stewardsville. After we got through Stewardsville I tried out some new roads on the way to Bloomsbury. These turned out to be some nice roads with good views of the surrounding mountains. It was still cloudy so the pictures didn't come out too good.

This is a very rural area of the state and once you get on the back roads you have them mostly to yourselves. This would be a great place to dump a body... err I mean you want to make sure you always ride with a group around here because it could days for somebody to find you if you fell and got hurt.

After 37 miles we made it to Bloomsbury for a break at the General Store then it was time for one big more hill as we headed back towards Frenchtown. Getting out of Bloomsbury to Tunnel Rd is a little ugly because you have to go on Rt 173 for a couple of miles. Its right off of 78 so it's your usual gas station, truck stop mess.

Climbing Tunnel Rd was easier this time around because the weather was a little cooler. It was another fun ride down Sweet Hollow then we rode along to ridge back to Frenchtown. Although the ridge is flatter than the surrounding hills there are still a number of 50 to 100 + foot rollers that make you realize how tired you are. We ended up on Stamets and Kappus with some nice down hills.

It ended up being a nice 55 mile ride which was enough According to Howie, with his GPS, we did about 3000 feet of climbing and my legs agreed that is was a hilly ride.

Round Valley and Great Weather

2008-08-26T21:11:00.001-04:00

It has been a couple of weeks since I posted a message, even though I have had a couple of spectacular bike rides. Besides riding, my weekends have been filled with working on some map updates for my book. Eight months after submitting the final manuscript I finally got assigned an editor at Falcon press and the book is moving forward again. I spent about 35 hours total getting the maps in the right format. The book is now getting copy edited. I also got a firm date of when the book will be published (April 14 2009). It's even listed on amazon now. Check it out

Although working on the book is eating up most of my spare time I have not cut back on my riding especially with the perfect weather that we have been having.

On Aug 16th I tagged alone on the first part of a hilly ride in and around Round Valley. We started in Kingston by the canal and headed to Round Valley. I left the group after going through the reservoir. I thought they were going to do some real hills but they ended up taking it easy. The weather was perfect. Mid 70s low humidity and clear. The last few times I have been past Round Valley I could barely see the other side of the reservoir. This time I could see for miles. I ended up with a some good pictures. Even though I left the group to keep the ride short on the way back I keep adding a few miles here and there so I could keep enjoying the good weather and nice views. I ended up with almost 70 miles and still felt great at the end. It was one of the more enjoyable rides of the year.

On Aug 23 it was another picture perfect day. I didn't have any ride planned but sent out some email and put together an ad hoc ride out of Bordentown. After the hills last week I wanted a mostly flat ride so we headed down to the Pine Barrens and back. I combine parts of my Medford Lakes, Pine Barren and Basic Training ride from the book to come up with a nice 68 mile ride. The weather was great, the roads were quiet and I had a good group of people. It was as close to a perfect ride as you can get. We also stopped again at the bakery just south of Smithville which is a great stop. This stop made up for our first stop at a Wawa where the clientele were a mix of long hair pony tail monster truck guys and fat tattoo ladies.

The perfect weather of the past couple of week can't last much longer I know that it will be only a matter of time before the sky starts rain frogs or I end up having to ride through some thunder snow storms(again) but I will continue to enjoy the good weather while it lasts.

Belmar, Rain and the Spoke Wrench

2008-08-10T20:52:00.000-04:00

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If you are looking for a flat fun ride Belmar and back is hard to beat. Although I was trying to orgainize a ride to Schooley's Mountain things didn't work out and I ended up joining the Joe's on an adhoc ride to Belmar from Etra Park on Sunday. Etra Park is only 5 miles from my house so I rode to the start.

Even though it is the beginning of August it was 58 when I left the house and I actually considered a jacket. It was a cold ride over to the park but once I got there I was fully warmed up. The Joe's had a good crowd. Laura and Mike actually rode over from Lawrence because they wanted to do yet another century.

After and couple of anouncements from Joe and an FU from Laura we started the ride. There is no one best way to get to Belmar and back so each ride we do is a little different depending on who is leading and how many miles you want to do.

Once it warmed up it was really a beautiful day. We cruised quickly through the usually roads past Farmingdale and made it to Belmar in under 2 hours. We stopped at the usual spot in Belmar just across from the beach. This is a great place for a break especially on a nice summer day. I usually do my Belmar ride after Labor day so it was nice to see be here during the summer.

After the break we headed back. Although the weather was still nice we could see some clouds approching. Approching Rt 35 Linda broke a spoke. We stopped on the other side to access the damage. We couldn't get the broken spoke off so we tapped it to the one next to it. Because of the broken spoke the wheel was out of true and rubbing the brake. I used a spoke wrench to true it up. It took some trial and error to figure out which way to turn it the spokes but after a few tries I got the wheel true enough to stop it from rubbing. I highly recommend everybody carry a spoken wrench because if you can't true a wheel after breaking a spoke the only way you are going to get home is to have somebody pick you up.

After the repair we continue our way back going pass Allaire state park and on to Freehold. We stopped in Freehold for a quick stop. By this time the skies were really dark and it started to rain. I called my wife to get a weather update. We were hoping it would be a quick storm that would pass but my wife said the radar showed a large area of rain would probably last for hours.

We pressed one into the rain and headed back the quickest way we could. We had a little over 10 miles to go. We ended up spliting up a little as everybody did their best speed to get back. I stayed back a little to make sure we everybody made it back.

It rained off and on as we made our way back and it really wasn't too bad. After we got back to Etra Park I continued on with Laura and Mike back home. The rain got a little worst and there were a couple of claps of thunder and lighting. I asked Laura and Mike if they wanted a ride home but they seemed set to complete their century no matter the weather.

Although the ride ended in bad weather I don't regret going on the ride. It was a good 78 mile ride for me but the rain ended my luck with the weather and put a dent in my rain karma.

The Scenic Sourland Cruise

2008-07-26T20:50:00.000-04:00

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With quiet roads and scenic vistas the Sourlands is one of the nicest place to ride a bike, as long as you don't mind a few hills. Although there are a couple of tough hills in the Sourlands most are in the 100 to 200 ft range and not too bad if you have done a little hill training.

My ride this week started by the canal in Rocky Hill and went to Sergeantsville and back. At this point in the season most people are in good shape so I decided to put some of the tougher hills on the route.

I had a good crowd (9 people). Henry and Irene were there which I was happy to see. They are a lot of fund to ride with. They had just gotten back from Anchor House ride so it was good to catch up with them.

From the canal we zig zaged north west for about 7 miles before starting the climb over the Sourlands. The first hill was Dutchtown Zion which is one of the hardest hills in the area. Its a 380 ft climb that gets steeper at the end so its was a rude way to start the ride. I try to do this hill once or twice a year just to see how I'm climbing. Although the hills last week to Merrill Creek were tougher I was riding my Miyata with a triple then. This week I was riding my Feather which is a lighter much better bike but doesn't have the low gears my Miyata does.

I learned two things climbing Dutchtown Zion this year. First my max heart rate is 190. Second I am in pretty good climbing shape this year. Although I maxed my heart rate out it recovered quickly and I felt pretty good when I got to the top.

A couple of years ago I did this hill and went Anaerobic (meaning I pushed to hard for too long). When you go anaerobic you are basically using more energy than your body can produce. You can only do this for so long before your body shuts down and you have to stop. It's good to go Anaerobic for short periods to help improve performance and strength. This is the idea behind interval training. But if you stay Anaerobic for too long you are going pay for it. When I went Anaerobic on Dutchtown Zion a few years ago, I made it to the top but had to rest for about 10 mins before I could continue. Since then I have learn how to train better so this doesn't happen again.

From Dutchtown Zion we made our way to Hollow then grinded our way up the Sourlands. Once we got to top will followed the ridge west toward Mt Airy. The weather was nice so I stopped to take a few pictures along the way.

After going through Mt Airy I took the long way up the the next hill towards Sergeantsville to explore a few new roads. This ended up being a little hillier than I thought but it wasn't too bad. Instead of going directly to Sergentville for a rest here I decided to take a detour down to the Covered Bridge because I hadn't been there this year yet and it was only a few mile detour.

After 31 miles we made it to Sergeantsville for a much deserved rest stop. This is one of the nicest places to stop for a break. They are very friendly to bikers and have good food (including dumplings and spring rolls). I opted for a Blueberry muffin because I don't think dumplings would sit well for the next 20 miles.

From Sergeantsville we made our way to Dunkard Church which is a pretty relatively flat road. Henry and Irene decided to drop off the ride in order to go at a more relaxed pace. I gave them the queue sheet so they won't get lost. When we turned off Wertzville Artie and Marty decided to take the shorter way back so we were down to five.

As we continued along we meet up with a biker traveling from Georgia to Connecticut. He asked about a couple of roads so I gave him the NJ bike maps I had with me. The last big climb of the ride was Lindberg which is never fun. After that it was some well deserved downhills and then some mostly flat miles to get back to the start. We ended up with about 55 miles.

Merrill Creek 2008

2008-07-20T10:42:00.000-04:00

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Merrill Creek is a reservoir in north western Warren County. This area is a beautiful place to ride as long as you don't mind climbing some hills. When I say hills I'm not talking about little 100 or 200 ft climbs I'm talking 400, 500 and 600 ft climbs. Michael showed me this route last year and really enjoyed it which is why it made the book. This is a challenging ride that starts off deceptivly easy.

We start off from Frenchtown and headed to Milford. From there we rode along the river up to Rieglesville. Along the way we saw the Anchor house riders coming the other way on the last day of their trip. We managed to pick out a lot of people we knew including Henry, Irene, Bob, Barbara, and a few others.

We left the river by Creek Rd and started a little climbing. We had a little accident at the corner of 519 and Municipal when one of the riders fell while trying to turn around after missing the turn. Other than a little road rash he was non the worst for were. Luckly the owner of the house on the corner drove by just after the fall and helped put a bandage on his elbow to cover the wound.

We continue on toward Stewardville and took a good look at the top of the hill where Merrill Creek is. After passing through Stewardville we finally reached the first serious climb Montana Rd. The route seems deceptively easy at the start because we start along the river which is relatively flat and even when we start heading into the hills they are mostly short 100 ft climbs. When you get to Montana Rd which is the road that takes you up to Merrill Creek you realize that this is going to be a challenge.

The climb up Montana is really not too bad its just long. The road climbs 620 in just under two miles. The grade is mostly constant except for a few little bumps. When I climbed this hill last year I had to stop for a few minutes about halfway up because my heart rate was maxed out and I needed a rest. This and a couple of other tough hills I did last year made me realize that I could use a little more aerobic training. I have started doing interval training during the week this year and I am happy to report that I felt much better on the climb up Montana even though the weather was hotter. I did stop about half way up again but this was to take pictures not because I needed too. A number of other people stopped along the climb also which is the smart thing to do. Long times are tough even if they aren't really steep. Even if you are in a comfortable gear climbing a hill your heart rate is going to creep up and eventually max out (Unless you are a highly train professional rider). The smart thing to do is to stop for a few minutes and let it recover because if you push too hard you just going to end up feeling sick and maybe puking you guts out. I know this from expericence.

Once we go to the top we regrouped and rode over to the Merrill Creek Reservior. Last year when I did the ride we didn't stop at the reservoir so I wanted to go back this year to get some pictures.

The reservoir has a good visitors center with a good view of the Merrill Creek. We stopped for about 15mins. I took a few pictures and took a look around the visitor center. Its small but has some nice exhibits on the animals in the area. The best thing about the visitors center is that it is air conditoned which felt really good after climbing the hill in the heat.

After our brief stop at the visitors center we headed back out along the ridge and eventually down the moutain. I got a couple of good pictures along the ridge and then had a really good time going down the mountain. It's 640ft of downhill. It's intense but fun. Of course half a mile ahead was another 350ft + climb that surprised me last year. This year I was knew what to expect so it wasn't as bad.

We then started heading to Bloomsbury over some "Rollers". Michael has a slighly optimistic definition of rollers because some of them required me to use the small chain ring of my triple to get up them. The views are nice in this area and I manage to take some more nice pictures.

In Bloomsbury we made a stop a the usual general store. It was a much needed rest since it was really starting to get hot. I really needed some gatoraid because I knew there was one more major climb coming and I didn't want to cramp.

There are many ways out of Bloomsbury most of them up hill. We chose to go up Tunnel Rd. Although its a 500 ft climb its probably the easiest 500 ft climb you can do since it is 2.5 miles long. It is still a tough climb mentally and physiclly because it just never seems to end. I was really glad when I got to the top because I was starting to get overheated and needed break. At this point between the heat and climbing most of us were pretty beat.

The payoff for climbing Tunnel is that you get to go down Sweet Hollow one of the best downhills in NJ. Its a three miles of shaded scenic costing that made up for some of the climbing.

Although the ride had not reached Death March status yet it was still pretty hot and we all wanted to take the shortest way back at this point. This lead to our decision to take Javes Rd even though it said the bridge was out. I had been on Javes about a month ago and the bridge was closed but still passable. This time when we got to the bridge it was in the middle of being demolished and not passable. Because nobody wanted to climb back up Javes we decided to ford the river which is pretty shallow. It wasn't too hard and the cool water felt good on the feet.

Javes got us to the town of Milford and then it was an easy 5 mile ride along the river back to Frenchtown. The ride ended up being around 59 miles. Its a tough ride but a really good route so I'm glad I did it. I will be doing a similar ride at the end of August because I enjoy this area. I just hope the weather is a little cooler.

Burlington County Cruise

2008-07-17T21:19:00.000-04:00

On 7/12 I had a ride in the book for a 50 - 60 mile ride through Burlington County. I ended up with a pretty big group, 12 people, despite the fact that Laura, Mike, and Cheryl weren't there because they were doing the MS ride the next day.

Leading a group of more than 5 or 6 people can be a little challenging but I'm lucky because I have a good core group of people that ride with me. They are all experienced riders with good road manner. They make leading easy and fun because they help me keep the group in line.

Riding well in a group means having good communication. It's important that each member in the group call out hazards and cars up and back. This insures that there are no surprises.

The other part of riding well in a group is paying attention and not doing anything stupid. Although most bikers worry about getting hit by a car, the truth is are that most bike accidents are caused by other bikers or hazards on the road.

For the first time in the last few weeks weather wasn't a problem. There wasn't any chance of rain and it wasn't going to be opressively hot. We started out from Bordentown and headed east through Crosswicks and on to Walnford and Hill Rd. Hill Road is a series of 7 little hills and after the first one its really not too bad. After a few more little hills we made our way through Cookstown and the backside of Fort Dix and then into Browns Mill.

We had a quickstop at the Wawa at about 22 miles and then continued on through the top of the Pine Barrens and pass some nice farmlands. The roads in the area are nice and flat and the riding is easy. This is a pretty area to ride through although its hard to capture a picture that does it justice.

Our second stop was a an unplaned stop at a bakery that I forgot was on the route. Its on Smithville Rd just north of Woodlane. Its a great stop and we ended up trading some good stories with some other bikers.

From the second stop if was about 18 miles back to the start and with a tailwind it was an easy ride. Lisa and Alex split off at Chesterfield. They had ridden in from Plainsboro so they could make the ride a century.

We ended up with 58 miles at a 17 mph. All is was a big group it ended being a very orgainized and fun ride.

Anti All Pace Ride

2008-06-28T22:23:00.001-04:00

Weathermen suck. If they are lucky they get the forecast right 50% of the time which is probably more luck than skill. Don't even get me started on the accuracy of long range forecasts which are a joke. Still when I'm planning a ride I look at the weather forecast anyway just in case it might be right. For this July 4th I decided to put together my own ride instead of doing the clubs All Paces ride because the rides are getting too large and unorganized and I wanted to do some different roads.

I was encouraged by the weather forecasts for the 4th because all of them said that any rain would be in the late afternoon. So I was a little mad at the weathermen when I woke up and saw dark clouds covering the sky. The radar shows approaching rain. In fact it showed rain over my house so I'm thinking I'm going to have to cancel the ride. Then I look out the window and it's not raining and the roads are dry. There's no rain so what do I do.

I get a call from Joe who wants to know whether the ride is on or not. I look at the radar again then look outside. The radar shows rain coming but it looks light and scattered. The roads are dry. I know I'll be pissed if I cancel the ride and then spend the morning looking out the window at dry roads that I could have been riding on. I tell Joe the ride is on. If it starts to rain we might get a little wet but it shouldn't be bad. This was the right decision because there was almost no rain and we ended up having a good ride. The moral of the story is that it is better to take a chance and get a little wet than to cancel a ride and be pissed if it doesn't rain.

I won't ride if it is definitely going to rain but I have become less likely to cancel a ride when there is only a chance of rain.

The ride started out of Etra park and the plan was to do a 50 loop to Farmingdale and back. I ended up with 8 people on the ride. The usual Hill Slug gang along with Herb and the Joes.

I had a nice surprised when Mike M brought out a cake and the group sang "Happy Birthday" to me. I'm not big on birthday celebrations but it was a really nice gesture from a group of people I really enjoy hanging around with.

From Etra we headed east taking the short way to Farmingdale. I wanted to get ahead of any rain coming hoping by the time we headed back it would be more scattered and we could pass through it quickly. The roads were really empty so riding was fun and we set a quick pace. We hit a few drops of rain here and there but it never really rained.

When we got to Farmingdale we tried to stop at the Bagel store but it was closed for the 4th so we ended up at the bakery.

On the way back from Farmingdale I took the scenic route around the Manasquan reservior. After we crossed Rt 9 we took Georgia Rd in to Turkey Swamp and kept cruising along at good pace. For the first time we actually saw two very large Turkeys at the end of Nomoco. I stopped to take a few pictures but none of them came out good.

From Turkey Swamp we headed through Millstone on Back Bone Hill and then back to the start. We ended up coming in at 17.2 mph and did just over 50 miles. Since the ride started at 8AM we were back by 11:30. It felt unusual to be done this early but it was a good way to spend my birthday.

Pine Barrens Metric

2008-06-28T21:11:00.000-04:00

After doing mostly hills for the pass few weekends it was a nice change of pace to head south through the Pine Barrens. This was a metric century that I had it the book. It turned out to be a popular ride. I got a number of emails and phone calls before the ride. This was a long ride on a hot day and although I try not to discourage people from coming on my rides I like to make sure the know terrain and speed that I plan to do. You don't want a rider to get in over their head and not be able to complete the ride.

I ended up having 9 people on the ride. It was most of the regular crowd plus a couple of new people, Lisa and Alex. This route was a combination of a Medford Lakes ride and a Pine Barrens ride that I did for the book last year. It started in Columbus just off 206 and headed mostly south towards Medford Lakes. On the way we passed Smithville a town that use to be an industrial village and produced woodworking machinery and high-wheel bicycles in the late 1800s. The land down here is mostly open farmland and is very pleasant to ride. We moved along at a good pace.

After going through the tip of Medford Lakes we headed out 532 which is a long 15 mile stretch that would bring us to Lebanon State forest. We stoppped at a little general store in Tabernacle. This is a popular place to stop for most of the bikers in the area and even though it was empty when we got there with in about 10 minutes a large group of bikers.

From the rest stop we continued on to through Chadworths to Lebanon State forest and got to ride through some real pinelands. Henry ended up having a flat along the way. Lisa wanted to observe to learn how to better change a tire so we gave her a lesson. Stopping to change the tire made me realize how hot it was starting to get.

We continued on and started to head back north from Chadworth. Just before we got to Browns Mill Alex had a flat so we demostarted how to change a flat again. At 50 miles we made our second rest stop in Browns Mill. From here is was mostly straight north back to the starting point. We ended up having to make a slight detour around Fort Dix that I hadden planned on but it really didn't any extra miles to the ride.

The ride ended up being 63 miles. We averaged about 17 mph which was a little better than I was expecting given the heat. This was a good group of people today nobody was pushing the pace and nobody was dragging. It was a good route and I really enjoyed the ride but by the end it was getting really hot and I'm glad it ended when it did.