It was suppose to be a towpath ride

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

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

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

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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

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

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

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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.