Scenic Rides

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The calendar I got for my office this year has scenic pictures of New Jersey. New Jersey has a bad reputation and is portrayed in movies and TV as a toxic waste dump run by organized crime. I will admit that there are parts of the state especially around Elizabeth and Newark airport that are really ugly and always smell bad. However there are a lot of beautiful places in NJ once you get away from the main highways.

January's calendar picture was a waterfall by Schooley's mountain. It was similar of the on I took at Duke Farms. I usually manage to take a few good pictures on each ride so I will try to post a least one a month to show the scenic parts of NJ.

Today I went to Pennypack Park. I try to go there once a year each winter because its a pretty place to ride. Its got a paved bike path and since it is designated a bike commuter route they actually plow it when it snows. This means when there is too much snow on the roads or trails you can still ride at Pennypack.

Today's ride was nice. We had about 4 inches of snow earlier in the week and not much of it had melted yet.  This meant we road through a mostly snow covered landscape next to the Pennypack Creek. There wasn't as much snow and ice as there was last year but it was still a cool place to ride and we stopped along the way for pictures. This year Laura came along with me or I guess I went with Laura since it was an official PFW ride although not one else showed up.

This year we went a little further down the trail and made it all the way to the Delaware river. The park by the Delaware has a nice view of the river but you have to pass by a prison and what we believe is a state run mental retirement home so its a bit of a strange place.

After a picture stop at the river we headed back to the car. It was 20 mile round trip and a good way to get out in this cold weather. Although I do enjoy these types of ride I am hoping the weather warms up soon so I can get back on the road. I guess we'll see what Punxsutawney Phil has to say. His prediction is as good as any weather man these days. 

I Have a Theme...

For the score of years that I have been riding it has come to my attention that there is a great inequality between those who can climb hills and those who avoid them. Some may say that this is due to genetics or socioeconomic factors. I reject this bias view and believe that all bikers are created equal and can rise to any heights they want.

Every year I have a goal that drives the type rides I do and how I train. A couple years ago my goal was to climb Mt Greylock, the highest point in Massachusetts. It turns out that I have been to most of the high points of the states that I have ridden in. This has given me an idea for this year. Not only do I want to go to the high point of New Jersey, again, but I also want to try to visit the high point of each county. There will probably be some counties like Hudson, Union and Essex where getting to the high point by bike would be inadvisable but we should be able to hit most of them.

This should make for some interesting rides. We will start with some of the lower and closer ones first then work our way up to High Point by the end of the summer. There will definitely be some trials and tough climbs along the way but if you join me on this march we shall over come the forces of gravity. Then you will be free at last, free at last to explore any road you want and not live in fear of any mountain


With apologies to Martin Luther King

Amen

Duke Farms

It was too cold this week to ride on the road and really not even warm enough to even go outside. However Sundays forecast looked to warm enough to try a mountain bike ride. I didn't feed like doing the canal path so I decided to go to Duke Farms and do some exploring. I posted the ride on the blog and sent out a email to the usual crew. When I got up on Sunday it was 17 degrees which was colder than I was expecting. Although Ron bailed because of the cold temperature Laura, Jim, Barry and Joe showed up.

It was 23 when we started the ride but at least there was no wind. I dressed as warm as I could an even switched to mittens. Once we got started I was warm enough that I didn't mind the riding. Duke Farms is an ecological preserve created by Doris Duke and now open to the public. It is 2700 acres of land by the Raritan river that has a lot in interesting features from the 7 main made lakes with numerous water falls as well as buildings and sculptures scattered around the property.

I didn't bother with my GPS because I didn't have the roads of the farm on it. So I relied on a map of the property. This meant having to take map out from time to time to figure out where we were and where to go. This also lead to a couple of wrong turns Still we manged to follow the path I had planned to see as much of the park as we could.

The first part of the ride was in and around the lakes and waterfalls then we rode around some of the buildings on the farm. One of the stops was the Orchid house which is a green house full of orchids. I thought it was a good place to go in and get warm but it turns out it was closed. We continued on through a few more places taking pictures along the way. You can check out Jim's Blog for more pictures.

By the time we got back to the parking lot we had some where between 8 and 9 miles. It was a long drive for such a short ride but it was better than sitting at home and not riding.  I also now know that Duke Farms is a pretty place to ride around so I will probably back in the spring when it is a lot warmer.

Bah Humbug

I haven't posted in a while because I haven't had much to say. I have keep riding and have been getting out on the weekends either to Larry's ride or a ride on my own. Its been a cold, windy and busy month so all the rides were short.

I'm not a big fan of the Christmas holidays since a lot of the meaning of the season is lost in over commercialization and stressful family situations (statistics show that heat attacks and depression increases dramatically during the holidays need I say more).

Our Christmas tradition is that we usually go to my in-laws for dinner on Christmas eve then to my nephews on Christmas day. Its usually a hectic couple of days and I'm always glad when it is over and I can get back to my normal life. This year however Christmas had a different flavor.

We did our usual Christmas eve with the in-laws any my wife's family where we went to dinner at a restaurant by them. Then dessert at their house before heading home. At around midnight my wife got hit my the first wave of food poisoning and I followed her at 3am. This was more than you run of the mill food poisoning. This was the epic horror movie type of poisoning where it was man versus food and food wins. My wife and I spent 2 full days projecting things out of us at an alarming rate. Its almost a week later and I'm just getting strong enough to be able to go out in public again.

My main regret is not missing any of the Christmas celebration but not being able to ride this past Friday or Saturday since they were the nicest days of the month.

By the way I have seen a number of ridiculous Christmas ornaments posted this year so just wanted to show one of the stupid ornaments that I have collected over the years. I'm a computer professional/geek which requires you to understand Star Trek at an expert level and I have a number of Star Trek themed ornaments. The pile of vomit that Spock is leaning over is an alien called a Horta and he is trying to mind meld with it so he can tell it not to kill any more.   What it has to do with Christmas and the season of giving I have no idea

Happy New Year. Hope to see you on the road soon.

The Frozen Bastard Ride

I didn't really expect a crowd since it was cold with possible snow flurries but they all showed up anyway. I had sent out an email late Friday to the usually suspects after trading some emails with Laura and Jim earlier in the week. I had to ride Saturday since I was busy on Sunday and I had decided to do the Lawrence Hopewell trail. I knew Laura would be coming since she was desperate for a ride after spending a couple weeks in England off the bike.

By Saturday morning I got replies from almost everybody and when I got to the starting point Dave, Joe, and Jim were already there. A few minutes later the other Jeff L surprised us by riding up followed by Laura who also road in about 5 minutes later.

With everybody showing up it felt like one of our normal summer rides expect for the fact that it was 31 degrees, we were all on mountain or cross bikes and we were riding through the woods on gravel instead of the roads.

The Lawrence Hopewell trail is well laid out trail and a good way to get some miles in the cold. Its a series of connected paved paths, gravel paths and roads that take you through Lawrence and Hopewell. You can see the trail map HERE.

We did a 20 mile loop starting at Princeton Pike just south of Province Line and then headed through Lawrenceville up to Rosedale Lake and Pennington before circling back through ETS. It was cold and didn't get much above freezing for the entire ride but once we got moving I was mostly warm.

Most of the trail is well maintained and it goes through a lot of the locale parks so it is somewhat scenic. The only issue is that the trail is a little mushy in areas and because of the recent snow and cold weather there was some ice we had to deal with.

Despite the cold and ice it was nice to have a ride with most of the regulars and hear them bitching and moaning about me about getting lost which I kinda did when we road around the roundabout at the hotel in ETS. I eventually got back on the trail and we made it back to the start where Laura distributed some chocolate from her trip. I don't plan to have any rides in the book for the winter but hopefully we can do some of these adhoc rides and get together as the weather permits.

Lug Nuts

The bicycle as we know it has been around for over 100 years and there are many interesting stories on how innovations occurred along the way. This Sunday I attended the Philly Bike Expo mostly to attend a seminar by Gary Helfrich on the history and theory of titanium frame building. For those of you not familiar with Gary he was one of the founders of Merlin Metalworks, the first company to build titanium frames. As a proud owner of a titanium bike(a Feather not a Merlin) I wanted to learn more about the history of the titanium bike.

I didn't know much about Gary before the seminar but it turns out he is a crazy mad scientist and a very entertaining speaker. He had a lot of great stories not only from his 10 years as a roadie for Aerosmith but from the insanity that ensues when starting a new business while trying to do something  that other more knowledgeable people had tried and failed. Although Gary did a lot of drinking and drugging along the way his passion for bike building and titanium made him the leading expert in both disciplines.  For a glimpse of his genius and crazyness you should check out this link. as it will give you a general idea of his story.

I really enjoyed both his talks. We also got to see the Bike Snob who I think is even more funny in person than on his blog. All this was besides the actual show itself which is a exposition of cool custom bikes along with many cool bike accessories and cloths. I have included a few pictures below but you can see more pictures on Jim's post.

The main difference between this years show and the one I attended a few years ago was that I saw a lot less lug construction and a lot more welds. I know some people have an almost pornographic attraction to lugs but I think welds can be as attractive if they are done right. And after understanding how difficult it is to do a titanium weld properly I have an even better appreciation of how good they look.

I was lucky enough to have Jim along with me as he is a titanium bike geek and didn't mind getting up for an early ride. We ended up getting to Philly at 7am and doing an hour an a half ride around the city and through the Wisahickon before riding to the show. On the way back we found some public art that you see below. All in all it was good day for a couple of bike geeks.

Missing Friends

I have met a lot of people while biking who I would call friends. I don't see them much out outside of riding with them because we all have our separate lives but when you ride with someone 4 or 5 hours week after week you get to know them pretty well. The social aspect of biking can be as beneficial as the physical part. I enjoy the people I bike with because they don't take life too seriously and when we ride together it is more about having fun than sitting in a paceline and averaging a certain speed.

That is why I look forward to the weekends when we usually get together. I usually ride on Saturday but this Saturday was a rain out so I headed to Cranbury on Sunday to ride with Winter Larry. I figured it would be a good ride because I had not seen Larry in a while and I knew a few other of my friends would be there. I was wrong of course.

The weather wasn't the best. It was in the mid 40s and the wind was blowing 20+ with gusts in the 30s but it was rideable. I suspected Larry might bail as he tends to do this when the weather is at the edge of riding. I'm not calling him a wimp but this is not the first time I showed up for a Larry ride and he wasn't there and it won't be the last.

There were 4 other people there waiting for Larry. Marc, Barry and a couple of other people I didn't really know. Since they were looking for a ride leader and I was looking for some bodies to block the wind I lead them on a loop up through Dayton, Helmetta and back through Jamesburg. It was about a 30 mile loop. There were a few spots where we almost came to a stand still because of the gusts of wind but it was manageable (I averaged 15mph). Since I rode into the ride I ended up with 43 not bad for a crappy November day.

Although I knew there would be a chance Larry would not be there today. I did expect Laura or Jim or Ed or a few of the other regulars as they rarely miss a change for a ride. No matter I will catch up with them on the next ride. And can talk about last weeks Columbia trail ride where I convinced them to head up one of the steepest hills we've ever been down. Laura looks like she is about to fall over. And I thought she looked slow going downhill!

And the stupid picture we took where they put the wall in front of the trail. It more slowed us down then stopped us. 

Of course this week we got the news that our friend George passed away. He was a great person and always livened up the ride. He was proof that riding can keep you young at heart. He was part of our riding family and he will be missed.