Going to the Beach

 

Riding to the beach is something I do at least a few times a year. It's actually a little easier to head to the beach as I live a little closer now. So when the I saw that someone in the PFW had listed a ride to Belmar starting at the Manasquan reservoir I had to go as I could ride in to the ride from my house. The ride listed was the half Sprague ride which was doing 50 miles of the annual Sprague century. 

It was a C+ ride with a lot of people I haven't ridden with before but it was a good group and we maintained a good pace to the usual rest stop in Belmar. The ride was timed to be in Belmar about the same time the century ride was suppose to get there. About 15 mins after we got there the century riders came in and we took a group picture on the board walk.

 

After the break I headed back on my own as I needed to get back early. I ended up trying some new roads on the way back so now have a way to see more of the shore area next time I'm down there. I ended up with 65 miles and felt pretty good after the long ride. The weather has sunny and cool without much wind so it was a good day for a long ride.

Last Saturday I listed my annual ride to Sandy Hook. I like to do this ride after Labor Day to avoid crowds at the beach. Instead of starting from Monmouth Battlefield park I started on the other side of Freehold as going through Freehold at the beginning and end of the ride has gotten more painful. The last few years the traffic has gotten a little worst and the roads are a little beat up. Starting on the other side of Freehold also makes the ride about 6 mile shorter. This lets us ride further into Sandy Hook if we want to. We did this route which is my northern route the Sandy Hook. For the first time I actually forgot to upload the route to my GPS so I had to rely on my memory and other people who had loaded the route into their GPS to guide us along. 

It was a sunny but cold day so I had a jacket on for the first time since the spring. We hit a little traffic as we headed past the old Bell Labs area. I also forgot how hilly part of this route are especially the part going through the Atlantic Highlands. 

After our usual stop at the Wawa on Rt 36 when headed downhill along the bay to Sandy Hook. We took the part of the Henry Hudson trail goes along the bay to get a good look at Sandy Hook before we crossed the bridge to get there. 

It was a sunny and the wind wasn't too bad so we decided to ride all the way up Sandy Hook. There were a few people on the ride who hadn't done the ride before so I wanted to show them all there was to see. 

After leaving Sandy Hook we took the normal way back with a quick stop at the pizzeria in Little Silver. We ended up just short of a metric but nobody went out to get the extra mile. I have no plans for any more beach rides in the near future but I'm sure I will have another ride or two to the beach before the end of the year.

Flow State

 

Riding your mountain bike along a single track trail with perfect technique requires a union of mind and body called a flow state. This is where see the trail ahead of you with it's twist, turns and obstacles and know how to adjust your hands, feet and body to flow smoothly along the trail. I will never achieve this state of mind on a mountain bike because I have neither the skills or experience to be one with the trail. However I do occasionally like the challenge of trying to do so. 

Most of my mountain biking is along rail trails but a couple of times a year I will try something a little more difficult. The local parks around me have some single track trails of medium difficulty that are fun in small doses. When I got my first mountain bike it opened up some new possibilities of riding and I looked around the area for the most popular trails to ride. One of the most highly rated trails with in a day trip is White Clay Creek State Park. This park has over 30 miles of trails in the woods and suppose to be one of the best places to ride single track. I have always wanted to go there so this past Tuesday I took a day off with Bob to give it a try.

White Clay Creek is at the top of Delaware so it's an easy drive down 295 and cross the Delaware Memorial Bridge to get there. I had studied the map of all the trails before the trip and had a couple of routes mapped out to try. I tried to stay to the easier parts but it's hard to know the difficulty of the trails from the maps and videos that I looked at. The trails are mostly narrow packed dirt in the woods. There main obstacles are the tree roots. Because the trails are ridden a lot the trail and the roots are smoothed out a bit so it doesn't take a lot of skill to go over them. There were occasionally some bigger roots I had to jump over and I was able to get over most of them without a problem. Some just looked too big to me so I did occasionally stop to walk over a few.  

The constant twist and turns of the trail as well as the changes in terrain requires you to stay very focused to stay on the trail. Its a tough workout but once I got into mountain bike mode I was enjoying the challenge.

White Clay Creek has some interesting features. One of these is a pump track which is a series of humps that if ridden properly requires no petaling. If you push or "pump" your bike at the right point in the hump you can generate momentum to get you over the next hump (kinda like pumping a swing). 

Although I understood the concept it was harder to do in practice and I had to petal at a few spots in the track. Still it was fun riding the humps and speeding around the banked turns.

 

We ended up with just under 5 miles on our first loop around the White Clay Creek. After a bit of a rest we headed to another section along a creek. I felt more confident on the second loop and took some more risks. There were even a few points especially on the down hill sections where I actual go into a flow but it would only last a few moments before I had to concentrate on making a quick turn or figure out how to pop over a root. 

This type of mountain bike riding is mentally exhausting. There are hundreds of little decisions you have to make as you negotiate the course. You are constantly leaning left, right, backward and forward to keep upright and on the course as well as feathering the brakes to get you around the tight curves. We didn't have any falls but I did scrape a few trees with the bike and my arm. 

At the end of the second loop we had done close to another 5 miles and were done for the day more because we were mentally tired than physically exhausted. It was a good work out and a lot of fun. There were a couple of trails I wanted to try that had some man made obstacles like narrow logs and bridges but I didn't have the energy for another loop. 

 

We probably saw about a quarter of White Clay Creek so I would like to come back again to explore some more the next time I'm looking to challenge my mountain biking skills.

Scenes from Cape Cod

It has been over 2 years since my wife and I have had a real vacation. Between the pandemic and last years move there just wasn't time or desire to take a vacation. So now that things have settled down we decided to take an extended weekend trip to one of our favorite place to go and relax, Cape Cod.

My wife and I have been coming to Cape Cod for 30 years so we know our way around and have a set of favorite places to go. My wife loves the beach so we spend most of our days here just relaxing on the beach. 

I'm not much of a beach person but do enjoy it from time to time as a way to de stress and take in the sounds and sights of the ocean which can be calming.

There are a lot of scenic views on the Cape and I managed to capture a few good sunset pictures.

The actual sunset and full moon rise occurred at the same time so right after the sunset I got some cool moon rise pictures. There was some upper level smoke from the California wild fires so the moon was blood red.

This may be the best full moon picture I have gotten so far.

I did manage to get manage to get a bike ride in. We did a 57 mile ride up to Provincetown. Part of the ride was on the Cape Cod rail trail but a lot of it was on roads along the ocean and bay so we got some good views of the ocean and dunes and stopped at a few lighthouses along the way. 

There was of course a bridge out along the way because no matter where I ride I can always find one. 

I have been to Cape Cod a lot over the years and it was a good place to come to recover from the hectic pace and stress of life. I'm glad we finally got to go on vacation and hope we can do more of these trips in the future.

Nineteen Years with Frisket

 

The Social Aspect of Biking

 

I started riding bikes as a way to keep fit but as I starting doing rides with bike shops and clubs I built some relationships with the people I ride with. I have known some people I ride with for more than 20 years. For the most part I have a small group of friends that I normally ride with called the Insane bike posse because they come on my rides and mostly complain about them but keep coming on them anyway. They are an odd bunch but we get along and more or less ride at the same pace. As the years have gone on a couple of people have come into my small group and few people have left although the core has stayed constant.

The move I made last year put me about 15 miles east of where I use to live and has caused me to find new routes to ride for my solo after work rides. There is still good riding outside my door. I don't have as much variety as there are not as many hilly road near by. However there are some very nice flat and quiet roads so it's easy to put together 15-25 mile rides that keeps me in shape for the weekend rides. 

It now does take me about 15-20 mins longer to get to some of the starting points for some of the rides I normally do. I am only a few minutes from 195 so I have not minded the extra time although I have changed some the rides I lead to a closer starting point. This still let's me hang out with the same people I normally ride with so my riding schedule hasn't really changed that much. 

There are times however when I need to stay close to home on a weekend because of some home project or family thing. Because of that I actually started looking at a couple of other bike clubs that are closer to where I live. Some may call this cheating on my current club but I have always occasionally ridden with other clubs. The closest club to me is the Jersey Shore Touring Society and as I found out a little over a month ago they have ice cream rides where the club pays for ice cream for everybody at a rest stop (in the ride I did it was at Four Brothers in Englishtown). I actually didn't plan on riding with the club on the day I stopped by their starting point but when I heard about the free ice cream I just had to go. 

The Jersey Shore Touring Society is a smaller club and doesn't have as many rides as PFW but it's a good group of people. I enjoyed riding with them and will do so again if I want something a little closer to home and don't want to ride by myself. The good thing about bike riding with a club is once you've done it with one club you know what to expect and how to act in a group so it is easy to fit in to a new group even if you never have ridden with them before. This club also has a lot of mountain bike rides in the winter so I definitely will go to some of those rides to learn some of the trails and parks that are near me that I haven't explored yet.

Last weekend I rode an event put on by the Suburban Cyclist out Doylestown. It started out of the Shine of our Lady of Czestochowa. I haddn't done an event like this in a while but it was fun even though I knew most of the roads I like the route and found a new way through Doylestown. They also had good food and good ice cream at the end. And as always it is fun to meet some other bikers and share stories with them. I may do a few more of these events now as things are returning a little more towards normal. 

So even though I will keep riding with my normal group is has been fun to also expand the possible rides I can do and meet a few new people because for me riding is as much a social interaction as it is a physical workout.

 

The Shrine of Our Lad

Cooling Down a Bit

It's been a hectic couple of weeks for me as my Baja decided to shoot a spark plug out of it's cylinder head. When it happen I thought I might need a new engine or car but it was not as bad as initially thought. They did have to lift the engine out and re-thread the cylinder head, which was not exactly cheap, but the Baja still lives and should have many more good years in it. 

We also had some construction at the house where we had a sliding door and some windows replaced which had me doing some spackling and painting. This along with some long days at work has not given me much free time. I have been biking but mostly from my house by myself as I didn't have the Baja to get me to a ride.

That why is was nice this week to connect with the posse again. Laura had her ride to Belmar where people get to choose the distance they want to ride. From 100 miles from her house to 68 miles from Etra. I chose none of the above as her first rest stop for the ride is about 7 miles from my house. So I rode in and met them there and followed them to Belmar and about half way back until I broke off for home and ended up with a respectable 53 mile ride. 

It helped that the heat wave we have had for the past couple of weeks broke and we had a day in the upper 70s with low humidity and not much wind. It was a perfect day for being outside and at the stop in Belmar it was as crowded as you would expect on a perfect beach day.

I'm always a little concerned riding into and out of Belmar on a Saturday as the streets are crowed with cars and people but even though we were a big group of 12 we didn't have a problem navigating the congestion. 

It was a good day for a ride and as we are moving toward the end of August the weather should be cooling off a little. Also with my house projects over and the Baja back in service I should have more time to do some more fun and interesting rides.

Summer Heat

We are in the dog days of summer now. That means riding in hot weather. Last weekend the temperature was close to 100 degrees so had to get out early for a short ride in order to beat the heat.

This week was a little cooler so I lead a 60 mile ride from Mansfield. I had a good turnout and we maintained a fast pace. We were over 17 mph at the rest stop. The route is pretty flat with a lot of long stretches with no turns which makes it easy to crank out quick miles. Heading back from the rest stop we had a slight headwind that slowed us a little be we mostly stayed together as it got a little hotter. 

Most of the roads are relatively smooth except for Eayrestown road which was didn't have a lot of pot holes but was just rough with a lot of cracks and patches. It will be off my list of ridable roads until it gets paved. 

The fast pace caught up to me about 3 miles from the end as I cramped up. It took me a couple of minutes to stretch it out and be able to ride again but I made it back with out any more cramps. As I have gotten older I cramp up more than I use to need to watch my miles and pace. I also have to continue to experiment with Gatoraid and Gu and other supplements to see if I can reduce the amount of cramps I get. 

Still even with the cramps I came in at 16.7 which was one of the faster ride I did on this route so am riding strong and definitely feel better this year than last. I just would like the weather to cool off a little bit. 

Still the summer does provide some good sunrises.

 

 

 

I ended up stay down the shore one night and got up to see the sunrise. It was a clear morning so ended up getting a couple of nice pictures of the sunrise which was a nice deep red.

 

We probably have a few more weeks of hot summer rides so will try to stay in the shade and keep cool until the the summer heat waves end.