The Belmar Reconstruction Tour

Belmar is one of the more popular long rides that the club does. The ride is relatively flat with a nice stop on the beach in Belmar. The only downside to the ride is that you will have to deal with some traffic by the beach and either an annoying or hellacious head wind on the way back.  I usually don't do this ride until its short sleeve weather but I decided to take a trip earlier this year to see how the reconstruction of the boardwalk was going. Although Belmar didn't get as badly damaged as Seaside it still lost most of its boardwalk and had quite a bit of flooding.

Although they had predicted a chance rain for Saturday the rain ended early in the morning so by the time we started the ride the rain was gone and the roads were starting to dry. I had a large crowd of 12 people that included most of the regulars as well as a few people hadn't seen in a while including Jeff X.

Except for a flat tire the ride to Belmar was uneventful and even easy as we had a tail wind most of the way. There is not a lot real scenery on this ride until you get to the beach. I usually enter the beach by Sea Girt so that we have a nice leisurely 3 mile ride along the ocean. In the middle of the summer there is a lot of activity here but today it was mostly suffers trying to catch some waves. We did also pass wedding that was going on outside at one of the hotels.

The main attraction this time was the state of the beach. During Sandy most of this area was under a foot or two of water and most of the boardwalk and water front property got a little beat up. Although most homes survived the storm with very little structural damage there was quite a bit of flood damage that they are still cleaning up from. The good thing to see was that the rebuilding has started and is making good progress. Although there are still parts of the beach with the boardwalk missing a lot of it is rebuild. We saw long stretches if new boardwalk with just missing rails so it seems that by Memorial day most of it will be back.

Still there is a long way to go. Some of the public bathrooms were totally destroyed and are just now having their foundations poured. I don't expect these buildings will be ready until at least mid summer at best.

I had been down this area about a month ago and Ocean Ave had still been closed to traffic so it a nice surprise was that Ocean Ave was finally open (except for a small bridge that was out in Spring Lake). The other nice surprise was that our normal rest stop by the beach was open. In fact the owner told us that he had just opened a day ago (Duncan Donuts was still closed). Although they had some flood damage the place looks the same.

After a the break we headed back into the wind. It felt bad as we started by we eventually got into a rhythm and ground our way back to Etra. The wind was bad but not soul crushing. I wasn't planning a stop on the way back but some people were a little tired so some of us stopped in Freehold while others went on.

By the time we got back to Etra we had almost 70 miles in. We averaged just under 15 which wasn't bad considering its early in the season and we had a head wind for 30 miles. It was nice to visit Belmar and see that it is recovering. I'll probably head down there again later in the summer to check it out again.

The Easter Cake

My wife have been hosting Easter, at our house, for the past 22 years. It is a lot of work but we have it down to a science so preparing the house and a meal for about 20 people is no big deal. Our menu is mostly Polish food like stuffed cabbage, pierogies and kielbasa although the is also a variety of other foods. The main menu is mostly the same every year but my wife tries to do something different and unique every year for dessert. The desert usually has some type of Easter theme.

This year my wife decided to make an ice cream cake that would look like an Easter garden. It started with three layers of oreo cookie klondike bars with vanilla icing in between. That was then surrounded by chocolate filled pirouline rolled wafers to form a fence around the cake. The top of the cake was covered with small chocolate chips to form the dirt for the garden then a straws were pushed through the cake to be the stems of the flowers. The flowers themselves were brownies covered in icing and various sprinkles. Lastly we added some peeps for an Easter flair.

The cake was a work of art and impressed the crowd which was what my wife was going for. Then it was time to cut the cake which we had no idea how to do. We had glued all the pieces of the cake together with so much icing and ice cream then froze it for a couple of days so it was built like a brick fort house. It took some yanking of piroulines and hacking with our biggest knife to get the cake into serving size pieces. They didn't look pretty but they tasted good. All in all the Easter holiday was a success.

Now that our holiday is over I can concentrate on biking. I took the Monday after Easter to head to the Sourlands to start working on some hills and burn off some of the winter fat. Now that it is getting warming I need to start working on distance as I have a couple long rides coming up including a metric to Belmar that I'm looking forward too.

Night of the Comet

In case you haven't notice it for the last month we have been getting attacked from space. First there was the meteor explosion over Russia. Then there were a couple of real close flybys by some asteroids(they came closer to the earth than the moon does). One which wasn't discovered until a few hours before is passed by. If any of these had actually hit the earth it could have taken out a major city.

This week the danger is a comet that is passing close by. If you know where to look you can see it just after sun set. I spent Thursday night at Mercer lake across from the boat house looking for the comet. The comet is not as bright as predicted so it was a little hard to find but I managed to see it and get a few pictures.

It was a very windy night so even though I had the camera on the tripod it still shook and made the picture blurry. The comet is the bright spot between the two bottom wires near the tower.

If you want to see some better pictures of the comet you can check out pictures from all over the world HERE

This won't be the last comet we see this year. Some time in November comet ISON will make it way into our skys. Although it is hard to predict a comets brightness comet ISON has the potential to be one of the brightest comets in more than a decade.

Single Speed Tom

After five weeks of cold and crappy weather it was finally nice enough, (sort of). to ride on the road again. The road was still wet from rain when I got up to put the dog out but it was sunny and 40 so I made a last minute decision to go to Larry's ride.

There were five of us there including Laura and Ron. It has been a while since I have been on a group ride so it was nice to see everybody again. Larry took out towards Freehold. As we road we talked about some of the rides we were planning for the spring. The roads were still a little wet but we weren't really kicking up any spray so it wasn't too bad.

After a stop in the Battleground orchid head back up through Millstone on our way home. As I was coming down Perrineville road I up shifted and immediately knew something was wrong with my rear derailleur. A quick look back and I saw that I was stuck in my top gear. I coasted down the rest of the hill and stopped in a driveway.

It became clear pretty quickly that the cable snapped. With a little help I was able to wrap the cable around the water bottle cage and lock the derailleur in one of the middle gears. A piece of duct table from Laura helped make sure the cable won't be come undone. This is similar to what we did when Mike M broke his cable in Califon. Luckily I only have 5 miles to go and no real hills.

It was a little strange riding with out the being able to shift. I did reach for the shifter a few times out of habit but really did have a problem muscling the bike up the few small hill I encountered. Having only one gear did make me concentrate on pedaling a little more and helped me remember to pull through the upstroke when I needed some extra power getting up a hill.

After riding home on a single gear I have a better appreciation of people who ride single speeds and understand the attraction but I prefer shifting.

Pennypack in the Snow

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Since Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring it has gotten colder and we had our first major snow storm of the season. What do you expect from a stupid pampered rodent. Of course real weathermen aren't any better at long range forecasts. The cold weather has limited my riding to the mountain bike. I've been to Mercer and the Canal trail but with the 6 inches of snow we got made most trails too deep to ride.

Back when I was researching the Philly book I discovered that the city actually plows some of their bike commuter trails including the trail along Pennypack Creek. Pennypack Creek and surrounding park is a nice place to ride so I decided to check it out so see how it looked in the snow.

It turned out to be a cool place for a winter ride. The main trail is paved but on Sunday it was still covered by some packed down snow. Pennypack is a popular place for people to walk, run and ride so any snow is quickly packed down even before it gets plowed.

I started at the north end of the park which is in north east Philly and only about 40 mins from my house. Although the trail was snow covered traction wasn't too bad. The only thing I forgot about the trail is that the first part has a few steep little hills. Going up them wasn't the problem is was coming down because breaking on snow is tricky. After the first few hills I got the hang of it though.

The main reason I came to Pennypack was the scenery. It was a pretty place in the summer and was even nicer looking with the snow. I stopped and took a number of pictures although they really don't capture the real view.

After the first 3 miles I got to a part of the trail that had been fully plowed and was mostly clear of snow. Except for a few spots the rest of the 7.5 mile trail was clear. I spent a little less then 2 hours going out and back on the trail and am glad I decided to get out for a ride.

Cold and Snowy

It seems like winter has finally arrived. This past week the highs didn't go much above 20 degrees and Friday night we had a dusting of snow. So in order to get some riding in I decided to take the MTB out. Chris and a few others were riding out of Mercer a 9:30 am but it was only 17 degrees at that time so I waited a couple of hours until it got a little warmer and decided to ride the canal path.

I headed over to Princeton and started the ride by Carnegie Lake. In the summer the path is a nice place for a quick trail ride along the canal. Today the coating of snow made it a little more scenic. Riding in the snow is not something you can do that often so when the conditions allow I try to get out.

I spent about a hour and a half on the path and went up to Rocky Hill and back. I took a few pictures along the way. It hovered around 25 degrees for most of the ride which is close to the my lower limit for an MTB ride. Any colder and my camel-back starts to freeze. Still if you dress right and keep moving its not too hard to stay warm. Although my feet were a little cold by the end of the ride I was warm otherwise and was glad to get out on the bike for a little while. There are a couple more months of winter ahead so you have to get out when you can.

Winter Exploring

This past Saturday was just a few degrees too cold and a little too windy to hit the road. I thought about taking the mountain bike to the canal but decided instead to check out a new trail that is a little closer to home. It's called the Union Transportation Trail. This trail runs from Davis Rd by the Creme Ridge golf course down to Millstream Rd just outside of New Egypt.

This trail was once the Pemberton & Hightstown Railroad. This was a short railroad line constructed in 1864 to provide dairies and farms access to the main rail road lines in Pemberton and Hightstown. The current trail is currently little less than 5 miles long but when finished it will be 8.6 and go all the way to the Assumpink. There are future plans to further extended it all the way into Hightstown.

The trail is crushed stone and pretty smooth. From the hoof prints and other debris on the trail I could tell it gets a lot of use by horses. Since this is an old rail bed it is relatively flat although if felt like a slight uphill in both directions. I spent about a hour and a half going out and back on the trail. It was a decent way to get quick ride on a cold day. I'll probably check it out again once they add a few more miles to it.