Post Christmas Ride

After being rained out last weekend and this past Saturday it felt good to finally get a ride in. I sent out an email to a few of the regulars to meet at Etra and ride with team social security. It was a cold and cloudy day so I wasn't sure who was going to show up. Laura and Peter met me at my house for the ride over where we met Chris, Joe M, and a few others of team SS.

Joe ended up leading us on a long loop around Allentown. It was a standard ride on local roads that we have done many times before but it just felt good to catch up with people be on the bike again.

Although it can be fun to get together with family and celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Festivus, Make Up Your Mind Day or whatever holiday you celebrate it can also be very stressful. The wife and I do a lot of driving to visit both sets of relatives for Christmas so we are usually exhausted by the time we get home on Christmas day.

Monday's ride was a good way to destress and work off some of the Christmas cookies. I wanted to try and get 50 miles in so at the end of the ride I split off with Peter, Laura and Chris to added an extra 5 miles. I ended up with 48 miles and got home before the unexpected brief rain storm which was enough. I have the rest of the week off so hope to get a little more riding in if the weather is good enough.        

Code Blue

The city of Philadelphia declared a code blue on Saturday. That is when the wind chill is below 20 degrees and they open additional shelters to give homeless people the chance to get out of the cold.  This also meant that it was too cold to ride on the road so I went on Laura's ride along the Lawrence Hopewell Trail. 

Cold is a relative thing. At the start of the ride we had a surprise visit from Cheryl and who drove up with Dave C. Cheryl came up from Florida to surprise people at the PFW party on Saturday. To people who live below the mason-dixon line anything below 50 is cold. Here in NJ we don't start complaining about the cold until is gets below freezing. I have been following a person I met in Alaska who lives above the arctic circle and took the picture above. He doesn't consider it cold until it is below zero degrees fahrenheit. The picture is of methane bubbles frozen in a lake. The lake freezes from top to bottom and since the top freezes first the methane bubble from decomposition get stuck in the ice. As each layer freezes another set of methane bubbles is trapped. Its a beautiful scene but unless you don't mind a couple of months without the sun and can tolerate 20 to 30 degrees below zero it not a place you want to live. I will enjoy pictures like this from the warmth of my home.

Today's ride was the beginning of the winter riding season. We will try to be on the road when we can but when it gets close to freezing we still find ways to get out for a ride. The Lawrence Hopewell trail is a good choice for cold weather riding. The path is well maintained and a good part of it is in the woods so you get some breaks from the wind. 60% of the trail is paved and the rest is packed gravel so it is an easy surface to ride on with any bike with wide tires.The main problem with the trail is that it isn't really marked very well. If you don't know where you are going it is easy miss a turn and get off the trail. I have done the trail 6 times and got lost 4 of the 6 times.

We started from the parking lot by the corner of Princeton Pike and Provinceline Rd. Laura had a good turnout for a cold day. The first mile is on dirt through the woods before we hit a paved path thorough Lawrenceville and across 206 on our way to Mercer Meadows. This part was open and where we felt the wind as we made it to the high point of the ride that delineates the Delaware and Raritan watersheds.

From there we went around Rosedale Lake on our way towards Pennington. The Lawrence Hopewell Trail isn't completely finished and stops on Wargo Rd. I usually take Bayberry to ETS to pick the trail up again but Peter said they just completed another section of the trail so we headed up Pennington Rd to the new section which goes from Pennington Rd over towards Carter Rd. When the trail ended again we were on Carter Rd which some one suggested we take to Cleveland which we did. From there Laura wanted to go down Provinceline over the a new bridge. This part of Provinceline is closed to cars.

The bridge was pretty and gave us a good view of the river. This however required us to climb a short but steep hill then take a grass trail to get to ETS and back on the trail to our starting point. This was a good detour and it is good to see that they continue to add sections to the trail to complete it. This is an enjoyable ride on a cold day so we will probably do it again sometime this winter.

The Check List

I ended up doing Laura's ride to Upper Black Eddy this week and you can read the details about the ride Here and Here. At the beginning of the ride I lent Jim a water bottle because he had forgot his. This got us into a discussion about a check list. For the last 5 years I have used a paper check list to make sure I did not forget all the things I need for a ride. Since I have been using it I have never drove to a ride and not have everything I need. Now as important as having a check list is learning to use it the correct way. What I do is before I leave my house I take out the paper check list and for each item on the list visually check that it is in my car. This insures that everything I need is actually in my car because if you just mentally go through a check list with out actually checking the item is in the car you are going to THINK you have something when you actually don't.

This is a similar methodology to check lists used by pilots Of course forgetting your water bottle for a ride is not as tragic as a plane crashing because the pilot for got to deploy the flaps but there is no reason to not use a simple check list to make sure you always have all your stuff. 

Here is my list. I don't always need everything on this list (e.g. Jacket) but this way I don't need different lists for different times of the year.

• Shoes
• Camelback
• Helmet
• Sun glasses
• Gloves
• Snacks
• Bagel
• Water Bottle
• Paper Towel
• GPS
• Maps
• Jacket
• Arm Warmers 
• Shoe Covers
• Ride sheet
• Pump up Tire
• Sunscreen
• Tail Light

Riding Solo

It was a very busy 3 day week at work so it was nice to have a long weekend to forget about work and get out for a couple of rides. Unfortunately I had some maintenance work at home and at our place at the beach that needed to be done so I had to squeeze my riding in between those jobs. This meant I missed riding with the normal crew this weekend and had to ride solo.

On Friday I got out early and decided to do a quick ride on the canal for a change of pace and to give the mountain bike a quick ride to see if it needed any tune ups. Beside a changing a flat tire up front before the ride the mountain bike is in good shape and ready to go as I expect to use it more as the winter gets colder. I drove to Princeton by Carnegie lake and did a quick out and back to Rocky Hill. This is my favorite part of the canal as it well maintained and has good scenery.

On Saturday I did a one way ride to the beach. It was the standard route to Belmar by way of Farmindale and gave me a chance to ride by the Manasquan reservoir. It was just over 50 degrees and mostly sunny so not a bad day for a ride. I got close to 50 miles in and was at the beach by noon. I then had another couple of hours of physical labor at the condo I was done.

Afterwords we headed to one of our favorite Mexican restaurants for a good dinner and coming home to finally relax after a busy couple of days. 

No Turkeys Here

Some days mistakes and unexpected circumstances come together to make a good ride. My Turkey ride was suppose to be the Saturday after Thanksgiving but because of an error some where in the process it was scheduled for the Saturday before. I had more people on the ride than expected including some riders who I haven't ridden with in a while. There was 5k race blocking some streets which could make it hard to make through Bordentown. These things make me a little apprehensive about the ride as we started out from the Peter Muschal school on our way to the pinelands along this route. I did perform the holy kickstand ritual before the ride just in case.

The route I planned took us through Bordentown. There was a flock of vultures on top of a school watching us go by which was another ominous sign but none of the streets we took were blocked by the 5k and traffic was lighter than normal. We continued on down to Axe Factory Rd which has been closed for at least the last 5 years yet is the most passable closed road in NJ. The road itself is freshly paved and the only issue is a barrier across a bridge you can actual ride through if you are careful. I suspect the bridge itself is not safe for cars which is why it is closed and assume the state has no plans to fix it ever.

After passing through Columbus we made our way to Vincetown along the way there were a couple of strip brakes as the weather warmed from 50 to 60 degrees very quickly. In Vincetown I by passed our first Wawa but stopped at a park for a bathroom break as I knew the Wawa in Browns Mill doesn't let us use their bathroom.

We maintain a quick pace as we made our way through the pinelands and to our rest stop in Browns Mill. This is not one of the nicer Wawa and is in need of an update but it is in a convenient location. There were some kids out side the Wawa getting donation for their sports facility so we threw a few dollars their way while we were there.

I took a different way back and went around the south side of the lake to add a few miles. This gave us a better view of the lake as well as took us past some active firing ranges of Fort Dix. The wind had picked up a little and was at our back so we formed a pace line an cracked up to Cookstown at 20mps+. I almost lost the group as they got ahead of me and missed the turn in Cookstown.

The wind continue to push us back for the last 10 miles and we ended up coming in at a 16.7 pace which on the fast side. The good weather, favorable winds and lack of any problems with the ride make this great ride.

Supermoon

If you have listened to the news this past week in between talk about the election results you might have seen something about a supermoon. The news describes it as the closest moon in the last 69 years which is not exactly correct and miss leads the public. This and other recent issues gives me less confidence in the news media in general.  If you want a complete description of what a supermoon is and why this one is special check out the article on space.com  However the simple explanation is that a supermoon is when the full moon appears near it perigee (the closest point in its orbit). So the special thing about this FULL moon is that it becomes full closer to it perigee than any other full moon has since 1948. It is a little bigger and brighter than normal but unless you have a way to accurately measure the size and brightness of the moon it is really not noticeable to the naked eye.

It did give me an excuse though to try and take some pictures of the moon on Sunday night. At 8 pm the moon peaked up above the trees in my backyard so I took out the telescope and found the moon. I hooked up my iPod touch to the eye piece with my home made holder and took a bunch of photos. The moon is really bright when viewed in a telescope so you have to try a lot of different exposure levels to get a picture that is sharp and shows some details. You also need a little luck to capture the picture during moments of calm in the atmosphere. Out of about 30 photo I got 3 or 4 decent ones.

I am still learning how to use the iPod touch to take photos so should be able to get some even better photos the next time there is a supermoon which is actually next month although it will be slightly smaller than this months.

ROOVA Farms

It seems like every fall when the weather gets colder and I'm looking for a long but easy ride I head to Rova Farms. From Mercer County Park it ends up being a 55 mile ride that has a few rolling hills but nothing that would qualify as a real climb.It is also very simple route with not a lot of turns so its easy to lead.

I rode in from my house and met Jack along the way as he was warming before the ride. At the park Andrew, Raj, Peter, and new Jeff were waiting. It was about 40 degrees but sunny as we left the park and headed across 130 in to the edge of the Assumpink. It must of been the start of one of the hunting seasons because the park was packed with pick up trunks and people with guns. We even heard a few gun shots as we left the park. 

We then took Rue Road down to Imlaystown on our way to Jackson township and our rest stop in Cassville at a gift shop/deli. Because if was still cold we didn't stop long and within 10 mins were were back on the road.

The main visible feature of  Rova farms is St Vladimir's church with it large mosaic on the front. This area use to be a very popular Russian resort from the 1930s to the 1970s with people coming from NY and Philadelphia to rent the vacation cottages here. Most of the homes are now full time residences and besides the churches most of features of Rova that made it Russian are now gone.

As we headed back to Mercer we ran into Neil and Mark in Turkey Swamp and stayed with them for about 10 miles before going our separate ways. We kept up a brisk pace as we headed back. We ended up averaging just over 16 mph. I split off to go home just before the park and got back home before 1pm with 60 miles. It was an easy fast ride and a good change of pace after doing mostly hilly rides for the past few weeks.