Happy Easter

Normally I don't ride on Easter weekend because I am busy preparing my house for the holiday and the 20 or more family members coming over. This year we had to cancel the gathering because of family issues. This meant with a good forecast for Saturday I could get a ride in.

I sent out an email to a couple of regulars to see if they were interested and where they wanted to go. I was leaning towards a flatter ride toward the shore but Laura convince me to head into the Sourlands and over to Flemington. She had been to a new coffee shop there, Factory Fuel, last week but because non of us went with her it didn't count so she wanted to go again.

I have not done any hill training this year yet so was reluctant to head to the Sourlands but worked out a route with just over 2000 feet of climbing and only a couple of real hills. I usually do this type of ride on my Feather but decided to bring my Synapse so I would have an extra low gear if I needed it.

We started off from Rocky Hill with a good group of us, 9 total. Laura, Jim, and Ed road in and Chris, Larry and few others were in the parking lot. This was an unofficial ride which meant no ride sheet and a reminder that there were no legal guarantees that I would keep them safe or care about them on this ride. We picked up a straggler in another parking lot on the way out.

I took the easy way up the Sourlands, Hollow Rd which felt OK and meant I wasn't totally out of shape. I trailed a little on Long Hill its not steep or hard but just long so I spun a low gear. The pay off was going down Zion which is a long winding downhill. At the bottom I stopped for a battery change and then heading through Neshanic and over and along the Raritan river. We rode across it and next to it for most of the ride as we heading towards Flemington. Since the trees were not filled in and it was still in the low 40s this wasn't as scenic as it normally is.

We hit some moderate traffic as we went through the outskirts of Flemington to get to Factory Fuel which is in an out door shopping mall. It wasn't a bad place to stop. It had decent if overpriced baked goods and I'm told the coffee is good. The only disappointment is they don't have many choices for non coffee drinks. At Rojo's it is a similar hipster wana be setup but they have apple cider which is as good as my uncle produced fresh from his orchard.

If it was a few degrees warmer or in the middle of the summer I'm sure this place would have been crowed so I think I would come back here only in the off season. On the way out of Flemington I had to go the wrong way up a street to get back out of town but this is normal for my rides. I think next time I would come in the way I went out and out the way I went in.

It only takes a mile from the stop to get back to open roads and soon we were on the rolling hills of Barley Sheaf and Manners. Laura and I stopped for a couple of pictures of the Alpacas. Then it was up and over Lindbergh to get back to Rocky Hill. On the way back half the group peeled off to head back home then Laura, Jim. Larry, Chris and I headed the back along 518 where Jim had a flat.

Although we did not have the family over for Easter my wife did make some bunny looking bread as she usually does some kind of decoration for Easter. It is sort of a tradition that we will do whether we have Easter or not. Unlike the tradition of the Chocolate Bunny Ride which is officially dead and will never rise again.

Spring has Arrived

Spring officially arrived early this morning but it doesn't feel like spring time yet. Last weekend it was just over 60. I had my first official PFW ride and did a loop to Jackson and back. This weekend it didn't get much above the low 40s and there was a small chance of snow. On Saturday it was just warm enough to do a road ride. I wanted to do something close because I had someplace to be in the afternoon so I headed to Cranbury. Both Marco and Tru were there. I had planned to go with Tru but I hadn't seen Marco this year so I went with him, Chris and a few other regular B riders.

Marco did a speed run with a simple route with only a few turns to the same Wawa in Jackson I went to last week. The pace was on the fast side for me since I don't have many miles in yet but I managed to hang on.

Unlike last weeks ride were it got warm quickly this week I think it actually got a little colder by the end of the ride.

It was good to get another 50 ish mile ride in to start building the miles and aerobic base but I will be happier when it warms up a little more and I don't have to worry about which set of gloves to wear.

LHT Trail

Ended up doing another ride by myself this weekend. I was thinking of going on Laura's ride but it was too cold for me to do a road ride and I also didn't feel like doing hills. I decided to to the Lawrence Hopewell Trail (LHT) since I haven't been on it this year yet. I got to the parking lot around 9:30 and I was the only one there. The snow we had on Friday had all but melted and it was just above freezing. This meant the trail was wet and a little mushy. For the most part the parts of the trail that weren't asphalt were in good shape but there were a few spots where it was like pedaling through sand so I got a good work out.

The last two times I rode this trail I got a little lost by the Education Center since this part of the LHT is not finished and you have to detour through a few local roads to connect back to the trail. This time I had no problem connecting back to the trail. I even found a few sheep on Bayberry.

Although I found a few people walking the trail I didn't see any other bikers. I ended up doing a little over 20 miles in just under 2 hours. It looks like the weather is turning warmer next week so I should be back on the road for my ride next Saturday.

The Rise of the Machines

Technology is improving at an exponential rate and becoming more ingrained in our lives. Few people can live without being connected to their phones. In one way it is good. I now can call for help or check the weather from almost anywhere. In other ways it bad, because besides being addicted to the connection, our privacy is being compromised as companies use the data to target advertising at us and to make us buy more stuff.

This past week I was at a conference in Vegas with 20,000 other like-minded geeks to discuss the latest technology trends and how to use this technology to improve our software to make it more cognitive. It was a good conference and I learned a lot. One of the main themes discussed was how to use artificial intelligence to pull meaningful information from the vast amount of data we all generate.  (By some estimates a person generates 1.7 MB of data per/min)

For those that remember, Watson was a computer system that won Jeopardy about 5 years ago. The main innovation of Watson was the ability to read natural speech and understand the main concepts behind it. This allowed it to answer complicated questions and learn from its mistakes so the more it read the smarter it got. Watson can tell the difference between Apple the company and apple the fruit based on the context of how it us used. This is a simple thing for us to do but very hard to do for software to do because of the way both process information.

The Watson on Jeopardy was a science project powered by hundreds of computers wired in parallel. Since then the software and technology has improved to the point that it is now has become a set of programming modules on the cloud. What that means is that anybody can wire up these modules and create some practical applications for only a few bucks.

At the conference I saw the Watson software being used to analyze the presidential candidates, help scientist analyze research papers, help support team reduce support calls, and much more. What started out as research project is now having real world impact and is going to bring in a new age of software that is going to make us even more dependent on them. I believe that in general that this will be beneficial for most of us. On the other hand there is a possibility that this will lead to Skynet  or Collossus so I’m making sure that all my software has a kill switch (just in case)

As part of the conference I did get a chance to see a presentation by the US Cycling Women’s Pursuit team.  The coach of the team was there, showing how IBM helped create an application to bring the data from the power, heart rate and muscle oxygenation sensors into a single view with in minutes after each training session. Normally compiling all this data use to take days. Now he is able to the view of the video of the training session along with the data and give immediate feedback. It was an interesting talked and I learned a lot about how power and heart rate sensors are used to improve training and performance overall. One of the most important thing the coach was able to get from all this data was W’ which is the amount of reserve energy a rider has. At the beginning of the race this will be 100% but as the rider pushes their power level above their max sustainable level this will go down. The idea is to be close to 0% by the end of the race but be careful use the reserve energy too early.

After the presentation I talked to the coach an asked him how much of this analysis would be useful for recreational riders like myself. He said that I would not want to go to the extreme that he does but that monitoring trends with heart rate and power could be useful. Power meters are still too expensive for the average recreational rider but as a result of this talk I may start collecting some data from my rides (heart rate, length, elevation gain, and a few other factors.) to see if I can use some of the tools I learned about at the conference to do some useful analysis. I know after doing a ride by myself today that I could use whatever help I can to get back to peak riding shape.

Spring Break

Although  I have spent more miles on my mountain bike than my regular bike so far this year the winter hasn't been that bad. We did have one big snow storm but it melted quickly and we have had  some cold weather like last weekend that made it too cold to ride (for most of us) but I have been able to get out more than the last two winters and have not posted any winter rants.

This weekend we had a taste of spring with temperatures close to 60 degrees. I convinced Laura to move her Saturday ride to this side of route 1. We meet at Mercer park and took a circuitous route to Roy's Deli that I put together. It felt good to be on a regular bike again. The route was mostly flat and the pace was on the slow side of B but I definitely felt the lack of real riding over the past couple of months.

It was good to see some of the regulars crew again and talk about the upcoming riding season and trips we might take. Although there is some probably some more cold weather ahead there is only 30 days until spring and more regular warmer riding.

Snowbiking 2016

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Although most of the snow melted with this weeks warm weather, Friday's wet snow made riding on the roads a little iffy. So Saturday I decided to head to Mercer County park. The 3 or 4 inches of snow we got on Friday made it perfect for riding in the at the park. A lot of the snow we got on Friday morning had melted so the main paths in the park were clear. There were still a few icy spots but nothing I couldn't ride over. The main problem I had was some flooding by the lake so I had to turn around a few times to stay on the paths further from the lake.

Its been a while since I road the mountain biking trails so it was fun riding through the snow. My mountain biking skills are average at best but they were good enough to get me through the trails and over a few trees in the middle of the trails with out falling. I spent almost 2 hours riding through the park. Its a good work out. Its a lot harder than road biking and a good way to get out a do a little different type of riding.

Pennypack 2016

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The trek to Pennypack park has become an annual tradition.  When there is too much snow on the ground to hit the road Pennypack is a good place to get a ride in. The parks paved bike path is a designated commuter route which means it gets plowed when it snows.

Last year I convinced Laura to join me. This year we got Ed to join us. It took a few emails to set up the logistics. Ed ended up meeting me at my house then we picked up Laura on the way to Pennypack.

We got to the park about 9:30am and were on our way about 10mins later after getting all our gear on. It was just around freezing so I was concerned about ice on the path but it was clear for the most part except over the bridges. Although we had a lot of melting this week there was still a good amount of snow on the ground. This made for a scenic ride where we stopped for the occasional picture along the way.

The first 7 miles went quick with only a closed bridge to slow us down. As most people know I haven't found a closed bridge I couldn't get around. This was the same bridge that was closed last year but this year they actually put a fence across to bridge that made it even harder to get over. You can check out Laura's blog for a picture of me climbing over the fence. 

The trail has 3 main parts. The first 7 miles gets you down to Frankford Ave. There then is a short part that gets you from Frankford to Torresdale and the last section gets you from, Torresdale to State Street and on to the Delaware river.

The section from Torresdale to State had not been plowed so although we could ride through some of the snow and clearer spots there were a few areas we had to walk over instead.

We did eventually get to the Delaware river to take in the view before heading back.

It took us about an hour to make our way back as we retraced our steps taking a few more pictures along the way. This is a very scenic ride and is different every time I do it so. It is not easy or fun to ride in the winter around here but Pennypack park is one of the places I look forward to ride when winter comes around.