RIP Big Joe

Sadly this weekend one of my PFW bicycling buddies was tragicly killed doing what he loved, riding his bicycle on River Road in Washington Crossing PA.  Big Joe was a fun guy to ride with and always on his "A" game.  Laura did a great job capturing Joe's spirit in her eulogy to him on her blog.  The last time I rode with Joe we were sharing how much both of us enjoyed this years MS City to Shore.  Every time I ride to Belmar, I'll think of Joe, RIP.

PPP Wheel Sucker

I went to the Staten Island Bicycling Association Pumpkin Patch Pedal today.  It's not where you think, the ride actually starts at Thompson Park in Jamesburg, NJ.  I met up with a group of PFWer's there at 8 am and started out in what was a cool morning (about 47 degrees).  The ride headed south to New Eqypt and after making the turn there we felt the full force of the 20 MPH winds that had been blowing us south.  Pedaling into a 20 MPH headwind is no treat!

One of the bonuses of the PPP is that at the last stop they have pumpkin pie (or apple pie if you'd prefer) and it was very tasty.  Ron and I took off from the last stop into the wind and struggled to cut through.  Fortunately at the second intersection we spotted three tandems that were moving along at a very nice clip.  We rode up on the rear wheel of the last tandem and were "wheel suckers" all the way back to Thompson Park.  I did thank them for the pull...

Fantastic Weekend at 2010 MS City to Shore

The forecast for the weekend looked good; Saturday 84 degrees with significant wind but from the WNW; Sunday cool with wind from the ESE. So much for the accuracy of weather forecasts!

Saturday morning Team Squash met at 6:15 for our team photo and eight of us taking the 100-mile route pedaled off into the morning. It was comfortable, 68 degrees, but we soon discovered that the 16 MPH winds were not at our tail, but headwinds; that makes for a lot more work. As it warmed up my thermometer kept climbing reaching a high of 95 degrees. Despite the wind and heat we kept a blistering pace. The incentive that kept me going the last 20 miles was a cold beer waiting form me in a cooler at the finish.

Great day riding with good friends! Team Squash always has the largest and loudest cheering section at the finish line and this year it looked even larger; even Wayne and Penny were there (word is Wayne took notice of a tandem…).

Sunday morning it was a nice cool 62 degrees, perfect for cycling! The nine members of Team Squash that were riding today met for breakfast and then headed out of town for the 75-mile ride back. The route out of Ocean City has two bridges and after the second bridge, there were only four of us together. Again, the wind was in our faces but today only 10 MPH, the group of four kept going as we expected to keep a more rigorous pace to finish early.

Today the clouds kept the temperature down, my thermometer never got over 69 degrees, and we were able to work comfortably. As we neared the finish we caught a large peloton of very fast riders; we sucked onto the back of that pack and raced into the finish, exhilarating! Two miles from the finish we could feel drops of rain; but we finished dry (route on RidewithGPS).

Another great event; Team Squash raised over $27,000 and the event over $4.5 million for MS!  Thanks to all that supported me.

MS City to Shore

This weekend is the 2010 MS City to Shore and I'll be riding with Team Squash again this year.  Saturday we'll be taking the 100 mile route to Ocean City and then returning on Sunday via the 75 mile route.  I'll follow up next week with a story on the event.

Hybrid Weekend

Looks like the weather will be perfect for my planned hybrid weekend.  Saturday planning on a 100 mile bicycle ride to Belmar, NJ with PFW; and Sunday planning on riding the motorcycle to the AMA District II Corn Boil and pick up 2 points towards the Polar Bear Grand Tour.

Another Reason to love my Camelbak

I love my Camelbak! The reasons are many; it carries a significant amount of water, great on these hot summer days; it keeps the water cold, even on a 3 hour bicycle ride the water is cold to drink; it provides an area for storage, cell phone, wallet, IPod, banana, or anything else you’ll need on a bicycle ride and it’s comfortable to wear with the NVIS back ventilation system. Today I discovered a new reason to love my Camelbak.

Riding on Miller Road between Dayton and Cranbury, we approached a stop sign. It is a heavily wooded area and I should have known better, but I approached the stop sign at a high rate of speed. I was planning to scope out the road to the left (thinking it would be clear as we were on a back road) and make the turn maintaining my momentum. Looking left at the last minute I saw through the trees that there was indeed a vehicle coming from the left. Now normally approaching a stop sign, I would clip out of my pedals to prepare to stop; here I had to make an instantaneous decision to stop. Grabbing both brakes, I stopped at the end of Miller Road, but my feet were still clipped into the pedals. Having your feet still clipped in means you can’t put a leg out and so I fell to the left.


Not the first time I have not clipped out and stopped; it has actually happened a couple times before. You aren’t going fast, in fact you are not even moving forward, so you would think it’s a harmless fall. However, people’s instinct is to put out a hand, elbow or land on their side. All of those scenarios can mean road rash, broken collarbone, broken wrist and any number of injuries in addition to the embarrassment of falling down in front of the group of riders with you! Being an old hand at this now my instinct was to turn and land on my back. The Camelbak acted as a cushion between the road and my body, making for a relatively soft landing. My seat twisted on the post a bit (a quick turn aligned it back into position) but everything else on my bicycle and my body was pristine!


Thinking about it as we pedaled the last couple of miles back to Cranbury the Camelbak acted somewhat like an airbag, albeit already inflated. This is not a new concept. Several companies that make motorcycle racing suits have been experimenting with airbags built into their suits for years. Alpinestars and Dainese both sell leathers with airbag systems built in. There is a YouTube video of a test of the Dainese system from 2007.


One more reason to love my Camelbak.

Ramapo 500

The Ramapo 500 has become a summer staple for a large group of my motorcycling buddies.  This two day event is run by the Ramapo Motorcycle Club and as in the past, they again did an excellent job choosing a wonderful selection of beautiful roads (less traveled) and preparing great cue sheets.  This year they added an option of downloading the routes to GPS devices to assist in directions.  I took advantage and downloaded the routes to my Garmin Zumo 550 as did everyone else in my group with a GPS.  I lead the ride for our group and still had to read the written directions, but the GPS helped to eliminate second guessing turns.

The ride registration is cut off at 400 with a wide range of brands and types of motorcycles.  With everyting from sport bikes to touring bikes to cruisers, one of the "rules" is when a faster motorcycle or group comes up behind you, move to the right to let them pass.  Every year we seem to encounter some folks that fail to read this section!  More on that later...

We meet at the crack of dawn, well not exactly, but when the Brass Ring opens on Saturday morning.

The ride starts up in Rockland County New York and right after a hearty breakfast we race up north to begin our day.  Keeping a group of ten motorcycles together is challenging, particularly when you are riding with 400 others.  We keep in touch with communication between myself and others in the group via our CB radios, but sometimes, particularly in the mountains, we lose communication.  About mid-morning on Saturday we had been passing through other groups of slower riders and got too far in front of some of our own riders.

Here we are discussing where the hell the others could be after waiting over 15 minutes!

The club likes to throw at least one gravel or dirt road into the mix and that appeared on Saturday afternoon (Hell Hollow Road).  I saw it coming up on the directions and we were stuck behind one of those slow groups that didn't read the move over and let faster groups pass instruction.  I kept riding up to the sweeper in the group and trying to signal him to let us pass; he didn't get it.  We got to a fairly straight portion of road and I moved left and began to pass the group in front.  Just as I get past the leader of the slower group the pavement ran out and we were in gravel.  That made for some interesting passing behind me by the rest of our group.  The road was not paved, had lots of huge potholes and at one point was dirt only; but a blast none the less!

There is camping available at the half way point but our group "roughs it" at the Hampton Inn for the night.

All in all a great event and fun 2 days of riding!  Pictures courtesy of Joe Holden, thanks Joe!

The motorcycle goes back into the garage now as I need to resume my training for the 2010 MS City to Shore in September.  Again this year I'm riding on Team Squash with John Ball.  Check my MS City to Shore Website and maybe contribute to the cause.

New Jersey Velodrome?

Yesterday on the front page of the Courier News was an article Velodrome Visions about a local bicylist that is lobbying for a velodrome to be built on the GSA Depot site in Hillsborough.  It sure would be nice to have that so close by.  We'll see what happens...

Ride with GPS

Alan, a British gentleman who rides with the Tuesday night Griggstown Grinders bicycle group, utilized this new site to post the rides; Ride with GPS .  It really is a great site for bicyclists and motorcyclists.  You can upload routes from your GPS device or create routes and then print cue sheets.  The elevation profile is the most accurate I've found showing elevation and degree of slope along the route.  IMHO it is far superior to other GPS sites.  And you don't have to own a GPS to utillize features of the site, you can create a route and print cue sheets.  They are running on a shoestring budget, so it may be slow during peak times.  Tell me what you think.

New York Five Boro Tour

This weekend started on a positive note. I went on a bicycle ride out of Cranbury on Saturday and on the way back 3 of us got caught up in a fast pace line at the front and after several miles realized we must have passed a turn as a wait at a stop sign yielded none of the other 20 something riders in our group. The Garmin mapping paid off as it led us back to Village Park; much earlier than the group too. After that fun and fast 45 mile bicycle ride I met with a motivated buyer to show him my 1996 HD Softail Custom. A good outcome, some green in my pocket and one less motorcycle in the garage.

Sunday was the New York City 5 Boro Tour and an alternate strategy from staying at a hotel in Manhattan last year. This year the plan was to take the Staten Island Ferry early and have the truck ready for a quick escape after the Tour. After checking with several club members that have years of experience with the Tour I realized that I had to take the 5 AM ferry; which means I had to leave the house at 3:30 AM. To get a good night sleep I needed to go to bed much earlier than usual. The fast bicycle ride and the 40 mile Softail ride (to deliver to the new owner) weren’t enough to get me to sleep early no matter how hard I shut my eyes. I have one witness to my staying up late as I responded to his text Saturday night after 10:30 PM.

Up earlier than expected on Sunday I arrived at the ferry parking lot and rode to the entrance of the ferry. Below you can see the ferry arriving from Manhattan and my position for getting on the boat (no one in front of me, lots to the sides).

Pictures from on the ferry, as you can see I was in the front and there were plenty of bicyclists behind me.

The picture below is our starting position. At the intersection of Church Street and Worth Street; this is the first block of riders that aren’t VIP’s (in the first two blocks in front of us).

The picture below is from Worth Street looking back towards Ground Zero and all the riders behind us.

The picture below is looking forward from Worth Street at the VIP riders in front of us. It’s early and the VIP’s get to arrive up until the 8 AM start and get slotted into their spot, so it fills up by the start.

At a little after 8 AM we started; walking our bicycles at first, we mounted by the starting banner and rode up 6th Avenue (The Avenue of the Americas). I was with a group from my bicycle club and had decided to stick with them and not “race” to the finish like I did last year. It seemed like a good decision up 6th Ave. as the traffic jam of cyclists hadn’t spread out and we encountered our first bottleneck as we entered Central Park. Slow pace through the park but the nice weather made the pace bearable. Out of the park we headed up to the Bronx, back across the 3rd Ave. Bridge and onto the FDR Drive. We climbed up to the Queensboro Bridge and crossed the East River. At the top of the bridge I stopped to take a picture but a marshal immediately instructed me to keep moving. I did manage to get a shot after we crossed Roosevelt Island but it wasn’t due to my stealth picture taking it was due to another bottleneck.

Up through Queens we stopped in the rest area at Astoria Park under the Triborough Bridge (picture below); refill with water, great snacks and back to riding.

We stopped at the Con Edison Learning Center rest area to meet one of our members that had gotten ahead of the group. Check out the spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline! The 5 Boro Tour offers views of New York City from many angles making it a fun and exciting ride.

In Brooklyn Kyle flatted (picture below) and we got two views we may not have seen without the stop to repair the flat tire. First a rider came past with a parrot on his shoulder; ironically I’d seen this same rider and bird partner last year in Brooklyn. Three minutes after the bicyclist with the parrot on his shoulder a man walked past us on the sidewalk with a pet rat on his shoulder! Only in NY.

After riding through some neat neighborhoods in Brooklyn we entered the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and then on to the Gowanus Expressway. On the Gowanus as we got close to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge there was a cool breeze blowing off the East River providing air conditioning to the 90 degree temperatures. I took an opportunity to stop and shoot the photo below of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

Climbing up the lower deck of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge I stopped again to photograph the riders and walkers coming up the deck. And the view out of the bridge of NYC; last year this view was obscured by the rain and clouds; this year the view was spectacular but the 90 degree heat had some haze that the camera caught looking up towards Manhattan; now the speedy decent the bridge into Fort Wadsworth Park for the festival.

It took me 50% longer this year than last year. Last year it rained HARD and made the event epic. This year the weather was beautiful. I was very impressed with the quality and condition of the roads we used; after a tough winter the Department of Transportation must have worked hard to fill all the pot holes. I didn’t just imagine this; I was witness to the many fresh repairs I saw while riding in the event.

As I rode from Fort Wadsworth Park towards the SI parking lot I rode up to two of NYC finest on their Trek bicycles (example below). I overheard them talking about all the accidents they had seen today. Striking up a conversation with them, they said the city encourages as many of NYC Police to bike the 5 Boro Tour as possible to provide security and help with accidents and medical emergencies. I asked them if they thought there were more riders this year verses last year. They laughed and said there were at least twice as many riders this year due to the weather. They added that last year the Tour was pretty safe as only the hard core bicyclists come out in the bad weather.

Fun event!

NYC 5 Boro Tour Tomorrow

New York City's Five Boro Tour is tomorrow for 33,999 bicyclists and me!

Bicycle Weekend

Was the weekend weather nice?  I'll say; Friday, Saturday and Sunday all in the seventies, beautiful blue skies and bright sunshine.  I took advantage of the weather and rode the bicycle all three days; 37 miles on Friday, 43 miles on Saturday and 42 miles on Sunday.  Saturday and Sunday were hard, fast rides and for so early in the spring my legs held up great.  On Saturday there was a pace line coming back to Cranbury; what started as 23 riders became 10 riders as people fell off the back.  I was one of only 5 that made it back first, not bad for an old man.  I'm happy that winter is gone and I can look forward to lots of bicycling.

Cannoli to Conversation; Ballet to Bicycles

This week while working a particularly slow open house a one of our customers in southeastern New Jersey, the highlight was a giant canola that one of the reps from Long Island brought for all to enjoy.

Between customers I spent some time talking with a friend who shares the love of riding motorcycles. The conversation darted between motorcycles and family and John shared that his oldest son was racing bicycles for the University of Pennsylvania. John’s son Sean was a professional ballet dancer; in fact he left high school early to join a professional ballet company. Some years later Sean met back up with a high school sweetheart and they got married and now both attend Penn. Sean joined the bicycle team 2 years ago. John said there was a race this weekend close to where I live and he was going to go watch Sean race on Saturday.

Later that night I did a little searching on the internet for the ECCC and also checked Velo News; on Velo News I found Sean had written a race report of an earlier ECCC race. The weekend race consisted of three events an individual time trial (ITT), a criterium (crit) and a road race. The ITT was being held at Mercer County Park on Saturday morning and conflicted with my plans for my own bicycle ride; the road race was being held on Sunday in Skillman and conflicted with my Polar Bear motorcycle ride; but the Crit was being held at Caldwalder Park and fit nicely into my schedule.

Saturday morning was cold and windy, at least when compared to last weekend; but I was able to bet 35 miles on the bicycle out of Cranbury. My oldest son Matt, visiting with his girlfriend Elizabeth from Alexandria, and I headed over to Caldwalder Park to meet John.

When we arrived a woman’s race was in progress, we found John and he introduced us to Sean. Sean’s race, the men’s A was the last race scheduled for the day. We settled in to watch the other races. The course was around a mile and with the topography you could only see a small portion of the track at any one spot. We stood near the start/finish line. During the last lap of the men’s B race there was an accident just down the hill (there was a hill leading up to the finish line). It was taking forever to clear the course and we walked down to see what happened. A rider, jockeying for position, was forced off course and hit a curb head on. The picture below, pardon my lame photographic skills, doesn’t really show the giant indentation on his front rim. The rider was ejected over the bars and hit a metal post head on. Fortunately after much initial pain he seemed to be ok but was taken to the hospital to be checked out.

The men’s’ A race started and Sean was mid-pack as he passed us each lap. About lap 3-4 we didn’t see Sean go by and work spread of an accident at the bottom of a downhill section. John rushed over to check out what had happened and returned shortly with news that Sean had indeed run into two riders that had fallen in front of him; he had crashed and had a flat tire. Sean quickly replaced the front wheel and rejoined the field. Rules allow riders to do this outside of the final 5 laps. As Sean circulated each lap, the race is 40 minutes; he seemed to just be riding along and smiled at us each lap. With 3 laps to go a rider broke away and seemed to be able to stay about 3 seconds in front of the pack behind him. They rang the bell for one lap to go, the lead rider was still in front and Sean was buried mid-pack. As we watched the pack come up the hill for the finish, the group had caught the lead rider and passed him; Sean was sprinting at the front and finished first by a wheel. What a finish! A guess that explosive strength required for ballet translates to explosive power to sprint to the finish of a bicycle race.