Chocolate, chili, bicycle

Finally it’s spring. To kick off the 2019 bike reason, we stopped for chocolate and chili. (Not together!)

Finally — spring is here. Sunny and temps topped 60 today, so time to kick off the 2019 bike season. It’s too early for heavy mileage, so we did an extended version of our short loop in West Windsor, Windsor and Robbinsville. And in those 23 miles of quiet roads, even a bit of trail, we had two great stops.

First was a chocolatier’s shop in an industrial park. We have seen many signs for David Bradley along the highways around here and on the New Jersey Turnpike, but we had never been. This time we saw the sign into the Windsor industrial park and pulled in.

It’s all the way in the back, in the last building., looking like something built decades ago. Nope, nothing fancy.

But when you walk in, it is wall-to-wall chocolate. Easter bunnies, wedding chocolates. Congratualtions chocolate bars. Thank yous in chocolate. Cookies. caramels, fruits, you name it covered in dark chocolate (or, if you must, milk chocolate). And we were immediately offered a sample — a slice of orange or a chunk of pineapple, covered in chocolate.

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A bonus day of bicycling around Titusville, Florida

More alligators!

6082B308-4B96-4C4B-85F9-3DB419D57E15The East Coast Greenway’s 2018 edition of its Week-A-Year Tour is over after 369 or so miles across 6 days. But some of us weren’t quite ready to get off the bike, and so we joined Titusville residents for a 10-mile fun ride on its trail and its Chain of Lakes Park.

Props to the 7-year-old in the group. Not only did she ride the whole way, but when her handlebar grip went flying off, causing her to lose her balance and tumble onto the grass, she bounced up with “don’t worry, I’m fine” to her mother. That’s the attitude!

We northeners remained fascinated with alligators, stopping twice for photo ops. What a big one! It hung around for a while before tiring of our gawking, lifting itself up and waddling into the water.

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Day 6: 63 miles from Daytona Beach to Titusville, Florida

Roundabouts on a rail-trail? Found ‘em in Florida. And

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What a day!

This is the last full day of the 2018 edition of the East Coast Greenway’s annual Week-A-Year fundraising ride, and we spent much of it pedaling on quiet roads or trails— including 34 straight miles on the East Central Rail Trail, part of the Coast-to-Coast Connector that will stretch from Titusville on the Atlantic side of Florida to Tampa-St. Pete on the Gulf of Mexico side. (It’s 80% complete.)

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Day 5: 64 miles from St. Augustine to Daytona Beach, Florida

The sights and sounds of the fifth day of the 2018 edition of the East Coast Greenway’s annual Week-A-Year Tour.

99DDB2B3-C02E-4EE9-8F0B-84E05B0A7346The most memorable sound of day 5 of the East Coast Greenway’s Week-A-Year Tour: the boom from the SpaceX rocket launched this afternoon at Cape Canaveral that we heard (and felt the rumble) 60 miles away in Daytona.

Second sound of the day: the roar of the ocean, heard from the hotel room balcony. (If only it was warm enough to feel like we should be playing on the beach.)

Yes, we are in the spring break capital of America. And we are hearing that Daytona Beach wants to change its image, attract more people like .. us.  That would be adults on bikes.

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Day 4: 70 miles from St. Mary’s, Georgia, to St. Augustine, Florida

Fabulous riding in Florida, aided by a powerful headwind.

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We were blown down the coast of Florida today, propelled by a strong tailwind that had us hitting close to 25 mph on flat road while pedaling seemingly effortlessly. That’s a casual pace for the Tour de France, but a speed we mortals can’t sustain. Wow! (And so glad we weren’t trying to go north.)

Florida is quite the contrast to Georgia. Lots more money. Lots. The East Coast Greenway route took us down the coast, so start with normal beach towns. Then ramp it up and up and up some more as you hit Ponte Vedra Beach. We took the residential road one block in from the beach that ran for miles, and the estimates for the value of these mansions kept rising — a million or two dollars at a time. All ginormous. As for their beauty, well, it’s a matter of taste. One rider called it F-you money. As for me, I wondered how many of them take advantage of taxpayer-subsidized flood insurance. Not that they would see it as a handout, of course. And who does the work maintaining their yards and cleaning their homes?

But let me start at the beginning of a great day. We pedaled a few miles from our hotel off the main drag in St. Mary’s to the historic part of town, where East Coast Greenway had chartered an hour-long ferry ride across the St. Mary’s River to Fernandina Beach, Florida. Folks in St. Mary’s want to turn this into regular service, and I hope they succeed. There’s certainly a well-connected and enthusiastic cheerleader for the area. Amelia Island in Florida was beautiful, and more trails are being developed; St. Mary’s needs to find a way to lure tourists — in this case, cyclists — across the river. What story can it tell?

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Day 3: 72 miles from Jekyll Island to St. Mary’s, Georgia

The day’s highlights: a rail trail and a “submarine”.

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Today’s highlights: the Georgia Coast Trail in Woodbine, the “submarine” outside a military base and tagging along with Brent for his talk about the East Coast Greenway to about three dozen people at a meeting of a military officers association in St. Mary’s. Only a few of them may want to get on their bikes, but they certainly could appreciate the dollars from filling around 30 rooms at a locally owned, non-chain motel.

Once again, worries about the weather were unfounded. No rain. We finally got the sun and heat we were expecting (while there’s snow in the forecast at home — glad to be missing that!)

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Day 2: 54 miles from Hinesville to Darien, Georgia, plus 14 miles around Jekyll Island

No rain .. yay! Today topped expectations in many ways.

4467D632-D9F9-421E-8E22-20F22DD78B28The word of the day is lollygagging.

Lollygagging while writing the day’s blog entry, of course. But also lollygagging a bit during the 54 miles we rode during the morning.

Lollygagging, as the Brit learned this morning, is a southern way of saying dawdling. Can I explain that five ways to Sunday?

Today’s biking exceeded expectations. The rain we were expecting to wake up to never materialized. The stretch of Highway 17 turned out to be pretty harmless. And we had a vehicle keeping traffic off our backs while we backtracked a bit from our hotel in Hinesville to get back on the East Coast Greenway

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Day 1: 46 miles from Savannah to Hinesville, Georgia

Where’s that southern heat? And here’s the scoop on alligator meat.

868732AE-71FF-4999-8DF7-D0E28B806485Take a look at how we’re all dressed in this year’s group photo, taken mid-morning in Savannah: long sleeves all around, and even some tights. So much for the warm southern weather we’d been expecting!

And given that it’s Veterans Day, we took time to call out the four vets in our group:

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Day 0: Exploring Savannah ahead of a weeklong bike ride

The annual Week-A-Year bike ride along the East Coast Greenway starts Sunday. Some of us couldn’t wait.

3A30EF1C-CF41-407C-9CF8-47A2336F5B7DAnother adventure on the East Coast Greenway begins Sunday. About 40 of us will spend the week biking from Savannah to Titusville, Florida. But some of us couldn’t wait, so we rode through Savannah and out to the giant Bonaventure Cemetery, of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” fame.

My fellow riders seemed more intent on finding the grave of Johnny Mercer, founder  of Capitol Records. He’s also the great-grandson of Hugh Mercer, a Confederate general who in turn was the grandson of the General Hugh Mercer killed at the Battle of Princeton during the Revolution. Somehow New Jersey is never far away!

I do love learning bits of history on bike rides, and there’s  more Revolutionary War history in Savannah. The Siege of Savannah in 1779   is a mystery to me, something not taught in U.S. History classes. I learned of the contribution of Haitians and the death of Count Pulaski (remembered through New Jersey’s Pulaski Skyway).

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Biking another segment of the East Coast Greenway, this time in Georgia and Florida

I’m heading out soon on a bike ride that is another installment of thhe East Coast Greenway Alliance’s Week-A-Year ride on track to reach Key West in 2019.

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Looking for No. 6

In a couple of weeks, we’ll be pedaling out of Savannah, Georgia, headed south for around 300 miles on our bicyles. We’ll follow the East Coast Greenway for six days, to the trail town of Titusville, Florida, near Cape Canaveral, where we will play on the seventh day.

Once again, our route will be a mix of trails away from traffic (sometimes lined with Spanish moss), quiet roads, roads with bike lanes or shoulders — and some not-great stuff, like more of U.S. 17, our nemesis last year. That’s the reality of creating a 3,000-mile route down the East Coast that goes through cities, rather than opting for the middle of nowhere to avoid anything difficult.

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