We test out L’Annexe de Mamie Colette in Titusville.
It’s the day after Thanksgiving. The last thing I need is a bakery.
And yet..
Continue reading “A hilly bicycle ride to a French bakery in New Jersey”See the Seward Johnson sculptures temporarily scattered around the Hopewell Valley.
Seward Johnson, of the Johnson & Johnson fortune, was a sculptor who created Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey. Now some of his work (or replicas of that work) are popping up elsewhere in Mercer County.
We spotted a life-like hotdog vendor in Trenton on a bike ride a few weeks ago. But when I read that the Hopewell Valley Arts Council has nearly a dozen pieces scattered across its part of the county (all temporarily, of course), I knew there was a bike ride in there.
Continue reading “A marvelous bike route in search of Seward Johnson sculptures in the Hopewell Valley”My Memorial Day weekend tally: 3 bike rides, 67 miles, lots of black and orange.
Memorial Day weekend training tally: out on the bike all three days, for a total of 67 miles. Though to be honest, all of that only equals the longest day on the Maine ride. Time to pick up the pace.
The big ride was Sunday — 31 miles with hills through Princeton and Hopewell and back. Memorial Day weekend traditionally is reunion weekend for Princeton University, when alums come back wearing the most garish black and orange print their class can find (once they hit the 25-year mark) or at least their class jackets. One year we hit the P-rade, when each class marches (we stood near the gathering point for the class meeting for their 20th reunion, dressed as P-rates of the Caribbean). Saturday night we caught glimpses of a heavily black-and-orange fireworks show. And on Sunday, we biked by homes of some proud alums. Here are a couple of examples:
This one had two banners — the one for the Class of 1932 is obscured by the tree leaves. The brunch with some easy-listening jazz was being set up in the garden as we went by:
And this driver takes his Princeton connection very seriously. Can you spot the tiger’s tale?
On Saturday, I combined my bike ride with a small errand: The garden needed some basil. Glad I could fit it into my little rear bag. It arrived home unscathed.
Stopped for a berry break on my ride today. Great mix of sweet and tang.
Stopped for a berry break on my ride today. Great mix of sweet and tang.
33 miles, and then a second, six-miler to pick up a few items from a store. Tough spin class on Saturday. The start of getting serious about my training?
Time to start training for the weeklong East Coast Greenway ride in October.
It’s time to revive this blog and start training — I’ll be riding in the East Coast Greenway’s annual weeklong fundraiser ride again come October, this time from Fredericksburg, Virginia to Raleigh, North Carolina.
So I rode two out of three days this Memorial Day weekend — the 40-miler was the “easy” way to Hopewell, while the 30-miler was the hillier way. So many cyclists wherever I looked! Sometimes it was a group decked out in lycra (oh, besides us), other times a family with a bike trailer for kids heading onto the towpath trail. There were even some (besides us, again) who’d ridden to catch our town’s Memorial Day parade.
So yes, May has been the month to start riding more than just to the train station and to work on the other end, plus the odd errand in town. One of my other notable rides was the 22-mile Four-Island Ride in New York with the East Coast Greenway.
But clearly I need to do more! This year’s ECG ride is being compressed into six days from seven because there wasn’t enough room for all of us in a small-town hotel. So this is what I’m facing:
Day 1: 68 miles from Fredericksburg to Richmond
Day 2: 31 miles from Richmond to Petersburg
Day 3: 80 miles from Petersburg to South Hill (hope it’s not too hilly!)
Day 4: 37 miles from South Hill west to Clarksville
Day 5: 59 miles from Clarksville to Durham (that’s the day we cross into North Carolina)
Day 6: 49 miles from Durham to Raleigh (I had no idea they were so far apart)
Exploring by bicycle 