Tag: New Jersey

Too much he-man strength

busted inner tubeTime to get serious about my training if I’m going to ride 385 miles of the East Coast Greenway over six days come October. So today three of us headed into the hills and tacked on an extra 10-mile loop to our usual route to give us 50 miles.

We were just about to start on yet another hill when I heard a strange clack, clack. No, it wasn’t the sensor and reader for my cycle computer touching. We looked a little closer and discovered my tire had bulged out on one side and was hitting the brake pad. How this happened somewhere after mile 30 and not at the start is beyond me, but the easy solution was to let out some air, get the tire back inside the rim and pump it back up.

If only!

First we struggled to get the mini pump to properly attach to the valve. We even tried with another pump. Then we struggled to get the pump off. Air out. We tried again. And we let out all the air. And then we couldn’t get any air in.

What had we done?

With all that wrestling to get the pump off, the guys (because it wasn’t me!) had actually pulled the valve out of the inner tube! This one was history. And we were miles and a long uphill and downhill from the nearest bike shop.

Fortunately someone (not me!) had a spare tube. Once again, no air.

bike repairIt turns out that one had a small cut, caused perhaps by tools tucked in alongside it in the under-seat bag. We could quickly patch it, which I did, but fortunately another someone else (again, not me) had a spare tube. By this time we’d had enough practice with the pump and — phew — at the end heard the satisfying “pop” as the pump came off cleanly.

Back on the road!

 

 

Following the footsteps of George Washington … and his spy

A historical and family-friendly bike ride from Rocky Hill to Griggstown, home of that “notorious Tory spy” John Honeyman. Or was he really a spy for George Washington.

Time for another history-themed bike ride in New Jersey.

Continue reading “Following the footsteps of George Washington … and his spy”

A bike ride from Portugal to India without leaving New Jersey

We ate our way around the world on this 46-mile jaunt through northern New Jersey.

Northern New Jersey may be the last place you think of for a bike ride: densely populated urban areas with way too much traffic (and potholes) to make a cyclist happy.

This East Coast Greenway adventure showed us we had it all wrong. And it highlights just what a melting pot this state is.

Continue reading “A bike ride from Portugal to India without leaving New Jersey”

Another section of New Jersey’s Lawrence-Hopewell Trail is done

We discover more of the Lawrence-Hopewell Trail on a 20-mile ride that includes a few miles on the East Coast Greenway.

One of my longer bike rides over the past week was along part of the Lawrence-Hopewell Trail, a non-quite-finished 22-mile loop off the East Coast Greenway just south of Princeton.

We usually take the D&R Canal towpath (part of the East Coast Greenway) for about 5 miles to the turnoff to Brearley House and then ride past the Lawrenceville School and through Mercer Meadows, a big county park — basically going clockwise on the loop. This time we decided to go counterclockwise because we knew there was a section through the Carson Road Woods that we’d never been on.

Before we got to that, though, we found another section that’s been finished — a sidepath along Province Line Road. It’s the red dotted line in the upper right of this map, and its completion means the trail is 88% done. (See the full map here.)

I don’t have any photos, unfortunately, and it really seems like nothing glamorous —  basically a wide asphalted sidewalk right at the side of the road, with no little strip of green acting as a divider. But it’s a key connection on a road that’s busy at rush hour and where motorists go fast at any time. One person I know grumbles about the drainage grates running across the sidepath every so often … and I could do without the rocks around them (probably also for drainage — UPDATE: driving by, that looks like it’s been covered). But it’s a big step.

After all that excitement, we rode the trail on the edge of a Bristol Myers-Squibb campus to reach Carson Road Woods. It has five miles of marked trails, including one mile that’s part of the LHT. Our route felt more meadow-y than the heavily wooded Maidenhead Meadows trail, another new section (for us, at least) near the start (the green dots leading to the parking sign on the map).

After Carson Roads Woods we rode through a neighborhood to Rosedale Road, where we’d seen an LHT sign but had no idea where the trail was. Now we know — neighborhood roads, then trail.

Had we continued on the LHT, we’d have gone through the ETS site, using a trail we’ve previously ridden. Instead, we turned toward Princeton and then home.

All in all, a 20-mile day. Essentially flat, but definitely one for the hybrids.

Time to start training for the next East Coast Greenway ride

I opted for a flat training ride — and to find a way to a microbrewery 20 miles away.

Yes, I’m once again doing the East Coast Greenway‘s week-long fundraising ride, that one with the unimaginative name of Week-A-Year. This time it’s 385 miles over six days, from Wilmington, N.C., to Savannah. In October, so not killer heat but still hurricane season, as we learned last year. (Here’s the first pitch to please support it with a tax-deductible donation.)

I admit I wish it was a seven-day ride. The mileage is more than other rides, though we’re promised it will be flat. Hopefully with a nice tailwind. We’ve got 80-mile days going into and out of Charleston, S.C., and it would have been nice to split one of those in two, just to have more time to play tourist. But it is what it is. Sometimes you’re constrained by where you can get hotel rooms for all of us.

Flat or not, 80 miles is a lot. As are 385 miles (see the full itinerary here). So time to get serious about spending more time on the bike.

I didn’t feel like hills today, so I decided to figure out what it would take to get to this new microbrewery I’d read about last year called Screamin’ Hill. Not that I care about beer. But it could be a fun group ride sometime. (Just bring your own food — they have none. Not even pretzels. No permit.)

This place is only open Friday afternoon/evening and Saturday afternoon — the owners have real jobs, we were told when we pedaled by on a Sunday early this year (that ride was from Allentown, not from home, to kill time while the car was getting serviced).

Every craft beer has to have a story, and this is how this one starts:

“Screamin’ Hill Brewery harkens back to a time in America when life was simple, when farmers brewed with what was at hand from the year’s harvest.”

Whatever. I just wanted a ride.

So off I went, following the route we often take to go through the Assunpink Wildlife Management Area for more than half of the way. Then it was new sights. I hit the nine-mile Union Transportation Trail but gave it a miss since it’s not paved and I was on my road bike. I passed the Cream Ridge Winery. And a farm I know from the Trenton Farmers Market. And horses. It’s rural.

Turns out it’s just under 20 miles to the brewery. As good as flat. I tried a different route on the way back. The road to Allentown had more traffic. I’ll stick to the quiet option.

Add on a second, 12-mile ride to get some groceries, and I am feeling virtuous about my 52-mile day.

Biking with George Washington

How cool is this? Biking with George Washington.

This is the coolest bike ride of the year so far — pedaling with George Washington (OK, a reenactor) and about 80 “troops” from the site of Battle of Trenton to the Battle of Princeton. All that was missing (beyond Alexander Hamilton) were some Redcoats in hot pursuit (even if that last part isn’t historically accurate). Next year!

This 10-mile “Chasing George” ride (with accompanying historical talks) was organized by the Historical Society of Princeton with help from a number of organizations, including a few of us representing the East Coast Greenway who escorted one company of “soldiers” from the Trenton train station to the Douglass House, site of a Council of War after the Second Battle of Trenton and the starting point for this ride. Some 37 of us took off behind General Washington, followed by 32 others who took a wider view of history. They had ridden out from just south of Princeton to Washington Crossing (site of the Dec. 25, 1776 crossing of the Delaware River) and then onto Trenton.

Yeah, the kids loved it. They made sure they were up front with George!

Our route wasn’t historically accurate; we took the D&R Canal towpath (part of the East Coast Greenway), which wasn’t built until the 1830s. The General and his troops had swung wide to give the Brits the slip that night. We ended up near the Princeton Battlefield as part of Princeton’s annual Ciclovia. Too bad it’s held on the edge of town, so attendance is pretty sparse.

But what was so important about these battles? These are the 10 days that saved the American Revolution. And it really was almost at an end. Washington had suffered one loss after another in the New York area and had essentially fled through New Jersey to just across the Delaware in Pennsylvania. Much of the Continental Army had signed up for one year and could go home at the end of the year. And on Christmas night, the army crossed the Delaware, despite the snow and the cold, and surprised the Hessians in Trenton on the morning of the 26th. They won, shocking the British. (And no, the Hessians weren’t drunk). Soldiers stayed on. There was a second Battle of Trenton on Jan. 2 and Washington’s forces held on as night fell. The British planned to finish them off in the morning, but Washington and his troops slipped out of town on a back road heading for Princeton and places north. British soldiers heading south to Trenton spotted them as dawn broke, and there you have the Battle of Princeton. Another win for Washington, and the Revolution was saved.

Want more? Read “1776” if you haven’t already. And catch the re-enactment of the crossing every Christmas Day, take part in Patriots Week in Trenton the week after Christmas and then watch for the Historical Society of Princeton’s own Battle of Princeton events just after that.

Construction sites along the East Coast Greenway

It’s inspiring to hear about parts of the East Coast Greenway that are now under construction.

trail-construction

I’m just back from the East Coast Greenway summit in Providence, Rhode Island. And while some participants couldn’t hold back on their disappointment over the presidential election, I prefer to focus on the inspiring developments I heard about.

There’s a huge amount of progress in creating the off-road network between Connecticut and Delaware in particular. Some of this is because the governors in both Connecticut and Delaware want the East Coast Greenway to be part of their legacy, as I’ve written before. So projects that have been in development are now close to the ribbon-cutting.

In Connecticut, almost 10 miles of trail will be completed this year and a minimum of another 20 miles next year. I saw many of those Connecticut projects on our long weekend there this summer (that’s where the photo is from), and hearing this makes me feel less disappointed that a Portland-to-Hartford ride will likely follow this year’s Calais-to-Portland ride in 2018, not 2017.

Bonus: a bridge over a highway is to be installed one Saturday night early next year (perhaps in April?) and since the road will be closed, why not celebrate there with a midnight street party? Plans are afoot, and I am waiting on the details.

In New Jersey, momentum seems to be building for two key projects, One is a much better route across the Meadowlands, from Jersey City to Newark, that will be called the Essex and Hudson Greenway. It’s gone from concept to the start of a feasibility study in less than a year, which is just amazing. The other is an off-road road from the Middlesex Greenway in Edison to the Raritan River in Highland Park, on the other side of New Brunswick. That would then link with the D&R Canal towpath. Middlesex County appears to be serious about this, so let’s see how long it takes.

Pennsylvania has 10 East Coast Greenway projects under construction this year (one of them is already done!), and another nine are in planning and engineering or ready for construction next year. One is the extension of the Schuylkill River Trail to Bartram’s Garden. There are projects planned in every county from the New Jersey line to the Delaware line, though I don’t know how much easier an off-road ride from Trenton to Philadelphia will become without more work.

In Delaware, there’s just been the groundbreaking for a trail close to 9 miles long connecting Wilmington to New Castle that will replace a hellish 9 miles of roadway.

A few developments away from the Connecticut-to-Delaware corridor:

  • Rhode Island voters just passed a $35 million green bond that includes $10 million for bike paths.
  • Washington D.C. has just about finished a 9-mile route along the south side of Anacostia River that the East Coast Greenway considers its complementary route. Still to work out is the link back to the National Mall. But when I look at the overall plan for the Anacostia River Walk, I understand the construction boom in Southeast that I saw from the highway on the way back from Raleigh. Trails are an ammenity and help bring economic development!
  • Florida is spending $25 million annually on trails, and East Coast Greenway segments are priorities.

Trail dust

On Sunday, a group of us headed north from Princeton on the D&R Canal towpath.

ecg nj signI haven’t ridden north on the D&R Canal towpath from Princeton in a long time. So on Sunday a group of us headed out that way.

The D&R Canal towpath is part of the East Coast Greenway, and the trail was busy — maybe busier than I’ve ever seen it. We had plenty of shade, and having the canal right there made it even more pleasant. Loved the turtles lined up on a log — the same family as some Week-A-Year riders spotted three years ago?

But unlike some of those Connecticut trails from last week, this trail isn’t paved. It’s also not quite as smooth as the Hop River Trail and Airline South, so it’s not something I would want to do on a road bike.

And the closer we got to East Millstone, the more we encountered a dusty red surface. Everything got caked. This is what my bike looked like before I washed it:

dusty bike

And

dusty bike 2

My panniers also were in need of a wash, and my once-white sneakers now have an orange-brown tint. Oh well.

We also rode over a bridge repaired (replanked?) by some East Coast Greenway volunteers earlier this month. Thank you, guys! Though as a friend pointed out to me, a “path closed’ sign at the point where you had a detour option would have been a nice touch.

ecg nj trail repair

Total miles on the trail: 30

Total miles for the day: 39

Black, orange and 67 miles

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:

princetonx3

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:

princetonx2

And this driver takes his Princeton connection very seriously. Can you spot the tiger’s tale?

princeton car

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.

bike and basil

 

Roadside raspberries

Stopped for a berry break on my ride today. Great mix of sweet and tang.

roadside berries2Stopped 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?