Just One More Ride

 Just one more ride to add. After the Manhattan ride (The Cherry On Top), I was picked up at the hotel by my older brother Ed. We packed up the car with my bike and luggage and sped off to his home in New Jersey. He lives in a beautiful lakeside community called Fayson Lakes. A great place to live and raise a family. Every year, Ed and his Wife, Rose, host a fishing derby for the kids. Prizes are awarded based on size, number and combined weight caught within age categories. The derby is being held this Saturday and he can always use a helping hand to set up the operation. I am staying for a couple of days to lend a helping hand.

The area is a beautiful location for cycling as well. Some roads are narrow without much of a shoulder and other roads are remote and breathtakingly beautiful. I set up a 30 mile out and back to Denville. The route is at the bottom of this blog setup as a figure 8.

The route starts out crossing a dam that forms the largest lake and is currently home of many Canadian geese and their goslings. The temperatures were cool and the winds were calm as I crossed the dam about 8 AM.

I popped out on to Boonton Ave. A rolling road without much of a shoulder that has a nice rolling action so that you drop down a bit to pick up speed and stand on the peddles to get to the top of the next hill only to repeat the sequence over and over.  On occasion, you will hear a large truck behind you and then pull off to the side to let them pass. Cars on the other hand can easily maneuver around you.

There are many opportunities to leave more traveled roads and head off to quiet roads the travel around additional lakes with only occasionally crossing paths with people walking their dogs.

School is still in session and it's a weekday, but you can imagine the lakes in the summer with kids in the water and sail boats and paddle boats dotting the lakes

The lakes will often freeze over in the winter and the summer activities will give away to winter sports and ice skating.

The turn around point is in Denville about 15 miles into the ride. Denville is a small community with an main street lined with small upscale shops. A stop at Church Street Bagels is mandatory.

I find cycling to be a very sensory activity. As you ride your muscles and lungs strain as you accelerate and climb up the hills. You feel the wind as it washes over you arms and legs. Your mind calculates distances to the next turn when to accelerate or decelerate through the turns and skin is cooled as your sweat evaporates as you coast down the hills. Your ears are listening to the sounds behind you. Is it a car, or a truck or maybe a school bus? What's it's speed and do they have enough room to pass you safely? You feel the vibrations of the bike as it rolls along the road surface. Sometime smooth over an newly paved road, sometimes harsh vibrations over an older road and sometimes jolts as you roll over frost weathered roads that will require replacement soon. Don't forget about the smells of newly cut lawns or blooming flower and bushes as you pass by. On occasion you will pass through a microclimate where the air is rushing down a valley or a forest and it will suddenly turn from warm summer temperature to a stream of cool, cool air enveloping you. I cannot comprehend any activity that subjects you to as many pleasurable sensory experiences as cycling. 

Today's Photos

The Cherry On Top

Well today is the day. The final day of our New York State journey. From Buffalo to the tip of Manhattan. A total of 619 miles in 10 days. 6 guys from across the US meeting in Buffalo to share the pleasure of the joy of cycling; Chuck, Chris, Doug, Frank, Mike and myself. 

When we were planning this trip. We were simply going to cycle from Buffalo to Albany to follow the Erie canal. A nice trip but when I realized that we could continue on cycle trails all the way to the southern tip of Manhattan, it wasn't difficult to nudge the rest of the group to take on the challenge. The planning started in late January with each of the riders taking a task. Hotel rooms, dinners, breakfast stops, lunch stops, vehicles and bike routes.  You break all the tasks down and it's all very doable.

Today was the cherry on top of the tour. Perfect cycling weather, cool in the morning, blue skies and a promise of warmer temperatures as the day progressed. None of us had cycled in NYC before. Our route started north of Manhattan in Yonkers, travel down the west side to the southern tip of Manhattan, referred to as the battery after the artillery batteries that were positioned along the southern tip of Manhattan to protect the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam when the Dutch had control. The tour continued up the east side winding toward Central Park in the center of the island before exiting north, through Harlem (the name is another Dutch gift originally Haarlem), before returning to Yonkers (another Dutch gift, Jonkheer).

The beautiful bike path continued right to the northern tip of Manhattan (who would have thought), though the morning rush hour traffic could roared close by.

Left to right, Mike, Frank, Chuck, Chris and Doug

The trail ended in Van Cortlandt Park and before entering Manhattan, we had a quick safety talk. Use hand signals; right, left, stop and obstacles. Keep together, regroup as necessary, leader up front with a sweep rider in the rear. All pretty standard stuff for a group ride. Manhattan is always under construction with detours likely.

We jumped from the trails to the city streets, mostly residential. A nice warm-up before the much denser streets ahead. Right, left, right left winding our way to the Broadway bridge, crossing the Harlem River. The bike lane across the bridge was under construction, so we had to scoot across the bridge and more twisty turns followed by a detour or two until we found our way to the Empire State Trail following the Hudson River south and beneath the George Washington Bridge, or as the natives call it, the GW.

As we continued south, we started to pick up riders zipping by us and runners and walkers. At about 21 miles into the ride it was time for some coffee. Using Google, Mike located a bakery just a couple of blocks off the trail. Someone wondered if we actually ride our bikes, because all of our photos are of us having coffee. I assured her that we did indeed ride, but that any ride without coffee and snacks was a wasted tour. "Ride to eat and eat to ride" is my motto.

We reached mile zero of the Empire State Trail at 12:30. After stopping at "ground zero" of the World Trade Center. We then took a short detour to view the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island in the distance near the New Jersey side of the harbor. It was now time to head back to Yonkers mostly following the East side of Manhattan.

On the way back, we hit several detours that made changes to our planned route. NYC is always under construction it seems and our primary goal was to make our way to Central Park. We hit several sights along the way, under the Brooklyn Bridge and the United Nations to name a few. On way back we followed the surface streets. We reached the Southeast corner of the park near the Plaza Hotel and spied a Sabrett's hot dogs cart and just had to stop to get one and a drink. We were hitting all the high points today.

Now it was time to dive into Central Park and enjoy a couple of miles of car and traffic light free cycling as we continued north. As we exited Central Park, we still had a ways to go to get back to the hotel in Yonkers we continued our navigation hoping that the charge of our various GPS devices would hold out. 

Chuck had a plan to continue on without them. Simply find Broadway and follow it all the way to the Broadway bridge and pick our way to the trail-head. Fortunately that wasn't required.

The route placed us on the Harlem River Greenway that followed the Harlem River Drive (HRD). The ride was unexpectedly beautiful with the Harlem River to our right and tall apartments located in the Bronx on the far side of the river.

After crossing the Broadway Bridge, during rush hour traffic, it was retracing our morning's twisty left, right, left to the Van Cortlandt Park and the trail head. With 9 more miles to go, we were back to the hotel.

A wonderful and unforgettable day of cycling.

If you would like to recreate the entire tour, the collection of the 10 days of routes are located at the following URL: https://ridewithgps.com/collections/3426853

I hope that you found this blog enjoyable.

Happy Biking,

Brian Cox 

Today's Photos

A Chilly Day For The First Of June

For the first day in June, it was a chilly start. Riders were outfitted in their cold weather gear this morning as it was overcast and chilly. If you look at the Epic Ride Weather image below, you can see that the temperature were in the low 50's but it felt more like the low 40's. Must have been because of the overcast clouds and damp air. With everyone bundled up, we headed off.

The trails today, like yesterday, were asphalt and the trails were mostly rail to trails. Meaning that the trails were built on the right of ways of abandoned rail lines. Being abandoned rail lines, the trails were mostly straight and if there were curves, they were gentle. While on the rail to trails, the climbs never exceeded 2 or 3% grades.

The ride today was fairly short, only 48 miles so we left pretty late at 10 AM and took our time. We even took a coffee stop at 14 miles at a nifty place that we had found on Google.  The shop as right off the path in a town called Mahopac. This was a great example to not judge a book by it's cover, the shop on the exterior was nondescript, but once you stepped into it, you almost felt that you should be taking off you shoes. The menu was heavily tilted toward teas plus they had cold brewed coffee. We were generally shocked how much we enjoyed our unexpected drinks. The name of the shop is Rowseelee. Click on the link to find out a bit more about the shop.

The lunch followed at the 24 mile mark and the beautiful trails continued. Again, today as in the previous days, the amount of time and attention paid to making these beautiful cycling and walking paths were very enjoyable and as we were inching closer the Manhattan, they became more heavily used. There were tunnels, bridges, old rail road stations and memorials. I had even spotted a COVID-19 Memorial.

The sun eventually broke out, the day warmed up and became very delightful. I might even like to do the Buffalo to NYC trip again sometime, perhaps a mid-June trip.

Tomorrow will be the cherry on top. We're heading into Manhattan from Yonkers to the battery and back again. About 52 miles round trip. None of us have ridden in Manhattan previously and we don't know what to expect. We hoping that we won't have any significant issues, Manhattan has upgraded the city to make it more bike friendly and we'll have a complete report after the ride is completed. We plan on leaving Yonkers at 8 AM, hitting Manhattan shortly after rush hour traffic, circle the island and be out of the city before evening rush hour traffic. We'll know if the plan worked in 24 hours. Wish us the best.

Today's Photos