NYACK 10/12/08-40 miles

This weekend we added two new Eb Riders-Sheri and Scott (from Colorado)! I took them up t Nyack to show them what our rides are like out here. We had beautiful weather...in the 70's. The leaves have already started to turn orange up in Nyack. We started at the Hudson River Parkway where I normally park. We met Stu up at the Alpine police station and continued up via 9W through Piermont and ultimately to the Runcible Spoon in Nyack. Here are a few pics of our trip!

Here is Sheri and Scott reaching the Alpine Police Station:
Me and Sheri after the big climb up to Alpine:
Here we are at the New York border:
Under the George Washington Bridge:

Twin Lights 9/28/08 - 50 Miles

Today, Stu and I rode in the Twin Lights Ride in Highlands, NJ. This was last year's most beautiful ride. This year...it rained, although it was still a pretty ride. I will definitely do this again. I took more pictures this week. Last week, I hit some rough road and my camera popped out of my bento box and smashed all over the road. (That's why you only saw one photo from ENY). It lightly rained for the first part of the ride, but thankfully the rain stopped by the time we reached the 20 mile mark. Here's the map:
That is a chocolate fondue tower and yes, those are marshmallows!

Escape New York 9/20/08-67 miles

Yesterday, I participated in the Escape New York ride up to Rockland Lake. This is only the second time that I have done this ride and it was even better than I remembered. We started at 122nd St and Riverside Drive, crossed the GWB to NJ and up to Rockland County. When I've done this ride on my own, I took 9W, but in the ENY ride, we took much more scenic routes through beautiful neighborhoods in Englewood Cliffs, Demarest, Closter, Norwood (NJ), Orangeberg, Blauvelt, West Nyack and Valley Cottage (NY). Thankfully, we avoided East Clinton Road (1.2 miles) in Tenafly. That road is a killer...the most difficult hill I've ever climbed. I'll have to remember that next time, we can turn right on Dean Drive and not go straight onto E.Clinton Road. The trade-off is a short but difficult hill up Walnut. It's only 0.6 miles but it feels like much more. It was a beautiful day for a ride! It was sunny and 71 degrees. I started at 8am and ended at 3pm. My ride time according to my bike computer was 5:42:39. I'm not sure how long I stopped to rest, but I probably needed a little more time because my legs were really getting tired. I ended up stopping on my own for a bit somewhere after the second stop. There were 3 rest stops for the 67 mile route. One at 21 miles, 35 miles and 55 miles. Lots of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, fig newtons, bagels, oreos and at stop #3, someone made homemade brownies. Yum! Here's the one picture I took before my battery died. As of today, I have put 569 miles on my bike this season. That's more than last year! Hooray!

Here's the route for the next time we come back from Rockland Lake:

Piermont Rd becomes County Rd
L, QR to W.Clinton, Dean Drive (1.0)
L to Ivy Ln (@ light) to Hudson Ave to (0.5)
R to Elwood (0.1)
L to Lydecker (up hill) (0.1)
L onto Glenwood Dr, then R to Lydecker (0.6)
L to Walnut (0.6)
L to Woodland (0.1)
R to Pershing (0.3)
R to Summit (0.3)
L to Palisades Ave (0.4)

The Cloisters-9/13/08 -20 miles

Today we decided to ride up the West Side highway up to the Cloisters and Fort Tryon Park. I took the ferry across to Manhattan to meet Nan and Stu at54th street and set out to explore the west side. Here is a photo of the beautiful George Washington Bridge.
This is us on the way up to the Cloisters.On the way back, we passed the NYC Swim Event. These people are swimming from the GWB to 58th street....in the Hudson River! Yuck!
Further down the greenway, we passed Fairway and some sailboats.

26th Annual Gold Coast Tour-7/13/08- 55 Miles

This is the ride that I usually do on or near my birthday. It is by far the most difficult ride of all the ones that we do. It's out on the North Shore of Long Island. We did 55 miles today. The first 8 miles are definitely very difficult, probably the most difficult of the entire ride. I think Nan may disagree though. We used every gear that we had. There are many hills throughout this ride. The other ones that I can remember right now is one in SeaCliff and one on Albin/Prospect/Shore/Scudder Road. There were 3 food rest stops (PBJ, bananas, oranges, pretzel sticks) and one water stop.We passed many beautiful mansions and were passed by many Porsches, BMWs, Mercedes, Ferraris. They are not too nice to cyclists. We also passed by a horse farm! Here's a pic of our new friend:
Me and Nan at the Roslyn Rest Stop (Mile 32.9):

Here we are at the finish line! (Post Mr.Softee):

Atlantic Beach, North Carolina-6/28-7/05/08

Hi everyone,
We just got back from a fantastic week in Atlantic Beach, NC. The gang obtained their advanced scuba certification, while I put on some more miles on Big Red (my bike). There is really only one safe place that we found to ride...Salter Path Road (aka Route 58). It is 20 miles from Atlantic Beach to the end at Emerald Isle. We tried to do that ride the day after we arrived, but we only made it 20 miles because it was super windy. It was so windy that we almost got blown off our bikes! The winds died down for the rest of the time we were there. We tried again on Monday afternoon and made it to the end and back for a total of 40 miles. We left at 1pm so it was really, really hot. On Thursday (scuba day for Stu, Nan, Marissa and Matt), I did the ride again, but this time left at 8:30am. It was a beautiful ride, no wind and not too hot. This ride is totally flat but can be windy at times. Not alot of pics here because it was so windy..I needed both hands on the bike.

Tour de Cure-Basking Ridge 6/7/08- 30 miles

Nan and I rode in the American Diabetes Association Tour de Cure in Basking Ridge, NJ yesterday. It was very, very hot..in the 90's, but we did just fine! We did the 30 mile route since this was our first time. It's a very nice ride, not as challenging as the Princeton ride, but just as beautiful. We rode past many of Nan's old haunts that she visited in high school, as well as the Great Swamp National Park and the Lyons VA Hospital. This is a smaller ride...they had over 400 registrants but felt smaller. The SAG wagons were all along the route. Very impressive.

Montauk Century 5/25/08 - 65 miles

This is our first ride of the year! These pics are at the end of a very long day out in Montauk. We are packing up at the Babylon train station. This is Nanner's first organized ride! The day started out sunny, but it turned cold at the 60 mile point and started to rain. By the end, we were freezing and wet!