Gold Coast 2009-July 12 (60 miles)

We finally managed to get on our first organized ride this season! June was a bust due to rain and other conflicts. The Gold Coast this year did not disappoint. We had beautiful, sunny weather..in the 80's. The nice thing about this ride is that it generally draws a smaller crowd and there are nice long stretches where we're riding alone. Here is Stu at the start of the ride at 8am.

Last year, we said that the first 8 miles were the most difficult....that's still true although there are many challenging hills throughout the ride. The 2 first giant hills are at mile 2.4 Mill Dam Road (0.6 miles) and mile 3.8 Cove Road/Youngs Hill Rd (?). After the first rest stop at Southdown School (mile 8.1) the next giant hill is in Seacliff: Albin/Prospect/Shore/Scudder Rd (mile 28.3). Here we are at the first rest stop:Our next rest stop was in Roslyn and it turns out that Tina saw us on the road turning onto Willets Road! What are the odds of that? Shortly after though, we missed a turn (we think at Muttontown Road) and took a 5 mile detour. Thanks to Stu's iPhone, we found our way back to Berry Hill Road to join the others. Here we are at the Roslyn stop:So we got detoured a bit on Old Hempsted Turnpike, Jericho Turnpike and Northern Blvd. We got thrown off because the roads have several names! We finally made it to the end...60 miles in total. It was a great ride and hope to do it again next year! Here we are at the end with our free Mister Softee ice cream cone!

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.