Rides 2013 — add yours

[Danneaux]

Ah! Now I can place it, Jim; thanks. My, that surely is a beautiful area and rich in history, just as you said. A treat to see and read about.

Best,

Dan.

[moodymac]

Jim,

Did you forget your camera?  You usually have a thread leading to a lot of fantastic photos!

Tom

[JimK]

Actually I did bring the camera. But my sweetheart Wendy, who is a very talented painter, has been taking a photography class lately. I see the pictures she takes and it just makes me embarrassed by the poor quality of my shots! I did take a few though yesterday before I got too disgusted with myself!

Here is the Hudson River, looking south from the Kingson-Rhinecliff bridge:



Here is my breakfast burrito at Taste Budd's, the shot inspired by all those South Lakes cake shots!



and, continuing the food theme, my Nomad in front of Dolce in Kingston's Rondout district:

[moodymac]

Thanks Jim,

Photos are great, your sweetie must be very good!

The Super C bags (and color) are perfect for the bike.  Looks like you had a nice load on for your trip.  The strap from the frame and through the wheel; is that your method of a parking brake?  Nice lock and parking place.

Please always include the food shots.  I, like you, believe that thoughts of food and biking come from the same sensory gland.

Tom

[moodymac]

Jim,

I almost missed it!  Took another look and found your notebook.  Is that for your trips and bike info.?  If so, it looks like it is filling fast!  Not to be nosey.

Tom, whose sensory glands were in overdrive.

[JimK]

  Looks like you had a nice load on for your trip.  The strap from the frame and through the wheel; is that your method of a parking brake? 

I had some extra clothes in the panniers along with the books. Needed to be a bit presentable for the reading group!

Yeah that strap... I got started using it with the clickstand. But now I use it a lot. It just stabilizes the bike. If I stop by the side of the road and need to root around in my saddlebag, I will use that strap. The bike can just lean against me and it won't steer off and roll away and fall down. I keep that strap in one of the side mesh pockets of the SuperC bar bag. In the other side mesh pocket I keep the shoulder strap for the bar bag... which is already attached in that photo.

I am trying to get a little better about organizing my photobucket files. The older ones are in a big heap along with fountain pens, dogs, and who knows what all!

[Matt2matt2002]

Just out of interest, what did it cost to park your bike against the meter?
 

[JimK]

what did it cost to park your bike

Eeek! The day may come! I hear talk of places around the USA contemplating various taxes on bicycles.

Here is one cool thing though: the toll to cross the Kingston-Rhinebeck bridge eastbound is $1.50 - it's free westbound. That's for passenger cars. For bikes, it's free both ways!

[JimK]

http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/193038738

I didn't even bring the camera today. Wasn't much promise of fine views or anything. All the roads I've been on before, but this was a new combination. 40 miles, not too bad. 2000 feet of climbing though... a new high for the year. I should sleep well!

Riding again along the reservoir... first I pass some women's cycling club, must have been 15 riders, all in matching lycra. They seemed more to be just enjoying themselves out in the beautiful countryside and not so determined to break personal speed records.

But then, wow, a bald eagle flew by along the road - it must have been just 20 feet away from me. The closest I have ever been to such a bird. Then a couple minutes later it flies by again the other way, carrying a big branch in its beak. Wow! Up a bit along the road is a patch of woods where there was a photographer, a fellow I see there often enough, with a monster telephoto lens. He saw the eagle land in a tree... then, ah, there it goes again! Back out of the trees there were a couple more photographers... and another eagle! The photographers said it was the male.

I doubt I could have caught a good shot of either bird - you have to be lucky or have the right lens! But it's something I will remember!

[Danneaux]

I always enjoy your ride reports, Jim, and go to the street views on your map links so I can see a bit of what you saw. Not a lot of road shoulder in some places; any trouble with cars giving you room? I'm guessing traffic count is pretty low.

You had some nice views of the reservoir, and -- Boy! -- some climbing, indeed!

I'm so glad you saw the bald eagle (and twice was even better). Those sorts of things stay with a person and make memories as nice as any photo you could have taken. Sounds to me as if it is nest-building. Given the size of their nests, I imagine you may well see it again on future rides -- fingers crossed for luck! How fortunate to see it so close; I'll bet it felt as if you could have touched it. Something about traveling outside a car seems to assure birds. On my own walk today, I got within about a meter of two Canada geese. They were completely unafraid, and it was nice to be that close without scaring them.

I hope the weather is much improved for you, Jim. All signs of Spring out my way at the other end of the country. Now, I want the sunshine and warmth to go with it!

All the best,

Dan.

[John Saxby]

That's a nice trek, Jim, and a real bonus to see the boids!  We visit those parts from time to time--have fond memories of the Catskills.  Old friends have a place near Ossining, SE of Bear Mtn Park and about 100 kms south of your ride; and in the early 1980's, when we lived in Manhattan, with some friends we rented a place near Hunter Mtn.  Lovely riding country, demanding at times, but that thins out the 2-wheeled traffic, no?

Have a long transcontinental ride planned (but not yet confirmed) this summer, about 12,000 k's round trip on my airhead, up the Ottawa Valley to the Soo, across the flatlands & the Rockies to Northern California, then Oregon to Vancouver, then to the Okanagan, Banff-to-Jasper, Saskatoon, and home via Superior's north shore. That will also serve as a reconnaissance for a BC/Alberta ride on my Raven-with-Rohloff next year...but if my mechanic advises against the transcontinental ride on my BMW, I've thought of doing instead a cycle-touring ride around & through the Adirondacks, south from Ottawa to the Finger Lakes, then eastwards towards Albany, brushing the northern boundaries of your turf, & home via Lake Placid.

So many roads, never quite enough time, eh?

Cheers,

J.

[JimK]

Yeah, these roads would be dreadful if there were much traffic. But there's not! Probably a car every ten minutes or so on most of this route. Some cars give tons of room and other folks cut it pretty close but at least the frequency is low enough it doesn't run the stress level up.

Spring is really slow to come here. Lots of plants coming up and buds on some trees... yes, and nesting eagles! But I ran into a bit of sleet on my ride today, or snow... white stuff coming down, anyway. I was chilly the whole way. Temperature in the 40s but rather windy too.

Ossining! I lived in Ossining for a few months, Nov 1991 to August 1992. I was working at IBM Yorktown. I don't think I ever tried riding a bike in Westchester County. Roads there are like the roads here, but the traffic is lunatic. My sister lives in Norwalk, Connecticut, and I have been dreaming about a ride down to her place. Just a hundred miles or so, but maybe with camping gear I would take three days. Looks like some reasonable Multi-Use State Forests that could works for overnights. Looks like maybe the far eastern part of Westchester, east of Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, might work. A friend who knows that area says probably if I can avoid rush hour and lunch time, it could work!

Hunter Mountain! That is practically my back yard, of course! Here is a photo from November 2011:



I don't have much desire to ride coast to coast. I guess I drove it when I moved back here in 2007 after my decade in Oregon. I-80 across Wyoming is mighty desolate! One of my big dream rides though is around the Great Lakes. Yeah, north of Lake Superior, wow, that looks like some remote country up there!

So many roads, indeed!

[John Saxby]

Nice photo, Jim.  Hunter Mountain!  I think I've been on that ridge...

My friends in Ossining tell me that there's now a bike trail just a little east of there, a N-S link from Manhattan to the reservoirs north of Ossining (would that be the Croton system?) -- all told, about 100 miles.  My friend Jim, with whom I cycled the Gaspé in 2010, occasionally rides into NYC from Ossining on that trail--it's a paved route, formerly a railway line.  As you know, the main rail link runs along the Hudson, on its east bank. That N-S trail doesn't help much with your E-W route to Norwalk, I know.

My possible cycle-touring ride in the west (2014?) won't be a transcontinental affair -- I'm thinking of taking the train to Vancouver or Jasper, and then doing a circuit in the Canada/US Pacific Northwest, maybe based on a Vancouver-Jasper-Banff--Portland triangle.  Then take the train back east again -- though the idea of cycling east across the Prairies with the wind AT MY BACK is appealing.  Cycling through hundreds of kms of black spruce in Northern Ontario, however, not so much...

North of Superior is scenically stunning, but friends who have cycled it remind me that the truck traffic ain't much fun -- it's the Trans-Canada Highway (#17).  Won't be quite so bad on my BMW.  Some cyclists go south of Superior via the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, so as to avoid the truck traffic.  Even at that, there's a stretch of the Trans-Canada east of the Soo which West-to-East cyclists have to travel, before cutting south at Espanola, to Manitoulin Island in Georgian Bay. (Manitoulin is the world's largest fresh-water island, and an altogether fabulous place for 2-wheelers.)

Hope you have good weather soon -- we finally have spring today, it seems.

Best,

J.

[JimK]

Here's an interesting journal from a fellow who seems to have avoided the trucks north of Lake Superior by risking moose and polar bear instead, far as I can tell!

http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/page/?o=1&page_id=186099&v=Fj

[John Saxby]

Thanks, Jim.  You really have to like black spruce if you go the northern route, through Hearst & Sioux Lookout.  Long time back, I took the train from Toronto to Winnipeg in mid-January -- 24 hrs of rocks-and-trees-and-snow-and-ice along that route, and we were still in Ontario, if you can imagine...

But a circuit of the Great Lakes would be well worth doing, for sure, and no slight undertaking.  A friend just published a fine book of photography on the lakes -- Sweet Seas, by Mark Schacter.  (That was the early French explorers' term, les mers douces--I doubt they'd use the same words today, unfortunately.)  Mark's from Thunder Bay originally.  The lakes have also called forth some great music:  many people will know Lightfoot's "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", and it's splendid; but for me the best is Stan Rodgers' last album, "From Fresh Water". Poignant because it was his last one.

If I make the ride on the motorcycle this summer, I'll let you know what it looks like for a cyclist.

J.