Hi folks, I'm starting this thread so other members of my bicycle club can post questions about our club's Longest Day, single day bike ride here.

For those who are not familiar with the ride, it's a NJ bike ride with 3 options. The most popular is the 208 mile route, then there's a Double Metric (125 mile or 200 Km) and the century route (100 miles). We have a web page dedicated to the Longest Day (http://somers515.googlepages.com/home) that Sandy (the coordinator) has put together for the club. That web page is going to have a link to this thread so we can try to contain the material in one thread (instead of it being over many sites and/or many threads).

For the regulars of Bikeforums.net, please be nice to these folks, some may be first timers and will have a ton of questions. I'll try to monitor this thread as often as possible to answer as many question about the ride as I can. I don't expect a whole of of traffic until May but you never know. For the new members of Bikeforums.net please be nice to the other members of this forum. A great number of them have useful information on doing rides a lot longer and harder than the Longest Day.

The Longest Day ride is held close to the longest day of the year. We can't make it the exact day as the rates at the hotels at both the starting point and the finish double with the summer season. Also the traffic at the end jumps as High School graduates head 'down the shore' for graduation day parties. Not a good combination.

It starts in Port Jervis, NY meanders through the state of NJ and finishes in Cape May. I think this is the easiest double century there is as it's all down hill. ;-) The net climb is -525 ft and as a 'flat lander' I can easily say that even the most difficult climb is doable without getting off the bike.

For those posting questions please moderate your language and sign up to become a member of Bikeforums.net to post to this thread. Thanks

This looks fun.

How do riders get back to Port Jervis (and their cars?) It's about a 3-4 hour drive between points.

This looks fun.

How do riders get back to Port Jervis (and their cars?) It's about a 3-4 hour drive between points.

Getting to Port Jervis and home from Cape May are up to the individual riders/team. This is an basically an unsupported ride which is why the club requires each team to have a SAG for their team. All rest stops are of your choosing and you need supply you're own food and drink. Despite this is still an excellent ride. You'll get a Polo Jersey and a group meal the day after (breakfast). More details at Longest Day (http://somers515.googlepages.com/home) web page.

As a general rule the teams meet in one place, usually someone's home. They then drive to Port Jervis, stay overnight, ride to Cape May, stay overnight, join in the group breakfast and talk about the ride. The SAG either rides with the team (this is very annoying to the rest of the riders) or rides ahead and meets the team in between or the planned stops.

If everything is unsupported, no food, no rest stops, no SAG, why do you have to pay for the ride and pay for membership for your club? Why don't I just get a friend or a few friends and do the ride on my own later in the spring or during the summer when the weather is nicer than in April and save the money that I would pay for the ride and club membership and use that to support my own ride since I'm riding on my own any way.

If everything is unsupported, no food, no rest stops, no SAG, why do you have to pay for the ride and pay for membership for your club? Why don't I just get a friend or a few friends and do the ride on my own later in the spring or during the summer when the weather is nicer than in April and save the money that I would pay for the ride and club membership and use that to support my own ride since I'm riding on my own any way.

exactly!!! good point, couldn't agree more.

Well, you do get reduced hotel rates, at both the starting point and ending point, plus a polo shirt. Hotel savings may add up to more than $35, the entrance fee. Presumably also, someone will help you should you be striving to form a SAG team

If everything is unsupported, no food, no rest stops, no SAG, why do you have to pay for the ride and pay for membership for your club? Why don't I just get a friend or a few friends and do the ride on my own later in the spring or during the summer when the weather is nicer than in April and save the money that I would pay for the ride and club membership and use that to support my own ride since I'm riding on my own any way.
Careful, the ride is not in April, it's June 14. The $35 are for the administration, things like checking out the route and coming up with the alternate routes around the detours. As Herman47 pointed out the discounts at the two hotels, the shirts (not the Jersey that's $65 extra) and the breakfast the day after. I'm not on the committee so I don't know all the details.

Also the March deadline was so you could have the Jersey by the Longest Day. The final deadline to sign up is May 14, I think you can still order a Jersey until then also. You just won't get it before the Longest Day.

The membership is an insurance thing.

For those of you who are preparing for the Longest Day, I've put up the initial javascript planner page (http://www.linuxha.com/other/non-ha/bicycle/planner.html) to help with planning out your stops and mile markers along the way on the route. I'll also be leading longer rides throughout April and May that are useful for training for the Longest Day. If you need to look at my routes they can be found on http://www.bikely.com/listpaths/by/ncherry. Also I may be able to help create new routes as long as it's within the areas I ride in (NJ).

Today (5/8) was the first official meeting and I met about a dozen folks who will be riding the Longest Day. Some very good questions. I hoping the folks will start showing up here soon and there will be more questions. Here's the link to the alternated route:

http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/CJBC-s-Longest-Day-2008-K

This is the alternate route, if we find out the bridge may be out on June 14th then this (the above route) will be the route. The above route is about 1 mile shorter but we lose the stores in Allentown.