Last weekend I had made plans with NR to ride a 300k up to Middletown, PA. I stood him up. (politely)
I was feeling like I hadn't spent enough time with Teresa and spending time with Teresa is definitely one of the things that keeps me going.
HOWEVER, I devised a sneaky plan to go biking anyway- just with her. About a year ago I heard about this place:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandon...vania_Turnpike

We made a last minute decision to go, called a couple of willing friends, packed up the bikes and drove 130 miles so that we could ride 13. Whoa.

I would definitely go back in the spring and I wholeheartedly encourage anyone who's into creepy history to check it out. I expected the experience to be kinda scary, but it was not. It was actually beautiful (to me, anyway) and totally fascinating.

I just uploaded my flickr pics. Enjoy:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/2797683...7622630717037/

That's cool, gonna have to check that out with the kids. What route did you take to get there? Access point?

I'm riding tomorrow at like 7 or 7:30 with my sometimes Sunday group, maybe we'll see you guys somewhere along the way.

Easy. I70 east till it dead-ends in Breezewood. R on Rte.30. L on Tannery rd. and park at the corner.
There is a Pike2Bike sign and a dirt path up a short hill and voila, you're there.
I certainly hope so. Ride one of the short versions of the route.

:o Catchng up on my :beer: drinking and... sleep... and I watched Thelma and Louise... :innocent: and the History channel is running a bunch of shows about the universe--pulsars, quasars, blazars--that sort of stuff.

Oh... I forgot... I pulled stuff--tiny little pebbles and glass--out of my tires and coated the cuts and contact area with ShoeGoo in prep for tomorrow--want to decrease my risk of flats from the trail.

Neat pictures by the way. Reminds me of a Smirnoff TV commercial where they held an impromptu rock concert in an abandoned tunnel.

Keep that up and I'll catch your mileage in 2010 :D

C'mon, sonnyboy, this old man needs some company and competition for 2010 mileage. :thumb:

:50:

LOL! I forgot about the 50+ smiley. Good one.

OK guess where and who I saw today by this conversational snippet:
Another fun overheard comment, someone asked City Councilperson Bill Henry if he would be riding with the group and he said that he never learned how to ride a bike but their was this guy who used to give beginning bike lessons in Druid Hill Park and I really wanted to go but things kept coming up. .. so I got his card and I guess if we can find the time he's going to learn to ride.

Also for those of you who want something a bit different the memorial ride for Jack Yates is tomorrow. http://www.baltimorespokes.org/artic...91103125844820

I tried to take apart and grease my bottom bracket today, the 8mm bolt holding it together was super tight but I got the crank off, then I went out and bought the tool to remove the cups, got home and tried to take both them off with no success, tried clockwise, counterclock wise, drive side moved a tiny bit counterclockwise. all I really managed to do was make the cup notches look like crap, so I put it back together, greased what i could. Then went for a test ride. Road w/no hands and the creaking went away, hmmmmmm?

So I put it in the trainer to eliminate the headset, road no hands in 50-11, no creaking, put my hands on the bars and BAM creaking. So I went away an disassembled the headset (nothing I haven't done before), cleaned and greased everything, put together ok.

Now I have a strange rubbing sound from the head set? remove and reassembled 10 dozen times, swapped cups, still have noise. loosen, tighten headset, still noise.

this headset is somewhat idiot proof, IS headset, top is a bearing assy w/centering ring and bottom is bearing assy that slides over fork race and into bottom of headtube, no pressed in nothing. No clue what I did wrong. Maybe bike doctor will have time tomm to fix it for me. :bang:

Just thought I'd chime in and officially introduce myself here.

I've recently become car-free(lite) after my car got totaled by an oblivious soccer-mom, so biking Baltimore is my new career :) If you see a kid on a Specialized Tricross sport, with a dorky helmet, brown bag and a Joe's Bike Shop jersey, that'd be me! Say hi, or stop by Mt. Washington shops for some coffee..'cause I'll be there if I'm not biking.

Welcome to the thread, patrickgh.

welcome patrick, see ya around town.

btw no such thing as dorky helmet, just a dork if you don't have a helmet and ride :thumb:

carbon can be strange in the way sounds are transmitted. I thought my bb setup was still screwed because I had creaking. Loosened the front skewer and re seated the front wheel-creak gone. Rose it today and everything is sweet.

Both of these are ME.
Barry: My son said he met you at the Jones falls planting. Said a bunch of cyclist were biking trees for the planting. Did you actually carry a tree on your semi.

old guy image was me riding GB's ride. Couldn't keep the pace and turned back at 20 miles. Don't know if my performance is Lymes related or the pace. Pace was quick but not that quick, 15.5!!!!! Should have been able to keep up with that. Hope you guys had an enjoyable rest of the day. It was a beautiful day for a ride.

'bout time:)

Just got home at about 7:30pm. Long day. Started at 6am riding to Oregon Ridge.

Part of the reason I took so long getting home is that I didn't want to do anymore climbing, but there wasn't any way out of it. I had to do some to get back to Towson. I took Paper Mill Rd into Jacksonville, had a couple Big Macs and a soda in Jacksonville, then I headed down Sweet Air to Manor, Manor to Glen Arm, Glen Arm to Cromwell Bridge, Cromwell Bridge up "Luskin's Hill" to Mylander Lane, went thru an alleyway to Putty Hill, then took my usual route home from work.

Once I got home, I dumped all the excess ballast then rode to the Royal Farm Store to get some fast carbs (i.e., junk food, namely Mike and Ike's), some chocolate covered donuts, and some raisin bran cereal. I'm still working on the Mike & Ike's. :o

I think I'll take tomorrow off the bike, but I'm prep'ing stuff anyway in case I wake up and change my mind.

I really bungled recording this ride on the cell phone GPS, so I'm going to have to reconstruct it by hand. [:mad: at myself]

At least I'm home in time to watch FX. They're showing Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer... again.

My day- 6:45AM-7PM 132 miles

... and, passing my 2008 mileage.

Four trees:
http://photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._4860121_n.jpg

It was a blast being in a forest on wheels pedaling around B'more. We delivered something like 25 free trees by bike, some where just dropped off on porches others we dug holes and planted. Tree Baltimore was expecting that we would not be able to do it all by bike but we did!

Your son is real nice, I think he was impressed that you are known to the B'more cycling community.

I wondering if we should form a "B" level group for those of us who can't keep up with the faster guys, maybe try to coordinate a shorter route with a longer route so we can all meet for lunch or something. GB's 4 reservoir ride and my "time warp" route would be a good option.

Ran into Patrick again today, he had to work and missed the Yates memorial ride. Ms GB showed up for the ride so it was sort of like seeing GB. All together about 80-100 people showed up including a lot of Jack Yates' family (6-8) from out of state. They all had matching jersey's made for the occasion, with a goat on a roof logo. The story is when Jack was a kid he wanted to bring home a goat from a farm they were visiting. Of course living in the city with a small yard so his parents asked where would they keep a goat and Jack said "On the roof." Very impressive that cycling was so much part of his family life style. At the ghost bike his brothers wanted an explanation of the accident and expressed a lot of outrage over such a senseless death.

Some of the conversations around the spoke card inspired me to try and plan a bikes are vehicles event where we'll supply cards and clothespins so when the bikes go the cards will make a motoring type noise. Can you imagine a 100 bikes all doing that? (Still tentative at this point.)

I'm pretty sure Lymes disease zaps you in someway. If you want to talk to another cyclist who has had Lymes I could put you in touch.

Anyway we need to work on a ride to get Patrick to come out and play with us, time for another bike and beer ride? Possibly north Baltimore and maybe try to get Harry and VelloHelen out as well?

awesome!

Nice!

I did about 25 miles today all around Mt.Washington and Charles Village/Hampden.. got some free books, and ran into my brother on N. Charles near JHU. Good times.

On again/Off again ride, Nov 8th
 

What a glorious day for riding on the second Sunday in November! Rita and I got our fair share of it too, as we joined Bob's group at Oregon Ridge at 8 AM. We had quite a mix of machinery show up for the ride, road bikes, cross bikes, touring bikes, a tandem and even one full suspension mountain bike. 102 miles later with group size whittled down a bit we had used up all of the rail trail that there is and were pulling back into the parking lot with headlights and blinkers ablaze. Bob did a superb job of stringing this together and keeping the doses of trail vs road just about right. Very nice group of folks too, notwithstanding their Advanced Stage 5 cycling additions! (eg The couple on the tandem had done a century ride somewhere on Saturday too.) All that was left to do was come home and sleep for 10 hours straight. That felt pretty good.
Andy

:thumb: :beer: x 6

Great meeting you and Rita. Hope to see you folks on some future rides.

Whoops! Apparently, I forgot to resume the GPS after lunch and after my dinner stop in Jacksonville. There's speed data for only 24 of the 55+ miles covered from New Freedom, PA. Total mileage of all three parts is 127.89 miles. Climbing, according to BiM, is 9,683 feet.

Looks like BiM used elevation trend for the climbing in Part 3, so that number is inflated, because it didn't show/know when I went down.

Speed for Part 3 is underestimated because over half of the speed data was not recorded.

I'm taking the mileages shown in the elevation charts at face value, which means BoB did more mileage than me. Good job! [I guess my shortcut thru Jacksonville -was- actually shorter]

http://bimactive.com/ba/journal/post/10783/27933 - On Again / Off Again - Part 1
http://bimactive.com/ba/journal/post/10783/27934 - On Again / Off Again - Part 2
http://bimactive.com/ba/journal/post/10783/27935 - On Again / Off Again - Part 3

:eek:

Because almost half of it is on flat trail, I foolishly imagined this route to be a "good for any level rider" ride. ahem...

Bikely is showing this as about 5,000ft (they always analyze low). BiM is more likely closer, but even an average of 7500ft. is a lot for this ride. The trail riding (41 miles) has at most a few hundred total in elev. change. So there's got to be at least 7000 ft. of climb in the other 61 miles. Ouch.

I had a continuation of tire flatting issues that were making me so frustrated that I was imagining throwing my rear wheel into the Gunpowder (I managed to combat those thoughts by imagining how I might get home after doing so). In spite of all that. I really think that this ride is a beautiful route and I would do it again next fall. Super thanks to Isaias, Andy, Rita, Chuck, Christa, Carl, Tim, and others whose names I missed. Cudos to Charlie and others who dug into this route with gusto, but peeled off before the end.

BTW Charlie, give Big Falls and Hicks rd some credit for knocking you out early- there's no way it was just a "lack of energy".