This is NOT the greatest blog in the world, no. This is just a tribute!

rick81721

Lothar
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Patrick

Overthinking the draft from the basement already
Staff member
are you willing to get out of bed before 8:00? we can get those north jersey park in!

looking forward to this - don't forget pictures.
 

Pearl

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING
If all of us could only be so lucky to retire!

Have you been to Water Co? I would try and get a tour down that way. I think you'd like it.
 

pooriggy

Well-Known Member
Team MTBNJ Halter's
I saw you from a distance later in the day at Jungle. I kinda waved and u looked at me like who dat, it was when everything was getting put away.
Good to see you exploring trails, learn by doing. Nice .
 

stb222

Love Drunk
Jerk Squad
Dang forgot strava files - if it's not on strava, it didn't happen, right?

Dickerson:

https://www.strava.com/activities/737573991

Black river:

https://www.strava.com/activities/737574104

Stokes (PS you know a park is obscure/not getting much traffic when I get a top 10 on a segment!):

https://www.strava.com/activities/739911775

Jungle:

https://www.strava.com/activities/739911819
Pro tips for clean posts:
you can edit your posts and add what you forgot
Full links are unsightly, to avoid, type the title of the ride of "ride link here" if you have no title. Highlight the text and and clink the link button, copy path in as usual. Boom, clean links.
 

soundz

The Hat
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Funny, I like to see the full link to see where I am going to before I click on it.
 
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qclabrat

Well-Known Member
congrats on the retirement, seems like we were just talking about it just yesterday, but was last spring at RV. Great start, right off the blocks, you'll be done by Thanksgiving for sure
 

qclabrat

Well-Known Member
Not much of a blogger but figured now that I'm retired I'd give it a shot. Thought I'd chronicle my riding post-working life - which hopefully will be different (and more of it) from the last 3 years. For those that don't know me, I started riding Dec 2012 when I got my first mountain bike, a salsa spearfish, from Jay at Halters. Previous to riding, I was doing mostly trail running, but after several minor knee/ankle/achilles problems, thought I'd be better off long-term concentrating on cycling. Having done most of my trail running at the sourlands, I foolishly did my first mountain bike "ride" there - and quickly realized it was much harder than it looked. I couldn't hop over all those rocks like I did when running! I live equi-distant between the sourlands and six mile run, so spent most of my first year riding six mile and mercer county park to gain some semblance of ability to ride my bike on dirt. Also rode it on the road as I didn't have any other bike. A 40+ road ride in the spring of 2013 convinced me to buy a road bike, so bought a canondale supersix.

Anywho, to skip through the boring next few years, I just retired at the end of september. One of my riding goals for this year was to try to hit every park listed on mtbnj that I haven't been to yet. I made a spreadsheet, Xed off the parks I've been to, and started to ticking off the others. Living in central NJ, I had hit more parks there than north or south, so they have been the focus. I also rate the parks on my spreadsheet - strictly a personal rating based on the trails, proximity - ease of getting there. I rate A or B places I'd like to go back and ride more, D or F for places that were "meh" and/or to hard to get to. For example, I gave Wayway an "A", even though it's a pretty far drive, because the trails were awesome and there is so much more to see. Lewis-Morris I gave a "D", the trails were OK in my opinion, but the big negative was driving thru Morristown to get there - I hate sitting in traffic so that's a big negative for me. Also, I like the adventure of picking a park, maybe glancing at a strava file or two, but otherwise just getting the gps address for a parking spot, and going for it - alone. Just riding, maybe getting lost a few times, but finding my way back to the car is part of the fun. Sure I miss some good trail sections, and ride some the sub-optimal direction, but who cares. If it's a great park I'll go back and hit some more.

So average riding time - I just checked strava and oddly enough my riding time for 2013, 2014 and 2015 was within a few hours of each other - I basically averaged a little less than 6 hrs riding/week for the year while working full time. This was my first full riding week post-retirement, and I think I'm off to a good start: 11 hrs, 18 min riding time, 100.3 miles, only one road ride, and four new parks. From my spreadsheet, I have 8 parks left in north jersey, 8 in central jersey, and 11 in south jersey - 27 in total. Three months to get them in - let's see if I can get 'em all.
Rick, I'm a spreadsheet and bullets type, would you mind posting your XLS and update along the way?
 
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