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.