31/31 ---> JULY 2017! CONTEST! WIN $100!

[1speed]

Day 12 - Part I and Part II (total time ~ 2:30)

Got out over lunch for a quick near-hour ride. Very nasty headwind out there today -- not a nice cooling wind, but a rotten furnace hot wind that seemed to turn with me to always stay in my face. I dislike wind enough on its own. Today was liked having God fart in my face for an hour ...

The evening ride was a bit better - got out in Wissahickon. It was burning hot the whole time, but I met up with a buddy of mine halfway through and we rode the new bypass trail. Its technically not open even though it's finished and probably should be because it needs to be ridden in, but it's also technically not really 'new' - the second half of it is the old connector trail behind the Wises Mill mansion. That goes back a bit for those who know Wiss: that trail has been shut down since probably 2002 or so. Nice to see it open again!

Hiding out from the heat for a moment in the covered bridge ...

 

[Robin]

Stayed cool in the shade at Mercer County Park.

 

[Kaleidopete]

Day 13 and a nice ride in the park early while it's only 70° out. Saw 6 bunnies today and saved one turtle from certain road death.

The Black Eagle trail.

 

[Steve Vai]

Day #13 - Not Rutgers.

 

[jackx]

July 12
15.2 miles
1:05:19

I seem to see foxes somewhat often lately. This guy was prancing along confidently and probably contently. He had a squirrel in his mouth and was heading towards the woods with his meal.

The fox stopped to look at me when I was looking at him.

 

[Robin]

It was hot and sticky today - the kids were more interested in picking raspberries, so that's what we did.

 

[Patrick]

If you caught my fb post, then you know i had a blow-out on rt 78 - just the trailer tire. nice and smokey too.
threw off the whole plan for a nice jugtown mountain ride. by the time i was able to get out, i was spent,
so just rode around clinton a bit. the main street area is quite nice. there was a music event setting up near the red mill.
guess they don't know how to read a weather app.

i did see something that made me smile. three early teen boys coming out the "back" gate of spruce run, in their bathing suits with their towels. not sure if they hit the res, or the quarry. nice to see a little normal, bad behavior.....

14.1 1:08
https://www.strava.com/activities/1082065409

 

[Norm]

Day 13

I am tired tonight so I will spare the long-winded and extremely circuitous route that brought me to Pennsylvania tonight. But I rode Nockamixon.

July Challenge Day 13: Like a mountain biking gypsy, I now find myself in Pennsylvania

It started to rain at the end so I cut it off at the minimum.

1:00:33
9.4 miles

Overall

Days: 13
Rides: 15
Time: 33:38 (7:38 over goal)

 

[1speed]

Day 13 - Pretty crazy day ...

A little set-up as to why I didn't get out over lunch (as I've been trying to do pretty much every day to at least set myself up to guarantee a minimum of an hour):

About two weeks or so ago, my company was caught up in the Ukraine hack. It was surreal around the office for a few days because no one (and I mean no one -- globally we were completely offline) was able to get online at all so very few people were able to do anything. When they finally got us back up and running, we discovered that anyone who was online at the time the ransomware bomb went off lost everything on their hard drive. I always start my day around 7 or so, so I was impacted. On my team, about half were impacted and half were fine. So the next question was when those of us impacted would be back online. I turned in my laptop last Thursday morning and didn't get a new one until Tuesday afternoon. For the last two weeks, I basically spent my time creating machine learning algorithms on paper or just thinking through solutions to questions I'd ignored for a long time (no kidding, I just sat there and wrote out "solutions" long hand as I thought through some of the issues I'd been saving for when I had time to think about them.) I also made sure I took a long lunch to ride as much as I could before the workday ended. Technically, I could do that any day since my usual workday is about 9 1/2 hours instead of 8, but I usually like to get in early on my own time anyway because I get more done between 7 and 8:30 than I do the rest of the day sometimes. So, at any rate, today I spent my lunch hour running around getting my non-standard applications installed on my machine after my director called in favors because our self-serve install site is still down and a few of us are worthless without those apps. So no ride at noon today.

And that meant I had to get out after work, and that was just about the time the sky started darkening. Terrific.

Early on this evening, there was a lot of thunder in Philly, but very little rain. I did, however, notice right away that I had no legs today. I think part of that had to do with an accident I had yesterday (I was wearing my reading glasses and misjudged a step and fell knees-first on a concrete floor, so I had really sore legs all day today.) So I dropped out of the woods after riding a quarter of the Wiss trail and decided to head out Forbidden Drive and circle Kelly Drive in the city instead.

The weather is on its way ...

That went well until I hit the turnaround point at the Philly Art Museum. At that point, the sky opened up just as I started riding into the wind.

Hiding out for a moment under a bridge ...

I tried to hide out form it at first, but then checked weather underground and realized I'd be waiting for a really long time if I stayed there. So I sucked it up and headed out into the drenching.

So I got horribly waterlogged on the ten miles back to my car. It was, to be perfectly honest, a miserable finish to the ride. But then things took a turn for the better ...

Apparently, the Valley Green Inn is doing a local brewery beer tasting every other Thursday. Tonight was Yard's. After I clean myself up and changed, I headed down to the Inn to get some samples. Two of them I'd already tried -- Brawler and Philly Pale Ale -- but the third was new to me:

This was a pretty decent summer beer - not too sour at all and very easy to drink ...

While I was sitting there enjoying Yards Pynk, this happened just outside the tent area where the tasting was:

So I just hung around and grabbed a Brawler to wait it out.

All in all, not a bad way to shake off the day's soaking ...

Total time today: 2:01:18

 

[MadisonDan]

13 of 31 done. A bunch have been multi ride days, with either CitiBike, or a quick spin around the block to get up to 60 minutes. I think other than Kingdom Trails, a H2H Race, and a Ride made up of right turns only, most is JRA. This has been really good for me, as my legs need the miles.
That's all.

Carry on.

 

[Kaleidopete]

Wet ride today.......it rained hard and steady the whole 90 minutes.
https://www.strava.com/activities/1082877754

even this wet, no mud, it's gravely.

I saw one fisherman with his boat, I yelled out, what are you crazy? fishin' in this rain!

 

[jackx]

July 13
16.1 miles
1:01:26

https://www.strava.com/activities/1081716041

I had about 90 minutes to run some errands and for a ride, so I decided to combine what I could. I stopped at a bakery to pick up a French baguette as I figured that would transport well in my jersey pocket. I double -bagged it to keep it dry. I passed a small farm along the way and figured I would hit it when I was nearing the end of my ride to pick up a head of Romine lettuce as it would also fit nicely for a few miles in another jersey pocket.

I decided it was best to pick up the dry cleaning via car though.

 

[Big Al]

Day 13: Got soaked at Clayton. On the plus side, when it feels like 100 degrees and thunderstorms are on there way, you pretty much get the place to yourself. https://www.strava.com/activities/1082156060

Day 14: Took the fat bike on the paved path at Mercer County Park and around Mercer County Community College. Got wet. Again. https://www.strava.com/activities/1082765777

 

[Robin]

With the forecast for today, wasn't sure what we would do with camp. So I got out early for a spin.

 

[Norm]

Day 14

My intention today was to get in an easy hour and ride down to CR to get a picture of the carnage. Well I had to go into white to get my pic, and the trails really weren't bad so I stayed in there. When it was time to go home I didn't feel like jumping on the road so I stayed in the trails as long as I could. I was pleasantly surprised with how well they drained today.

July Challenge Day 14: I went to take a picture of this bridge work then I kinda got stuck riding around the park a bit

1:47:43
15.5 miles

Overall

Days: 14
Rides: 16
Time: 35:26 (7:26 over goal)

This coming weekend is the Stewart race and I'll be up there from 8am tomorrow until Sunday afternoon. I imagine I will end up riding like 4 laps of the course when all is said and done so I think I'll have some time to pad my monthly total. After Sunday I will likely stick to the road mostly next week. I need to dial back the travel-to-ride a bit because work is going to be heavy next week.

 

[MissJR]

well, well, well... about half way thru and i'm still at it:

July 8: wishing i could hit up six mile instead: https://www.strava.com/activities/1074234315
July 9: who is peter?!: https://www.strava.com/activities/1075989368
July 10: this weather sucks: https://www.strava.com/activities/1077543270
July 11: chasing @MadisonDan around a triangle park: https://www.strava.com/activities/1079150478
July 12: ain't no party like a lew mo party: https://www.strava.com/activities/1080734611
July 13: i think this is how horror movies start: https://www.strava.com/activities/1082397104
July 14: CCR is an awesome band: https://www.strava.com/activities/1083534435

 

[1speed]

Day 14 - Almost went out in the rain over lunch, but decided to wait and take a chance for a bit less rain. It worked out as it never rained during my ride tonight. I stuck to the bike path along 202 because even the best draining trail anywhere would be under water from the rain we've had here the last 20 hours.

Total Time: a bit short at 1:18 today

Took out the China Carbon bike tonight, at 36:17. Love this bike ...

 

[Patrick]

Day 14 -
so the power went out at my place last night. my clock has battery b/u, so no problem.
went to bed early, have no idea when the power came on. might have been the whiskey, might have been the beer,
might have been......
anyway, looked at the clock and it said 5:10. so decided to start the day. turned on the coffee, threw the recycling
in the can - let the cat in.....i finally look at my phone, and it is 3:15. F! well i have plenty of paperwork, and need to
catch up on my internet stuff. and bills, and more stuff.

so i was checking the weather app, and trying to time the rain. made a call to @mattybfat and did a bit of coordination.
after a few stops, we were in beautiful warren county for a Shade of Death loop. of course ya need to descend 1000' down
to the valley to do it, and it was wet, and not knowing the route made me slooowww...

we managed to get in a great 22 mile loop. https://www.strava.com/activities/1083272626
Was drizzling/misting when we started, finished in light rain. high 60s with 100% humidity...but not bad.

i was lost at the 20 mile mark! but it was straight back to the start.

 

[Steve Vai]

Day #14 - Took a gamble on the weather and passed up riding in the a.m. for an evening session. Trails were wet, but it didn't rain until we finished. Stayed the outside of the park which is more gravel fireroad stuff.

 

[Magic]

Where dis?