Tour de PDS: Stage 1 (The East Side of the Hudson in 177 miles)

At 6:30am on a gorgeous, dry Monday morning in mid-July, I clipped in and rolled out of the Poughkeepsie Day School parking lot heading south. Coming off a week of above-average temperatures mixed with high humidity, the conditions boded well for a journey through 25 towns and 177 miles. The Tour de PDS had begun.

The final route for Stage 1.

Not sure why they chose these colors, but I'm glad they did.

Garrison, NY 10524 

The view of Bear Mt. across the Hudson.

A very refreshing lunch in Pawling before the big climb.

The major climb of the day crosses the Appalacian Trail.

Another quaint hamlet sign.

Lovely farm country abounds throughout the Hudson Valley.

Friends Jill and Doug slow down to say hello.

The oldest inn in America.

The FDR home is one of the many historic spots along the river. 

Back again, safe and sound as night falls.

Stage 1: The final count.

In all, it was a delightful day.

Up next: Stage 2: Exploring the West.

The Tour de PDS: An Educational Endurance Adventure in Two Stages

It all started in mid-April at my school's annual auction when I made a pledge to cycle to every single town in which one of the students in my school lives in the shortest time possible. Poughkeepsie Day School is a small, independent day school that draws families from all over the Hudson Valley. After ten years of serving as middle school director, I figured it was time for me to see our broad expanse of geographical diversity up-close. Little did I know (when I made my pledge) exactly how many miles I would be riding. Our admissions director soon let me know I would be cycling to 47 towns and villages.

A map of the 47 towns and villages in which PDS families live.

After plotting the zip codes onto a map, I consulted our 2nd and 3rd grade mathematics students who made a wide range of estimates of the shortest route between all of these points. Taking their input and looking carefully at the map, I decided to break the tour into two stages, one on the east side of the Hudson and the other on the west. The former would amount to 177 miles and the latter 154.

To prepare my white Indy Fab for the journey, I attached my trusty Detours seatpost bag (for provisions), a Kinesis toptube bag (for camera and phone) and a Garmin eTrex GPS (to help me stay on track). On a dry, sunny Monday morning in mid-July, I rolled out of campus at 6:30am heading south to begin a large loop that would take in 25 towns as far south as Cortlandt Manor and as far north as Tivoli.



Up next: Stage 1 up-close.

The Westfield 600K: A Super Randonneur Again!

This was not the first time I've ridden the Westfield 600K, but it was the first time I've completed an event of this distance since my August 2010 accident. I love riding in the Catskill Mountains and I can't think of a nicer way to complete my super "re-randonneur" season. Other than a few sprinkles at the start, the weather was outstanding; warm, but not too hot with little humidity and virtually no wind.

In Woodstock, Brian and Doug organized the most gracious checkpoint I've ever encountered. They made sandwiches, filled water bottles and was generally made riders feel like royalty.

Right after Woodstock, our work really began with the climb through Devil's Tombstone. The Catskill Mountains sure look a bit different up close.

After the Catskills, we enjoyed a sweet descent down the backside of Windham Mountain into a rolling section that inched towards Albany through the Helderbergs.

The least scenic section of the route involves the stretch through Schnectedy, but I was able to find a small slice of beauty anyway. If you can forget that GE dumped millions of tons of PCBs into the Hudson over the years, it's easier to see the beauty.

I woke up on Sunday with a sour stomach, but upon arriving in Bennington, VT, I craved an egg sandwich. Sadly, the only place I could find this protein-rich delicacy was at McDonald's. It was delicious and the coffee hit the spot too, and helped fuel me up the monster hill just east of town.

While I was generally well-hydrated throughout the event, at some points, I wondered about halucinations. Take this milk bottle for instance. Doesn't it make YOU thirsty?

So in all, it was a great weekend. I learned that 600 kilometers is still within my reach. While this was not my worst time on an event of this distance, it was certainly not my best. I returned to Westfield with strength, confidence and the hope that with more training and conditioning, I will be able to ride greater distances and at higher speeds.

My Newest Commuter Upgrades

Working at my children's school comes with blessings too numerous to count. One of the less convenient aspects of the relationship though involves commuting by bicycle. Since we live 15 miles from school, the shared bike commute is pretty much out of the question. Sure, my son has humored me once or twice, but this is not a sustainable solution. As a result, riding into work often involves me arranging to pawn the kids off either on one of my colleagues or my wife. The loose ends generally come in the morning, since they have reliable bus transport in the afternoon if necessary.

When morning rides for the kids are arranged successfully, everything generally works out, but other issues arise, such as how to transport my laptop bag to and (more importantly) from school in the evening. On at least one occasion, my kids have actually forgotten my laptop bag by the kitchen door which is NOT GOOD. It's also generally a hassle to arrange to have someone drop my bag off at my house in the evening. So, needless to say, a more sustainable solution was needed. Enter: Ortieb.

After doing a little research I found that the Ortlieb "Office" pannier would perfectly suit my needs. This large, spacious bag comes highly rated and includes flexible internal paneling to help organize a laptop, papers and assorted smaller objects like chargers, phones, keys and pens. It's completely waterproof which gives me great peace of mind as far as my laptop is concerned. I also bought a sleek laptop sleeve to ensure that my precious cargo would have a little extra padding for the ride. This particular model from Timbuk2 even has interesting vent holes to aid in laptop cooling after a hard day of work.

Since panniers don't hang by themselves, I also needed to install a rear rack on my old Bianchi to round out the picture. I chose a Topeak Explorer rack since it looked pretty darned solid, was not too heavy and was priced considerably lower than the high-end touring racks I might have used if money was not an object. Finally, I added a Busch & Muller Toplight to the rear rack for early mornings and late afternoons in the fall and winter.

The attachment hardware is ingenious. Here's a video from Ortieb showing how it works.



With just two days under my belt, I already love the arrangement. The bag is spacious enough to fit my work materials, a few personal items and a change of clothes. I even packed and successfully transported a bottle of red wine to an evening potluck on Friday! The best part, though, is my total self-sufficiency as a commuter. Now that summer has arrived and my kids no longer need to travel to and from school with me each day, I can really see what it's like to live the bicycle commuter lifestyle.

The Sweet Feeling of Success

It feels especially sweet to reach goals that are both challenging and long standing. I've wanted to earn the RUSA R-12 Award for many years, but the cold Northeast winters and countless compromises I would have had to make kept this out of reach; out of reach until this year. This weekend marked my final monthly ride of over 200K since last July. It also marks a year of riding brevets since returning to cycling after my August 2010 accident. In addition to the R-12 credit, this brevet also proved to me that 400K is still within my reach as a cyclist. I finished tired, a little sore in my left shoulder, but strong and within 20 hours.

The field was tiny on this late season 400K. There were just six of us, two from North Carolina, one from Cleveland and two from the local area in addition to me. The first six hours of the ride were filled with steady rain which calmed into showers and then petered out all together leaving us with a beautiful afternoon.

Shortly after the start, I fell into riding with Jonathan, a strong rider from Cleveland with a beautiful new Velo Orange rando bike, who really helped me stay focussed throughout the day. Jon is a great guy and I look forward to riding with him again. It reminds me how randonneuring can unite total strangers in a shared mission. Maybe it was the rain, maybe the green hills and valleys throughout the day, maybe it was the smell of fresh cow manure, but something about this ride reminded me of London-Edinburgh-London.

It was a spectacular ride set in the beautiful Finger Lakes region. The vistas were amazing and the roads smooth and free of cars. I will surely be back for more rides in Central New York and highly recommend them to you. I could actually hear Lake Ontario beckoning for circumnavigation as I stood on it's banks at the start of yesterday's 400K. Perhaps the Lap of the Lake 1000K lies ahead. I sure hope so.

Next up: the Westfield 600K on June 23-24.

School + Hudson Valley + Cycling = ADVENTURE!

Most great ideas come to me when I'm riding my bike. This was certainly the case in mid-April when I was riding one of my 200K permanent routes rather than completing the Princeton 200K after being asked to serve as the master of ceremonies at the school's annual gala auction. As I stepped up to the microphone that evening, I announced my plan: this summer, I will ride my bike to every town in which a student from my school lives, in the shortest amount of time possible.

How better to combine my love of long distance riding with my love of the Hudson Valley and my love of Poughkeepsie Day School, where I have worked for the past 10 years as the head of middle school? Some kids live right around the corner from campus while others spend over an hour and a half on the bus in the morning AND in the afternoon. As you can see from the map above, the school draws students from over 50 towns, cities and villages in five counties and two states. While the greatest number of families live close to campus in Poughkeepsie, others are spread more or less evenly up and down both sides of the river.

The questions at this point are: how long will this adventure take? and what is the best route to use? I asked a few math teachers at school for a little help with route planning and found out two important things. 1) My journey is a close approximation to the Traveling Salesman Problem that has plagued mathematicians for years. Apparently there is no straightforward algorithm that works to determine the shortest distance between so many points. There are simply too many variables to consider.  2) There is a willing group of young people around just about every corner in my school, so today the second and third graders and their teacher helped me begin to measure and strategically design my route using maps cuisenaire rods. Here's a brief film of their work. I'm eager to see what they come up with.

With a goal of completing this ride in one or two days, I have my work cut out for me, but if adventures were easy they wouldn't be adventures, now would they.

More soon!

The Princeton 300K: A Little Confidence Grows with Each Ride.

The Princeton 300 is the longest ride I've attempted since my August 2010 accident. It's an old favorite that takes in large stretches of the New Jersey countryside I prowled in my younger days. The Princeton 300 is also the first event of that distance I ever completed in 2007 during my first year of randonneuring. The weather forecast could not have been better on Saturday with blue skies, still air and temperatures peaking only in the mid-70s. For these reasons and more, it was a perfect day to stage my return. 

We rolled out of Princeton before dawn and traveled north over smooth, barren roads to the first control in Whitehouse just a few miles away from my mother's home where I had awakened several hours earlier. Throughout this first 40 or so miles, I rode at the front of the pack with a few old riding buddies swapping the usual tales of rides past and future and bikes custom and vintage.

After the first control, the field spread out a bit and, while I was disappointed not to hang with the big dogs, I knew that maintaining my reserves was the only way to approach this day. Riding strong throughout the event and simply finishing the ride with some gas in the tank would bring me great relief. With over 9,000 ft of climbing, this is not a ride to take casually. Although it was hard to let the rabbits go, I knew this was the wise choice.

Support on NJ Rando events is fantastic and this brevet was no exception. Ride organizer Paul S. was cheery at the start and and finish and made countless appearances at controls, both secret and announced, throughout the day. NJ Rando stalwart Bob O. was on hand at both the start and the first control and it was great seeing RBA Katie R. and diehard NJ Rando volunteer Jon L. at the Blairstown control. Their smiling faces mitigated any pain and suffering I may have been feeling as I contemplated the nasty Jenny Jump climb that punctuates the turnaround.

Attuned to my own rhythms, I spent much of the day riding alone which eliminated the need to feel as though I was either holding someone back or riding slower than I would like.  In all, I felt fairly steady, if not truly strong, throughout the day and finished without any noticable pain, despite the requisite suffering.

They say you can't go home again, and I do believe that's true, but just as I was rounding the corner to enter Hacklebarney State Park, I ran into an old friend I haven't seen in quite some time. John R. is the master teacher I worked with 25 years ago as a teaching intern fresh out of college. While we've seen each other since that time, it's been a while and it was good to catch up and see yet another encouraging face when his wife Barbara arrived to pick him up.

With the main work of basic recovery behind me, I'm on my way to rebuilding an endurance foundation. Completing a full brevet series in search of the Super Randonneur (SR) award issued in Paris to recognize riders who completion a full series of qualifying brevets (200K, 300K, 400K and 600K) in one season will make that return even more sweet. This weekend's Princeton 300 also served as the penultimate ride in support of my R-12 attempt. Only June remains.

The NYC Five Boro Bike Tour: Third Time's a Charm

Yesterday, my son and I again rode in the NYC Five Boro Bike Tour. This father-son family tradition began in 2009 when Eli was just 9 years old. That year, we braved Biblical rains as we passed countless middle-aged riders pushing bikes up hills and taking advantage of the bail-out option at mile 25. "No stopping," he said at the time. Now that he's 12, a few things have changed. For one, he's using an actual geared bike (with 3 chain rings!) - we look for creature comforts as we age, don't we? 

In this, the tour's 35th year, 32,000 riders again descended on the city in search of adventure. This event, while thrilling for many, was becoming known as the "Five Boro Bike Walk," so drastic measures were necessary. This time, the organizers chose to send out starters in three waves rather than just one. As a result, we experienced absolutely no bicycle traffic along the way, even at the typical bottle necks.

Eli, or "Squeaky Magee" as he came to call himself, was riding his mother's Trek mountain bike which could have done with a little additional lube. We saw lots of commuter bikes, many with rusty chains and some with odd modifications, like the rear rack-mounted handlebar bag that I could not quite figure out or the full suspension mountain bike with the high rise handlebars. I also saw a few old Detours bags here and there, but never when I seemed to have ready access to my camera, so I have no pictures to share. None of these bags was as cool as the two I was sporting that day anyway. My Sodo handlebar bag has really grown on me as a place to store food, gear and gadgets all within easy reach.

One of my son's many great qualities is his determination to stick with something once he's started. He was very happy, for instance, to find out that we did not need to stop at the first or second rest areas. Why waste time, he reckoned? This steady forward motion enabled us establish a new family record with a sub-4 hour finish. Done before noon? What do we do with ourselves?

The final 3-mile stretch from the festival to the Staten Island ferry was predictably relaxing up until the final 1/4 mile when the two of us became separated as riders started funneling into the ferry staging area. Images of 19th century steerage popped into my mind and I may have been humming the theme to Titanic as I weaved through the crowds looking for my son. As luck would have it, we found each other before too long, but he is now using this as leverage to get a cell phone. Can't really argue with him there.

Here'a time-elapsed video of the entire tour in under two minutes.

Next up: A return to randonneuring with the Princeton 300K this Saturday.