Tag: Daily Prompt

Recovery Ride

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Fort Taber in New Bedford MA.  Built to protect the city from an invasion by sea after the War of 1812.  It was designed by Robert E Lee before he became an insurgent. 

Yesterday I called the hills on our Wednesday Night Ramble Goldilocks hills.  Not too steep, not too flat.  My legs told me a different story overnight and this morning. An easy spin or recovery ride is a standard remedy for those aching muscles.  I planned on one of those easy, short recovery rides.  I ended up doing 25 miles, but it took over 3 hours with all the stops for photos, taking to friends, stopping for coffee, stopping for no reason.  It was a good day to ride a bike.

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The elevated walking and biking path in New Bedford, MA

The

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The swing bridge turns on a massive cog that sits inside the yellow railing at the bottom of the bridge. 

https://www.strava.com/activities/573219926/embed/69b2ea43485f220e74ff98e05bd342cf7e8fe522

Wednesday Night Ramble in Tiverton RI.  Six of us showed for this first Wednesday night ride of the season..Lots of Goldilocks hills. (Not too shallow, not too steep).  This and my daily ride around town gives me 27 for the day, which is my average daily miles for the month.

The summer tour is imminent but the route is still undecided.  I’m really leaning toward Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard for a short 5 or 6 day ride. West Virginia with the Rails to Trails group is still a possibility.

Double Sessions

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Rode around the city at lunchtime for a couple of hours. I had planned to ride less because I was going to do an evening training ride.  Well, evening rolled around and I decided to ditch the second ride.  I took the dogs for a walk on the MUP and there were bikes galore out.  It was such a beautiful night that I decided to go for a ride.

I am filming a fundraising ride in a couple of weeks.  There are three mileage options, 13, 28 and 45 miles.  It’s an Ice Cream Ride where two of the options use basically the same route.  The short ride is in a different part of town altogether. I’m going to ride the longer routes in reverse which will allow be to cut across town to get some footage of the family ride down by the waterfront.  Tonight I did a practice ride that takes me to two sections where the longer rides converge.  This is going to work out OK.

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One of the ice cream shops on the Tour de Creme ride. 

Three Flats and Sunshine.

I was about to drive to yoga when the weather on the 8’s began broadcasting.  It was raining but the prediction was for the sun to show itself after and eight day hiatus in just a couple of hours. That got me into the garage to check out the “made summer ready” road bike.  I’ll keep this short. Continue reading “Three Flats and Sunshine.” →

Riding All Day

Scott bike on dirt path

I left the house at 8 AM in order to try Subway’s May special. Buy any 6″ sub and get a breakfast sandwich free. The one word that comes to mind is “Don’t”.  When the young girl put the egg part of the sandwich on the counter it look like the fake vomit we used to see as a kid.  The bacon didn’t look any better.  The bread was good though.  One more thought about Subway.  I keep track of my food on myfitnesspal. Occasionally my daily salt consumption would be off the charts. When I looked at my subway entries and found that was the cause, I decided that I will not eat there very often any more.  I have some money left on my app to use up, and that will be it.  Too bad because I kind of like the place.

Besides 25 miles of riding today I got to cut the lawn that, with all the rain lately, was turning into frog grass.  (Kneedeep).  Tried in vain to get my Honda power washer started. It’s less than a year old and I think it’s dead.  DSCN0297A buddy came over to help me move a 300+ lb mahogany entertainment center into my garage.  I think he is dead also. It’s on Craigslist and is offered for free, but there are no takers.  It will go out for the trash pickup on Wednesday. (If I can get a hand moving it).

I ended the day getting the road bike ready for some serious riding.  Cleaned, lubed and summer tires installed. All I need is a few hours of sunshine which has not happened in the month of May yet. Maybe Monday. Maybe not.

 

 

Felt ready to rumble
The Felt.  Ready to rumble
No moon tide
New moon high tide
Scott bike an big tree
This struck me as a possible good photo.

Early Morning Is The Best Time To Ride

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Tia Maria’s European Cafe.  Water St. New Bedford

Early morning ride to get my hair done. I left the shop at 8;30 and it was just too nice not to ride. 45 and cloudy. It is the first day without rain this month.  Met with a couple of bike friends and fellow photographers, Peter Perreira and Josh Sousa at Tia Maria’s European Cafe in New Bedford. Naturally we talked bikes. A ride around the peninsula in the city before returning home to power wash the decks and clean two bikes of all the crap they collect from riding in the rain.  Probably do a second ride tonight

NYC Five Boroughs Ride.

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Riding in the Rain in NYC

Our team of 10 riders traveled to NYC to do the Five Boroughs Tour. I have to confess that I don’t know some of the team members, nor have I met them.  I only saw one of the nine others over the weekend and things did not work out that well for him. Did you ever stop your bike not unclip and fall over. Yea, me too.  It happened to Paul at around the 25 mile mark in Queens.  He is going into surgery today to have his broken hip repaired.

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Things were a bit worse on at the Red Hook Crit on Saturday night 10 seconds into the race when the pace motorcycle stalled.

Our ride started in a light rain and all the comments were how not so bad it was riding.  By 10 AM the F bombs started as the intensity of the rain increased. The last 10 miles on the Bronx/Queens expressway sucked.  Heavy rain, wind and almost all up hill. Everyone who finished was glad they did.  A lot never got that far.  I’m guessing the subways got crowded as people bailed.  I can’t wait for next years tour.

Did I make a movie.   Of course.

2016 NYC FIVE BOROUGHS from John Sullivan on Vimeo.

Day 29. Exercise Tiger

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Day 29 of 30 Days of Biking was a 17.5 mile loop on a sunny, cool, windy day.

I got the Novara Randonee bike all tuned up for NYC tomorrow and took it out for a shakedown ride.  Everything is working fine and after eight years, I finally decided to adjust my saddle to eliminate the problems the pressure caused.  It took that long because this is primarily my touring bike. During and after every tour I promised myself to adjust the seat. I always forgot about it till the next tour.  After taking it our for a test run last week, I was determined to fix the thing.   You can’t imaging how painful things became trying to relieve myself.  It always turning into a scream.  All is good now.

The ride took me into the city (New Bedford, Ma), around the peninsular and into the old Army Base name Fort Rodman.  I stopped by the military museum and the old Fort within a fort, Fort Taber.

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Fort Taber inside the Fort Rodman grounds.

A stiff ocean breeze kept the temps in the low 50’s but the wind was at my back for the return leg of the ride. The beaches were deserted except for a lone man hunting for treasures.

Rain is in the forecast for Sunday’s ride but for now it looks to be off and on showers. We can live with that. My last day of 30 days of biking is very likely to be a lap around the parking lot in Staten Island tomorrow.  Fortunately there is no minimum distance in the rules. Thirty days of riding is a done deal and Sunday begins “The National Bike Challenge“. My hometown of Fairhaven, MA will be out to regain our spot as the winner in the local challenge that we lost last year to our Neighbors in Mattapoisett, MA.  I’m pretty sure we got this.

 

Day 27 High Hopes

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This Ram had high hopes for a treat.  Next time.

It’s still below normal  with temps in the mid 50’s.  The weather will continue to improve for my 30 days of biking, culminating with a 65 degree day for riding NYC on Sunday. I planned on riding a new route beginning at yoga and adding 10 miles to my workout.  Things didn’t pan out so I did one of the standard 26 mile rides.

https://www.strava.com/activities/558645785/embed/7e328acd26a4b8fb4ff53a5e5ccd926e190b4470

It was hit and miss with the wind.  It’s wasn’t bad for the most part, but there are sections of the route that are wide open farm land.  Whenever I rode into one of those areas, it was a struggle to maintain anything over 11 or 12 MPH.  That and a couple of the hills conspired to keep my average for the ride at just under 14 MPH.

I hadn’t planned on doing any stopping, sans Lloyds Market, but the animals were out in numbers today and being the sucker I am for good animal photos, I ended up making four or five quick stops.

Day 27 Lloyds Market

The little guy above saw me stop, took a look and began meandering my way.  As he got closer we spoke to each other baaaa-ing our feelings.  He let me scratch his ears in the hopes I’m sure of a treat.  From now on I’ll be packing something for them and the horses.

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I see you.
Day 27 Ram 2
Let’s talk about treats.
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The Clydesdale were out
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Rescue horses

Beating the Rain

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Day 26 of 30 Days of Biking

The local weather gave a 40 % chance of rain for an hour followed by 10% for another hour. That gave me time to get in 26 miles for day 26 of 30 days of riding. It was one of those days where I got into the zone.  For instance, Vaughn Hill is a nemesis of mine. I begin to dread the climb a half mile away.  Today, I came out of the zone and realized I was a mile beyond Vaughn Hill.  I climbed it and didn’t even notice. I did other hills at double digit miles where before today my speed would drop to 6 -8 MPH.  I was having a blast.

I was really excited to see my stats for this ride because I know it was the fastest by far, of the season.  Naturally, when I got home I shut down my Garmin and didn’t save the ride.  I do have a wired bike computer attached but that only told me the time and distance with none of the fun stuff that Strava tells me when the information migrates from connect.garmin.  Oh well. It would have been nice but within a couple more rides, this one would be out of sight and mind.

The last ride of this event will be in New York on Saturday.  I’ll probably do a short ride in Staten Island before we take the ferry to Manhattan for registration.  Sunday will be a celebration of completing 30 days of biking with 32,000 friends as we ride the 5 Boroughs and 5 Bridges of NYC.

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The all turned and walked away when I approached
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I had the roads all to myself