Biking and Hiking and Kayaking: Be Careful Out There

Random Pictures and Posts

If it's not one thing, its another. Between work travel and weather and parent's day at my daughter's college, my outdoor activities have been a bit limited. Plus, I'm now blogging on my company's corporate blog - all these factors have combined to dilute this blog. But here's some pictures and short posts on some of the outdoor time that did happen:

Carl and I have done a lot of biking, including just about every stretch of the C&O Canal towpath from Shepardstown to Glen Echo, MD. This picture is at Whites Ferry, I think this is an old 1800's vintage store. The white pattern on the right hand wall looks like a dog chasing an ATV to me.

I haven't gotten a lot of kayaking done at all since the Wye Race. Right before Wye, I did get a paddle in on the Severn River, starting at the 450 bridge at the Jonas Green Park boat launch. This is part of my efforts to get more time on textured water but at first I didn't think the weather would cooperate. At first there wasn't much wind at all and it looked like it would start raining at any moment. However, I launched anyway and started heading upstream. The wind picked up quite a bit and there were a good number of big yachts and working fishing boats cruising up and down the river - I got to take some decent waves on the side. I ended up doing about 9 miles and exploring some nice coves on the northern side of the river.

Carl and I also went back and repeated one of the nicest sections of the York County Heritage trail. We saw some rail car enthusiasts motoring along on the tracks and revisited the tunnel were we sought shelter from the near-tornado conditions on our earlier ride:

Bucolic Biking After Hanna Harrassment

Saturday September 6th was supposed to be the annual Civil War Century bike ride, sponsored by the Baltimore Bicycling Club. However, Tropical Storm Hanna had other ideas and the ride was postponed to Sunday. The BBC did a great job of moving a very big event - the registration had been capped at 1,600 riders and it looked like most of them showed up on Sunday. The one negative was that we would not have the last rest stop at mile 44, as the Barlow Fire Department parking lot was being used for some kind of antique car show. That meant there would be about 32 miles between the last rest stop and the end, so I made sure I had extra water and food.

The day after a tropical storm comes through is usually beautiful and Sunday was no exception - not a cloud in the sky, slight breezes out of the north and low humidity. After the traditional 7-11 coffee and a muffin for fortification, I was on the road leaving the Thurmont start location by about 0730. The ride has 100, 77, 65, 53 and 25 mile options -  I decided to do the 65 mile metric century. After a bit of neighborhood road biking, the route follows Hessong Bridge Road and about 8 miles in goes over the Utica Road Covered Bridge, which as we all know is the Original Burr Arch Truss Bridge. Seven miles later you come to the first rest stop at the Loy's Station Covered Bridge, which is, of course, the Original Howe Truss Bridge.

On the way to that first rest stop, I passed a few people and a few people passed me. My goal is only to have skinnier people on skinnier bikes pass me and that was pretty much the case. The ride heads north from Loy's Station on beautiful country hills and then crosses to the west of Rt. 15 and heads through beeyootiful downtown Emmitsburg. The ride starts to head uphill here, passing Dave and Jane's Crab House, and heads towards the Ski Liberty slopes - this was the only place I had to talk to granny.

The reward for all the climbing is reaching the town of Fairfield, PA and the final rest stop at mile 32. This rest stop always has the best thing ever - tomato and mayo sandwiches. I don't know why, since I would never eat such a thing the rest of the year, but after 32 miles of biking in September nothing tastes better than fresh tomatoes slathered with mayo and slapped between two slices of bread. Since this was to be the last rest stop, I stuffed a few of those down, refilled my water bottles and grabbed some snackie things for the final 32 miles of the ride.

The rest of the ride cuts through Gettysburg National Park with some short steep hills but great views of the monuments. Once we left the park and headed east on Taneytown Road, the resourceful BBCers had found a way to have an impromptu rest stop at about mile 42 but I was feeling strong and just kept going. Here I was passed by a skinny guy on a skinny bike but by about mile 50 I had caught up to him and we chatted for a while. Somewhere along here we passed the final covered bridge - the Sach's Covered Bridge, which is nice but doesn't seem to be an original anything.  The other guy was real erratic in his speed so at one point I pulled away from him and he actually drafted me for a few miles - that is almost unheard of. That seemed to energize him and with about 5 miles left in the ride he accelerated and left me in his dust.

At the 64 mile mark, I pulled back into the starting point, enjoyed a free scoop of ice cream from the Antietam Dairy truck (excellent Loose Moose) and then headed home. Another great ride put on by the BBC and I guess my last long one for the year since we won't be doing the Salisbury Century this year. Googley map of the ride:

Save The ICC Bike Trail

The Intercounty Connector is a controversial new highway initiative where I live in Montgomery County, Maryland. TMALSS, or yada yada for the Seinfeld generation (though if you go to that link you may be less of a Seinfeld fan,)  construction has started and there was supposed to be a contiguous bicycle path along its entire length but now the state and county folks are trying to back out, claiming environmental impacts and budget constraints. Instead, there will be some sections of new trail, then routing onto surface streets, and so on. Not a big deal for experienced cyclists, but guaranteed to be an impediment to the general population and just a plain old stupid idea. Let's see: gas is at $3.70 a gallon, so let's discourage bicycling...

The Washington Area Bicyclist's Association is lobbying to fight this - if you would like to weigh in, go here to send email to the county bumblers officials. Thank you and have a nice day.

Save on Taxis - DC SmartBike Sharing Program

Today you can already bring a bicycle on Washington DC's Metro subway system, except for commuting rush hour between 7-10am and 4-7pm weekdays. If you don't have a bike, or don't want to risk your bike on DC's mean streets, or if you want to use a bike from a Metro stop during the times when bikes are banned from the trains, DC now has the SmartBike program. Essentially sponsored by Clarchannel advertising, for $40/year you get unlimited use - not a bad deal.

Let a Tunnel Be Your Umbrella

When I was in 5th grade, my science fair project was about weather control - how in the future we would use satellites with lasers to basically have rain fall where it was needed and not fall where it wasn't. Forty years later it appears the Chinese are giving weather control a shot for this year's Olympic games. The Chinese even have a Director of Weather Modification, who knew? I think in the US the closest we have in the National Weather Service is the Director of Throwing Darts at a Weather Map. With that in mind, Carl and I should not have trusted the forecast for Sunday: clear with slight chance of scattered storms after 2pm. But being fools, we did.

We decided to do a 30 mile out and back on the Heritage Rail Trail from Glen Rock to York, PA, allowing us to complete the entire North Central/Heritage Rail Trail duopoly this season. This section is very rural until you start nearing York, has lots of interesting old structures, one of the few bike shop-restaurant-day spa-WiFi hot spots you will see on a bike trail and the oldest continuously operational stone arch tunnel in the world, the Howard Tunnel. The trail is slightly downhill going north, so the return trip is slightly uphill but the weather was gorgeous and we made good time after a few false starts actually finding Glen Rock.

Lots of people out on bikes, including several Boy Scout groups. Everywhere you look along the trail new facilities are popping up, including a rest stop with bicycle sculptures. As we headed north it started to cloud up a bit and as we hit the 11 mile mark and started entering the greater York metropolitan area, we started to hear some rumbling that sounded like jet planes (to Carl) or cars going over a metal bridge (to me) but once we reached the end of the trail in downtown York, we realized there were no jets and no metal bridges, just plenty of really dark clouds moving in from the west. As we headed back, Carl looked at the dimples in Codorus Creek and noted that the fish must be really biting - until I pointed out that those "dimples" were from rain drops, not fish.

As we continued south the rain drops got a bit bigger, the thunder got a lot louder and the wind really picked up. The time between the lightning and the thunder kept decreasing until we saw the crack and heard the boom pretty much simultaneously - and it began to just pour down in a gutter gushing deluge. We were about a mile away from the tunnel, so we just slogged it out until we got there and joined about 20 other weather refugees inside the 170 year old structure. After about 20 minutes, the rains slowed and we prepared to head out - until the rain picked up again, and we waited some more. It finally slowed again, and we headed out - but of course it started pouring again. Being manly men, and soaking wet already anyway, we just kept slogging southward, towards the sound of more thunder. There were many tree limbs down along the trail, and when we finally reached Carl's Jeep and tuned to the weather frequency we found that the area had been under a tornado warning.

Later that night I checked the NOAA weather reports and York County had gotten 2.65 inches of rain, pretty much from that one storm we rode through.  Where are those satellites and laser beams when you need them?

Memorable Memorial Day Mileage

I've never been a big "let's go drive somewhere over the three-day holiday weekend" kinda guy, and with gas at $4 per gallon, a stay-at-home Memorial day weekend sure makes a lot more sense anyway. The weather gods smiled on the Baltimore-Washington area for the holiday, with blue skies, temperatures in the 70s and not a drop of rain in sight.  The movie gods also cooperated, with some good opening night opportunities for evening activities.

I started the weekend with a hilly 32 mile bike ride through Montgomery and Howard counties, stopping at the new "House of Flavors" in Highland for an expensive coffee and a bagel. I did the Haviland Mill hill both ways for my first granny gear test of the year - I could do the hills in 3rd gear, so I'm starting out the bicycling year a little bit ahead of last year anyway. Though, 7 miles an hour isn't much faster than 5 mph. This route passes by about 7 different coffee shops (only one of them a Starbucks) so some day I will map out a tour de java where every 7 miles or so you get another jolt of caffeine.

I followed that up with an 8 mile kayak training run on Rocky Gorge Reservoir, where I concentrated on trying to do every stroke the right way. Lots of herons and turtles out, and the one bald eagle, to watch me as I tried to keep both hands high, both upper arms bent, both hips rotating, both lower arms straight, both paddles fully in the water - oh, and sit up, and forcibly stab the paddle in the water, too. I made some progress - without really trying to push it, I got my standard time of 1:28 (5.5 mph average) down to 1:24 (5.8 mph). Maybe I will make some progress in doing less thrashing and more actual boat propulsion. That put me in a good frame of mind as Carole and I joined some friends to go see the new "Indiana Jones" movie (many thumbs up if your thumbs like Indiana Jones movies, which they probably do) and a really good dinner at the Aida Bistro in Columbia (many tongues up if you are one of those who eat.)

Sunday morning was the standard "bicycle with Carl" day and we decided to check on the Gwynns Fall Trail which had opened a new segment from the Park and Ride lot at I70 and the Baltimore Beltway. This is a very odd trail, mixing in new paved segments along the river with riding on abandoned roads with riding on dirt paths through the woods with riding on open heavily trafficked streets through urban Baltimore. It goes all the way down to the Inner Harbor, but we only did the northern, more rural part. The new northernmost section includes several switchbacks and lots of brand new landscaping - it will be a good looking trail section when that all matures.  About 5 miles in some fire trucks up on the road were spraying their fire hoses over the trail into the river, for some reason - this created a mini-waterfall that had us puzzled for  bit, but they stopped spraying as we sat there deciding what to do.

We went as far south as Carroll Park, home of the Mt. Clare mansion that dates from 1760. The Gwynns Falls route beyond that is basically mostly on streets, except for a few sections of paved path that get you under the Baltimore Beltway. It is a fun way to bike into Baltimore's Inner Harbor, if you are so inclined, but it ain't scenic - nice view of the Greyhound bus station, though. On the way back, we detoured to do the abandoned road section to beeyootiful Dickeysville, MD - a town that seems to have been isolated in time and remained unchanged for 100 years. Even though there is a tree down across the trail, it is well worth the 2 mile detour. We then headed back north and chugged back up those new switchbacks, for a ride total just shy of 20 miles. You can stretch this out to about 35 miles round trip if you go all the way to the southern end.

Later that night, Carole and I (along with Jim and Jacquie) did another dinner and a movie night, seeing "Son of Rambow", a weird British movie. Half a thumb up, if you like oddball movies with lots of kid actors with British accents using all kinds of British slang as they do all kinds of things you hope your kids never do.

The next day it was back to paddling. Jerry and Marie had mapped out a paddle on the Monocacy River, starting at a launch ramp north of Frederick, MD (essentially in the parking lot of a WalMart!) and ending at at Pinecliff Park, 6.7 miles downstream. With all the rain we've had in May, the river flow was about 50% above normal which gave us a nice downstream assist. We saw lots of herons and other birds, and one river otter - a first for most of us. The river is largely isolated from development, but you do go past the discharges from a few water treatment plants and you get to experience that nice minty fresh smell. At this water level you hit a few small rapids, probably Class I at best, which added a bit of fun. I lead the way through many of them and cleverly lead Carole and me to run aground at one point after passing under a bridge. However, we quickly moved on and enjoyed a nice float, er paddle down the river. A quick (but huge) bite to eat at the breakfast buffet at the Four Seasons in Mt. Airy, and a quick viewing of the fancy bicycles at the Mt. Airy Bicycles shop and a very nice Memorial Day weekend drew to a close.

The Googlefied map of the paddle:

Hours and Hours of Pedaling and What Do You Get? A Sore Behind and Soaking Wet

I've been spending a lot of time on exercycles this winter, either at the local health club or in the exercise rooms at hotels. It seems like there ought to be some more useful output of those things than just my sweat and warming up the room - both of which cause energy use for someone to clean up the sweat and for some AC unit to cool the room. If those machines were connected to the power grid, I could probably cut my electric bills a bit or at least be able to claim some kind of green credits somewhere. After all, if I'm going to spend 45 minutes pedaling and end up exactly where I started I'd like to be able to pretend I'm sweating locally to do something or other globally.

On an exercycle I can read magazines or watch TV to fight boredom, but new technology is starting to address that. My local health club has put in 3 Expresso exercycles that have computer generated screens and varied resistance that goes with the different courses on the screen. They also give you a power output reading, along with the usual heart rate reading. It is very cool to see watts against heart rate and against my feeling of wimpiness - watts don't lie. Minute for minute, pedaling in circles on the Expresso bike is usually much more strenuous than on the older stationary bikes. Plus the Expresso web site lets you see your last 10 workouts (if you log in to the machine), though they do try to charge you $10/month to see all your workouts and be able to ride on some courses that that are limited to paying members.

The Expresso web site shows average speed, heartrate and power output but not any detailed minute by minute information. Just for grins I wore my Garmin Forerunner Dick Tracy wristwatch/GPS/heart rate monitor thingie - the heart rate plot to the left is a 29 minute hilly ride where I averaged about 185 watts. One annoying Garmin feature is everything they do is proprietary, so the Garmin heart strap isn't readable by any of the exercycles so it didn't read out on the exercycle screen as I was pedaling. But anyway, looks like it took me about 7 minutes to get my heartrate over 120 I stayed in that zone the rest of the ride. Definitely better exercise than one of the standard exercycles but still well below the heart rates I hit in spinning classes.

Let's see: 185 watts times 1/2 hour = .092 kilowatt-hours. At my BGE rate of about 16 cents per kWh, I could have reduced my electric bill by about 1.4 cents. If I did that 5 times a week, that would be almost $3.50 per year, would pay for about 3 days of health club membership - or maybe feed Sally Struthers for an entire month?

Leaping Into Leap Year

Finally, 2008 is actually here. Allegedly, soon there will be an election and an end to the inane coverage of the current crop of 37 or so candidates. If you live in Australia or New Zealand you'll have a pretty nice eclipse to view in about a month. We will all work an extra .3% this year for free, as 2008 will have a February 29th - with global warming and all, that day (a Friday) may be a great day to take off and go paddling. In any event, 2008 probably can't be any worse than 2007 was - and it may be a whole lot better. To get 2008 off in the right direction, I managed to work in hiking, biking and kayaking across the end of the old and the start of the new year.

Carl and I returned to Maryland Heights to complete the Fort trail loop hike that was derailed by ice and fog last time. For some reason, Carl suggested (and I agreed) that we would start at the base of Weaverton Cliffs where the Appalachian Trail meets the C&O Canal Towpath, which meant we would have about 6 miles of towpath hiking and 5 miles of climbing up and down Maryland Heights - basically 3 miles flat, 2.5 miles up, 2.5 miles down, 3 miles flat. The weather here is on one of those seven day cycle where every Sunday is gray and rainy, so from the stone fort at the top of the mountain (at about 1400 feet elevation) the view was muted but still pretty impressive, as was the evidence of all the damage from the icing. The information signs talked about how they pulled 10,000 pound cannons up to this fort but I will bet they never once actually hit anything from up there. It rained and sleeted for the last two miles of the hike on the Towpath but doing an 11 miler was a good way to close out 2007.

I had missed out on a CPA paddle around Eastern Neck Island, so on New Year's Eve day I snuck in a paddle on the Potomac from Jack's Boathouse in Georgetown. Frank the proprietor was there and let me launch at my peril, since the big floating dock had been pulled up and only a small dock with a powerboat using up most of the space was left. I managed to get into the kayak (looking like the Michelin Man in my dry suit) without going swimming and paddled a little over 2.5 miles upstream almost to the Chain Bridge. The water was pretty high and the current was noticeable - I thought I was way out of shape until I turned back and then my speed jumped from 5mph to closer to 7 mph. A lot of swirls and eddies in the water, as well, making paddling a bit more work than at lower water levels. Back at Jacks, I helped Frank move a boat as some payback for being able to launch and headed home.

Carole and I started the New Year with our odd "go to Starbucks and drive around looking at houses" tradition, after puzzling over the Washington Post's annual In and Out list for a while. The older I get, the fewer of the pop references I understand - that's probably a good thing. The weather was decent, so I decided to head over to the Baltimore Annapolis Rail Trail and bike from the Earleigh Heights restored train station to Annapolis. When I left it was in the forties and sunny, but by the time I started it was cloudy and had dropped into the thirties. I biked into Annapolis, where it appears they are doing major construction on the city dock area - it was a mess.

On the way back, rather than just take the B&A trail back for the standard linear 22 mile out-n-back, after crossing the Severn River I detoured onto old Baltimore Annapolis Blvd and then out to Greenbury Point where the old Navy antennas used to be. From there I headed  onto St. Margaret's Road, eventually reaching Rt. 50 at Cape St. Clair Road. This is a nice stretch of road, with a few short ups and downs and lots of great scenery - interesting houses and occasional water views. I took College Parkway against the freshening wind back to Jones Station Road and back to the B&A trail - the detour added almost 7 miles for about a 29 mile total. If you look at the track of the ride below, it sorta looks like a crude drawing of Snoopy, no??

Happy Holiday Hiatus for the Restofus

  For outdoor pursuits, 2007 was a pretty good year:

• Got up to four kayaks and paddled most of the places I wanted to paddle: Wye Island, Eastern Neck, Jug Bay, Parker's Creek and a whole bunch of races.
• Biked a bit less but managed to do the Salisbury Century for the first time in about 10 years
• Hiked every segment of the Maryland Appalachian Trail and pretty much every other hikable spot within 100 miles of this area

Lots more to do in 2008 - I never did paddle Janes Island and it looks like the Blackburn Challenge race will be on the agenda - with a brand new boat to paddle. I want to bike the Allegheny Passage bike trail and increase the number of long hikes as well. Oh, and probably do some more 5k races with my wife. Now, if I can only figure out a way to get that annoying job out of the way that forces so much indoor time...

So, happy trails/wakes/slipstreams to all and to all a good night.

Running With Fast Women

Wow, not only does she bike 65 miles in a single bound, but check out Carole's results from the Laurel Turkey Trot:

Wow - she beat all the 50 year-olds, and even creamed those 40-somethings, too!