My Summer Behind Bars: October 2010

NW New Jersey

After 13 years of living in New Jersey, and at the suggestion of Pascal, I planned a bike ride from home to High Point - the highest point in our lovely state. Using Google Maps, I laid out a route that was 105 miles round trip that offered "bail-out" options for about a 30 mile total or a 70 mile total if you didn't feel like doing the century.

The weather was great yesterday so Pascal, Paul, Tim, Ed and I headed out at 8:00 A.M. to test out the cue sheet that I had created. It was flat on paper (quite literally) but we knew we were in for some climbing for the day, as it crossed back and forth (and back and forth) over the three mountain ridges of the Appalachains that make up the northern part of the state. That and the fact that we were riding to the highest point in the state!!!

Our route looped around Lake Hopatcong, the largest lake in NJ, and then headed up north through Ogdensburg. For rock hounds, Ogdensburg is one of the most geologically diverse areas on the globe - lots of different types of rocks and minerals. Our route took us up Sterling Mine Hill and past the Sterling Mining Museum with all the news about the miners recently freed in Chile, it would have been neat to visit, but the place was closed when we rode by. From then we looped back west and north through some really nice farmland.

At the 35 mile point, Paul, Tim and Ed who were under time constraints had to head back south (marked by an "L" on the map above), leaving Pascal and me to the climbs up to the State Park. "Up to" being the operative words of the day.

We had some great back roads which I found using Google Maps, although the road markings differed somewhat from the references provided by Google. Since we were testing the "Cue Sheet" if we reached a point of ambiguity, we would take what we thought was the most probable route, and if we were wrong, cycle back to that point.

At the end of the day, our 105 mile ride turned out to be 122.3 - my longest day's ride of the year. As well I managed to ride the toughest 1.2 mile section of road this year (including the rockies and Cape Breton Island) in the last stretch up to High Point! Here is a profile of the grade - 18% at the steepest!!!

A true "nose scraper!!!"

The sights from High Point were spectacular - unobstructed 360° views of New Jersey to the East and South, upstate New York to the North, and Pennsylvania to the West. What we did not know at the time that I selected the route, was that a VW car club had set High Point as the northern point of its car rally so as we were leaving, we had to contend with "Fast and Furious - Munich Drift" literally hundreds of souped-up VW Jettas/GOLFs/Sciroccos, etc. whining along the same "quiet" country roads.

We got home around 5PM after a long day of riding, climbing, back-tracking, climbing, sightseeing, and still more climbing - all in all a fun adventure and well worth repeating - now that I have corrected the cue sheet it should be do-able in about 105 miles...

Here are some of the more memorable pictures from the day.