What Happened To The Tuesday Night Hustle?
July 15, 2015 § 1 Comment
If you are a bike nut, and of course when I say bike I mean bicycle, and not a motorcycle. Really we would say a cycling nut because we are “cyclists”, and not just “bicycle riders”. What is the difference? WTF knows, but there is a difference! So, if you are a cycling nut, and you are nuts enough to race your bicycle, and by race that could be race in mass start events like weekend criteriums, or road races, or it could be race as in you are a tri-head, but you really really really love the cycling portion of the event, and to go fast on the bike is something that you think about all the time when you aren’t riding.
Along comes a weekly ride that you have been waiting for. A ride that you have read about in other parts of the country, or friends of yours from Ogalala post to their Facebook accounts every week about this ride that totally kills them, and you think “Damn, why isn’t there a ride like that at The Jersey Shore?” Sometimes you have that ride on weekend if the right people show up, but generally you want something like that during the week. Something to break up the week and give you a decent workout mid-week, and prep you for whatever the weekend will bring. Something that has you just on the limits of your abilities, until you fall back and drop back in behind the last person of the pace line and ahhhhh, just enough relief that you realize you can hold on for another turn.
The Adventures of Frank & Stein Part I
July 3, 2015 § 1 Comment
Every year is an anniversary of “The Adventures of Frank & Stein” played by myself as Stein, and a college friend and roommate Frank Falcione. The name really has to be credited to Thomas Dudek, another college friend. Tom was a somewhat streetwise Philadelphia fanatic that played a great game of pool, and lived in the same student housing slum as both Frank and I. We were in the same small Engineering Science department at Penn State, and we spent a lot of time together in class, at the Rathskeller shooting pool, at The Hub shooting pool, and drinking lots of beer. Somewhere along the line in this friendship Tom gave me the nickname Stein. Pretty soon that was how my circle of friends knew me. Very much the same way that I am known today amongst my cycling contingent as Bird (yes, it is short for Big Bird). I don’t really recall how Tom came up with stein. It was not like we were all looking for nicknames. We weren’t sitting around drinking and smoking dope thinking out loud “We should all have some nicknames….Eric you be stein”. Suddenly it was there, and that was who I was. So the following (and subsequent posts) is a recollection of an adventure that was hatched by me, and drew in Frank so that by the time we left for this adventure it was already being called “Frank & Stein’s Big Adventure” or something like that. “What route are you taking?” “It’ll be the Frank & Stein route.” “What the hell is the Frank & Stein Route?” “It will be the route that we travel, where ever that takes us.” Mostly it should end up being a tale of friendship, and the people we meet along the way. What are stories, but the recollection of past events shared with friends? So here is the recollection of one of my major past events.
NJ AT Sectional Hike #3 – Culver’s Gap to High Point State Park
June 30, 2015 § Leave a comment
June 28, 2015
It’s been a month since our last hike (4 weeks technically), my oral surgery is still in recovery mode, but I am under no restrictions other than I am still on a soft food diet. Our plans of camping Saturday night, so that we could observe the Sunrise from Sunrise Mountain, were thoroughly washed away by a near tropical storm that came through late Saturday.
Getting Started Culver’s Gap
I awoke in a daze. I had fallen asleep in the chair I had last been sitting in watching another episode of The IT Crowd. (Episodes on Netflix!) I hadn’t done anything to prepare for my hike and I needed to get some bed rest before awaking for real at 4:30. I did take some time to put a lunch together and then retired to my bedroom. I wanted to get to bed, so I figured I would just put everything together in the morning and I crawled into bed.
NJ AT Sectional Hike #2 – Mohican Outdoor Center to Culver’s Gap
June 30, 2015 § 1 Comment
June 1, 2015
As is the custom with these sectional day hikes, I don’t exactly get myself fully together until the last moments the night prior, and then I don’t sleep well to boot. Last Saturday night was no different. On the plus side, at least I had managed to get everything together and ready to go, so there was nothing to do in the morning except drag myself out of the sack and get to the car. Negatives? Sleeping, or lack of it. Thoughts of what I was forgetting, or sleeping through the alarm raced through my mind all the while, side thoughts of “I am not asleep yet” percolate occasionally to the head of my consciousness issues queue.
Stupid issues were keeping me awake as well. It’s warmer weather now, so I wasn’t planning on long hiking pants, however, I don’t really own a pair of short hiking pants. I have shorts, but they are all cotton and even though rain was also forecast, no one wants to sweat-wet cotton shorts and wear them all day. So all I had were some pocket-less gym-style shorts which being pocket-less meant that it wouldn’t be easy to access my iPhone for picture taking, and now that I had spent some cash on a Pic Stick, a phone case with a tripod adapter, and a remote shutter release, I had been planning some hiking selfies! Jeopardy! Then I remembered that I had purchased a waterproof pouch, for my backpacking trip in Utah last year which could attach to my shoulder strap, except I didn’t have the slightest idea where it was, and I certainly wasn’t going to find it at 4:30 in the AM. THAT, and whether I should wear compression calf covers during the hike because I was reasonably certain of sore lower legs in the days after the hike if I failed to do something about it. So, little sleep was achieved.
Barbados Needs Sidewalks
February 7, 2015 § Leave a comment
Yes Barbados has some sidewalks but hardly enough for all the roadway that exists on this island paradise. Perhaps you might believe that paradise doesn’t include sidewalks, but you would be wrong. If there are roads, and there certainly are roads in Barbados, and there are pedestrians, and there are plenty of pedestrians in Barbados, and they have to get from the transit stop home, then Barbados needs sidewalks. Keep in mind that pedestrian traffic is not limited to daylight hours only, oh no! They are in the road in the dark in dark clothing and are very hard to see. Did I mention that they drive on the left here in Barbados?
Sufferfest 2015
January 2, 2015 § Leave a comment
“Can we go home now?” It was a question on everyone’s mind at that moment. Out of the 7 of us, only myself and two others decided to do the final steep leg killer climb up Takalousa in Holmdel. What was cruel, was I had taken them up the long 3 tiered Telegraph Hill Road climb within sight of the top where my pre-programmed route was to hang a left and descend through a neighborhood cut through to get to the base of Takalousa. By this point we had close to 4000 vertical feet of elevation in our legs, and we had been on our bikes for nearly 6 hours.
High Uintas Wilderness – Day 7 – Final Day
November 1, 2014 § Leave a comment
Our last morning began with the usual queuing for the cat-hole trowel. I was first (as was getting to be normal) and afterwards I grabbed my fly rod and headed down to the pond for one last native trout fishing experience. Forgotten was it that my one week license was purchased through Friday, and that technically I would be fishing illegally, but as they say, ignorance is in fact bliss. I fished the edge for a while until Larry abandoned The Point and then I took up his former location as this was a prime location. I was still fishing the dry cadis, but the morning felt different and I was pretty sure I had the wrong fly. A few casts, and I was about time to hang it up, when a fish took my fly and I managed to set the hook in time. It would be fair to note here that it took me more than a few tries the previous evening to get the hang of “setting the hook”. I could feel immediately that this was no small fry, so I pulled him in and as it turned out he was just barely legal. I was fishing for fun, so catch and release was the name of the game, and after Larry helped me extract the hook, I placed him back in the water and off it swam.
The fire ring, my poles, no one else, just me. The sun on the young Aspens, they will not survive, the Beaver will make a snack of them soon one day.
High Uintas Wilderness – Day 6 – Fishing with Andy
October 22, 2014 § Leave a comment
My initial focus this morning was what I could see. Facing south because I like to sleep on my right side, my view was open as that was the direction I had set my Tyvek shelter the previous night. In those first moments of consciousness I couldn’t help notice the clouds; The dark clouds; While coming into focus they appeared to be coming our way up the basin. “Rohr Oh” were the only words I could mutter and I jumped out of my sleeping bag with definite purpose. If a storm was coming, then I needed to re-orient my shelter away from the wind. I quickly stiffed my bag, and rolled up my sleeping pad. I decided to take another look. Maybe the clouds weren’t heading right for us. Maybe they were moving right to left across my field of view. Maybe I jumped to the wrong initial conclusion.
HDR shot in the early morning. Though ominous looking they looked worse when I first awoke.
High Uintas Wilderness – Day 5 – And it was only 4 miles
October 20, 2014 § Leave a comment
The day would prove to be a lot more challenging than the 4-ish miles we calculated we had to travel. On paper it seemed like it might be an easy day. Eighth mile return to the H55 trail, and then 3.5 miles to and over Bluebell. We had studied the lake documentation and we decided to camp on X25, one of the unnamed lakes without camping restrictions, and we hoped some native cut-throat trout. 🙂
First one up and went for an 8 shot panorama where clearly the exposure changes dramatically from East to West this time of day.
High Uintas Wilderness – Day 4 – Unexpected Pleasures
October 17, 2014 § Leave a comment
Day 4 is upon us. We will be moving camp from our current elevation, back down the Yellowstone, and then up the Bluebell Pass trail to Milk Lake. The net change in elevation will be almost +300′, but we need to lose 600′, and then gain back the 900′. We will be covering some of the same ground that we did on Day 2, however, we will hang a left when we get to the first trail junction. The hike back will have us recross the Yellowstone again, and we will have also to recross Milk Creek, which was a little dodgy the first time. Once we make the left onto Bluebell though, the terrain changes from a long valley walk, to a hill climb. The map indicates switchbacks, but there isn’t anything written which says how many, and how long they last. Reading the map says, there is about 1.2 miles of initial switchbacks, and then it levels off for a bit, re-connects with Milk Creek, and then ascends a little more mildly to the trail junction with Milk Lake. There, a spur will climb the final stretch to the lake where we will commence the search for a fire ring.
Larry Butler in his black attire: Pearl Izumi Cycling tights Moutain Hardware down vest REI Knit Cap Some kind of running shoe Star Bucks Via
Big Bird's Adventures 