Bike About 2025 – The Last Phase
March 15, 2026 § Leave a comment
This is it. The final part of my cross country adventure on my Lynsky GR 300 gravel bike. In my last post I had zero’d for 3 days at my friend’s cabin in the woods on the edge of Bald Eagle State Forest near Woodward, PA. Some friends were up to hang out with us as well, and now they have returned to Northern Virginia, and it’s time for me to hit the road again. The plan is a simple one but perhaps not one you guess, knowing that I live in Monmouth County New Jersey not too far from the Jersey Shore. You might expect as much of a Bee line as could be made, trust me when I say the mountains do not support that kind of a journey. Anyway, my plan was to continue North on the PANTS route until I intersect the JORTS route where I will head East through some of the toughest riding in PA if not the country. That will put me on the same route as my prep ride that I finished in May. Hancock NY, across the Catskills and down the Empire State Trail into NYC to Pier 11. It was a nice ride in May, it should be a nice ride in August too. As hard as I tried to coordinate getting friends to meet me at Bear Mountain State Park to finish this ride off the only person I could get was my friend John L and the details of that meetup are still in the works. The Bear Mountain Inn was full because it was a weekend that I would be coming through, and so no vacancy means no friends. I thought detouring there and climbing Bear Mountain would be a nice diversion from the May route, but it was not meant to be.
« Read the rest of this entry »Bike About 2025 – Iowa
February 21, 2026 § Leave a comment
I have made it to Iowa in time for the start of this year’s Ragbrai. It will be the 52nd edition of the ride so Ragbrai LII. I can say now as I write this installment up that there were plenty of distractions during this phase of my trip and I didn’t keep decent daily logs as each day clicked away. Some of that was due to being part of a much larger event than my little jaunt across the country. What I found out was that rather than Ragbrai returning to the format prior to edition L (One L of a time!) which was 3-4 thousand cyclists, they had no cap on registration and the number was closer to twenty thousand cyclists. I joined the same group that I rode edition L with where there were some scratches, and some new editions. The main known protagonist being Pete Toohey whom I had been texting status all summer on my ride. We were to be joined by the Texas Meyers clan consisting of Robert, his son (name escapes me again) and daughter-in-law Amber and then the UVA clan (Amber is also UVA clan) that owes its Ragbrai attachment to one UVA alum, (K)Cat Rosenthal, who managed to convince a number of her VA girlfriends to “give Ragbrai a go”. The UVA girls are Cat, Amber, Heidi, and the other women whoose names escape me sadly including a new convert. There was also Ted the Diplomat who was riding with our group, doing his first Ragbrai before being deployed by the State Department to Somalia for his first assignment.
« Read the rest of this entry »Bike About 2025 – Wyoming
December 14, 2025 § Leave a comment
July 5th Day 19 – I transition from the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR) to Peaks Parks and Prairies (PPP) heading out of West Yellowstone. This begins the next phase of my summer bike about where my goal now is to get to the town of Orange City in Iowa for the start of the 52nd edition of the Registers Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI). I have the entire state of Wyoming to cross as well as most of South Dakota, one of the few states left on my list to visit, and now I am going to do South Dakota some real justice and spend quite a few days riding across it. For now I am still in Montana, having left Denise and Rebecca on the 3rd, they should be finishing up today by riding into Jackson Wyoming while I will set out East bound.
« Read the rest of this entry »Bikepacking in 2025 – Prep Ride
May 19, 2025 § 2 Comments
I have signed on to a ride starting just prior to the Solstice with a couple of people I have met through a local Hiker/Biker group that operates out of the Morris/Essex counties area of New Jersey. I was introduced to this group via my friend Paul that has joined me on some of my backpacking adventures and now that I am nearing the end of my working career, I am looking for bikepacking adventures as well. This particular adventure will be 2 northern sections of the GDMBR (Greate Divide Mountain Bike Ride) from Kalispel MT, to Jackson Wyoming. My plan is to leave them 1 or 2 days prior to their destination, and jump on the Adventure Cycling’s Parks, Peaks and Prairies ride and try to get to Orange City Iowa in time for this year’s Ragbrai (Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa) which some other friends I have are doing this year. I did the 50th anniversary edition of Ragbrai in 2023 and at the end of that ride we all agreed to try again this year. Once I am done with Ragbrai 2025, then the plan is very fluid. More than likely I will simply keep going and work my way back home to New Jersey, however I will probably try and work my way up to Buffalo to get onto The Empire State Trail, and ride to Manhattan and home. In 1981, with my buddy Frank, we rode fairly straight across the states from Iowa, so I am not too keen to repeat that. Another possibility is to head North, and then West and ride to Bend Oregon. That seems very unlikely, but it is not out of the question.
« Read the rest of this entry »Cycling The Pyrenees – Part One
June 18, 2024 § 2 Comments
It’s been almost 2 years, and I never wrote a single line here about this (mis-)adventure. Surprised I am indeed. Some time in early August my friend Tom Fahey sent me a link to a RideWithGps route across the Pyrenees that he and another friend, Augie Carton, would be attempting in October and did I have any thoughts on it. Of course my first thought was “Hell Yes!”, however I was doing a 10 day trip in the Weminuche Wilderness at the end of August early September, and I would have very few vacation days left, and then there was, of course, the expense, yada, yada. So, I didn’t ask if I could come at that time, but I told him I would analyze the route and get back to him. There won’t be any images to add in this post, but as I scan backwards through my SMS history, I see that there was an exchange with both Tom and Augie on July 30th concerning this trip, so it got onto my radar screen a lot earlier than I remember, and maybe it’s because I got to think about it for so long, that did influence my decision to join.
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Big Bird's Adventures 