Up Hill

Man the wind has been blowing for like 3 or 4 days now. My riding has been limited by the weather and other commitments so I am primed and ready for a ride tomorrow. I am also excited to see the Princess who will be home this weekend. I love taking a ride with her. It is so cool to ride along and talk. We have been riding since she was a year old. I can remember coming back on the home stretch , one hand on the bars and one hand reaching back holding her limp, sleepy head from bobbing in the baby seat. Then there were the years of the tow behind, alley cat when I used to buy her M&M's for a little power boost. I think the stand out moment, and probably any dad would agree, was that moment when I let go of the seat and she tottered along under her own power. Oh man, exactly one split second later comes the realization that this will only be the first of many times ya gotta let go and let her make her way without you to guide her.....Ya just gotta hope she keeps her feet on

It was a good weekend in spite of a rainy day today. Friday, I did a 16 mile recovery ride after the Platte Clove adventure on Thursday. Saturday was great, we spent the day with family, food, wine and 6 strings. It seems that the older I get, the more I enjoy time spent with family. We were sitting there playing songs and we realize that collectively we have forgotten more songs than we remember. Getting song lyrics correct is not a problem after a couple glasses of wine; we just go right into another song. Sunday brought some much needed rain and we went down to Adams for plants and walked the new “Bridge over the Hudson” with the princess. It will be real nice when the connecting bike trails are complete. Speaking of bridges, the Route 9G bridge over the Ro-Jan Kill is closed and I have to drive way around to get to the office, they say maybe 6 months till it is re-opened. I think I should just work from home till fall.

Well, I can check that off the list! Whew, I got an early start this morning and did the Platte Clove ride. It was a beautiful morning and I do not feel bad about missing a few hours work. The ride is a 20 mile loop that includes the accent of Platte Clove road and a decent of route 23A. Now everything I have read about climbing this road does not even come close to describing just how tough it is. It is steep and then it gets a little steeper and then it just gets stupid. I had to walk quite a few sections, I just could not recover…Oh did I say it was steep? Oh, and did I mention that it is long? When a section is running at 7% is looking like a recovery spot, you know it is steep. Having said all that it is beautiful, there is still snow on the trails at Hunter and the views are out of this world. The decent was really cool and fast. As far as my ratio setup, all I have to say is short of a Mt. bike, there ain’t a setup that is going to help much, I should have taken the Surly as I

I was cleaning up the dumpster Fuji on Sunday and I noticed that it has one of those Alpine stacks of cogs on it. The large cog is a 32 and the small is a 14. It is a pretty wide range for 6 speeds and not real great for normal road riding. I guess that is how they get away with the 52/42 rings on the front. So that got me thinking and I went out to the shed and pulled out another old 12 speed that I fixed up last summer. This bike had a really cheap crank that I replaced with a no name compact and cartridge bottom bracket. Within a few minutes I had the Alpine rear wheel on the bike with the compact crank. This setup gives me a bike with a 34 front to a 32 rear……Look out Platte Clove because I now have the gear for the accent. I tested it out around town and went down to the town boat launch, the climb back out was nothing on it, I wasn’t even down in the granny. Now if it doesn’t rain on Friday, I am going for it.

This year I decided to use up some vacation by taking a bunch of Fridays off, so far the plan has backfired. Every Friday I took off has resulted in a rainy day. I sure hope this Friday thing turns around for me as I was looking to Fridays to be my long ride day. I spent yesterday (rainy Friday, day off) overhauling Scout, my trusty old hybrid that did winter bike duty this year. Poor old thing, rode hard through the brine and put away wet. I went through both axels, Derailers, and soaked and cleaned the chain. I cleaned up the rims and paint and hung it back on the rack. Scout is ready for the next adventure. I see that there is a bike swap meet in New Paltz on the 25th. I may take a couple of my Wips in an attempt to thin out the herd. I would also like to look for a compact crank for the Surly. No riding for 2 days now…I am going out tomorrow, rain and wind be dammed.

Last Friday we drove down to the city to rescue the princess. On our way back we made a pit stop at the State Line Lookout on the Palisades Parkway. The State Line Lookout is a little glance into the bygone days when auto travel was still an adventure and the Road Side Attraction was where auto travelers made their stops as opposed to the Quickie Marts of today. I love stopping at the state line, I don’t think a lot of folks traveling on the parkway even know it exists, or they just don’t think they have the time to stop. There is never a line for the clean bathrooms and the view is really nice. Stopping here you can imagine this place in its heyday. You can get hot food, cold drinks and a peaceful spot to sit and rest.

Just down the road from the Up Hill estate is located the town transfer station. At the transfer station they have a large roll-off dumpster in which folks dispose of all manner of stuff made out of metal. I find that it is most fruitful to visit this dumpster just after they close on Saturday. This weekend’s visit was very exciting as I found that someone had decided that they no longer wanted this nice old FUJI. I can not stop myself from rescuing classic bikes even though I need another like…well you know. I dragged it out, then went back in to retrieve the front wheel. I walked home balancing the Fuji in one hand, Surly in the other. Once home, I Pumped up the tires, got the brakes working, trued up the front wheel a bit and rode it about 8 miles! It is a sweet old bike and very lucky I came along. I am not sure what I’ll do with it, maybe just clean it up and flip it on Craig’s list. Easter was great and we spent the day with family, playing 6 string and eating. The Frenzy caused