Over the River and through Camden...

For my bike ride yesterday, I set an rarely-selected easterly course. I don't often ride into New Jersey—yesterday's trip marked my sixth visit in four years—because there are a lot of psychological obstacles. In order to get in to New Jersey, I must ride of Ben Franklin Bridge, which itself it actually quite fun, but it's an unpleasant ride to the bridge itself. Once across the bridge, getting through Camden can be a bit of pain. Simply put Fairmount Park is a much more attractive route.

That said, once past Camden, ridding in South Jersey is quite enjoyable, and since I don't ride there often is still novel. The terrain is flat, there are many neat old towns like Haddonfield and Moorestown, and there are fewer suburbs to traverse before reaching the countryside.

On yesterday's ride, I followed the Cooper River for about five miles before turning south towards Voorhees Town Center, one of the properties my company is currently redeveloping. After checking on the progress and downing a smoothie, I returned to my easterly course. An hour of riding brought me to Medford, about 18 miles east of Philadelphia, as good a place to turn around as any. I took a much more direct route back. Most of it was into a strong headwind, but I managed to maintain about 12MPH, which is pretty good for me. I returned to my apartment at 7:10 PM, ten minutes later than I hoped.



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Trip Statistics
Length: 61.1 miles
Time: 6 hours 5 minutes
Riding Time: 4 hours 40 minutes
Avg/ Speed: 12.5 mph
Max. Speed: 22.4 mph
Avg. Cadence: 58 rpm
Cum. Ascent: 1,600 ft.

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To cross the Delaware River from Pennsylvania to New Jersey, I almost always use the Ben Franklin Bridge. There is a pedestrian walkway on the each side, but the only keep one up at at time. This is the first time the north walkway was open. It's actually much easier for me to access this side, were I to know to go there first.




















What happens when your garage contractor or the driveway contractor don't get along.


















Voorhees Town Center is one of my company's major redevelopment projects. These two mixed use buildings are currently under construction. We will lease the ground level space to retail shops. Our partner will lease the apartments on the upper floors.























Historic house in Medford.


















New Jersey, beyond the sprawl.

How NOT to fly from South Bend to Philadelphia.

The trip commenced ominously. After a great weekend in Michigan, two seemingly-simple flights separated me from Philadelphia. While driving me to South Bend Regional Airport, my mom commented on a brewing storm to the west, a storm that would in fact delay the departure of Delta flight #6061, my flight to Cincinnati, but only by 15 minutes or so. With an hour and fifteen minute layover, I saw no reason for alarm. Even when our plane, then only 40 miles from its destination, veered off course and headed northeast, I remained unconcerned. But soon, the captain informed us that bad weather over Cincinnati forced us in to a holding pattern north of Dayton. She assured us they loaded extra fuel anticipating this move, but our stores proved insufficient. We landed in in Dayton for what she originally dubbed a 'gas and go' but what became a 'gas and wait'. On that sun-bathed tarmac, I called home and learned from my father my connecting flight reportedly would depart on time at 8:30 PM. It was 8:00 PM and I lost all hope of catching that flight. My short plane ride, assuredly the shortest of my life, from Dayton landed an hour later in Cincinnati.

With limited rebooking options, I found myself holding boarding passes for an 8:25 AM departure connecting through Detroit as well as a a coupon for a (discounted) room at the Florence, Kentucky Microtel Inn. Following the pack, I reached the hotel shuttle stop. After the second Econoline van departed full of stranded travelers other than me, I reevaluated and decided the hotel not worth the $50 rate. I obtained a complimentary overnight kit from the baggage desk, mainly for the free tee-shirt, and headed back through security in to the quieting terminal. To pass the time, I watched Orlando beat Cleveland in the NBA playoffs (yeah!), walked backward on a moving walkway, and counted the number of planes at gates (7). If only I'd had a Texan to wager on which of dwindling arrivals would arrive next. Eventually, I found, for a bed, a stuffed chair placed by Starbucks for their patrons, one of the few places in the airport protected from the drone of CNN adulating the Supreme Court nomination.

There, I obtained a proto-decent four hours of rest before the Starbucks employees arrived to prepare for the coming day. A task they approached in oblivion to my desire for sleep. I moved to Gate B14 and though the rest not as decent as before, it was ample for me to sleep through my opportunity to steal aboard the 6:20 AM flight to Detroit, a development I would later rue. As it were, my assigned Detroit-bound flight departed late due to a crew member calling in sick, but once again I fault weather my ultimate misfortune. For had it not doubled the length of this flight, I might have made my connection.

Rebooked for the second time in two days, but this time on a direct flight between Detroit and Philadelphia, I lunched peacefully at Max & Erma's (mmmm). Afterward, I briefly explored flying standbye on an earlier flight, but, if the monitors are to be believed, it completed with my confirmed flight for which, after delays, would depart ealier. Beyond caring at this point, I opened up White Fang and read. Neither the minutes–I know not how many—we sat at the end the runway waiting for the authorities to re-open the airport nor the extra time we circleded Philadelphia while they "changed runways" fazed me. I knew I'd reach my apartment eventually and I did at 5:30 PM, a little less than 25 hours after leaving Niles.


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The first and second legs (techincally first and third legs) are the actual routes recorded on my GPS. Sitting in the middle of the plane, on the final leg, prevented my GPS from obtaining a signal to record a track. In it's place I pasted the three Detroit-Philadelphia flights for which I do have data.

It's worth zooming in north of Dayton to see the circling on pilot did in hopes of waiting out the Cincinnati storm.


Our Plane to Cincy. Oh lassie, if only you'd had a little more jet fuel...

One flight left. It's to Midway. I bet these passenger's though they were the unlucky ones.

If you've ever wondered what Cincinnati's B terminal looks like at 12:00 PM on a Wednesday, now you know.

Bike Rides to date (5/17/09)

With my ride last Sunday, I've been on my bike four times this year. Here is a single map showing each ride.

A nice Fall day in May

If not for the green foliage on the trees, I could have mistaken today for a Fall day; gray, overcast skies, cool temperature, cooler wind out of the north. It may sound bleak, but I find it's actually pretty good bike riding weather. I held off most weekend because the weather reports suggested rain—it didn't rain–but by the middle of the afternoon that threat passed. I didn't intend on a very long ride, but ended up logging 40 miles. I even went beyond the Blue Route (Philadelphia's north-south, suburban beltway), an area I'd not previously ridden, to the very western edges of the suburbs. When I reached Media, a little before 5:30 PM and after about two hours of riding, I decided attempt to return home as speedily as possible, challenging myself to make it there by 7:00 PM, a goal I beat by a good 15 minutes.



Ride Statistics:
Length: 40 miles
Total Time: 3 hours 26 minutes
Riding Time: 3 hours 17 minutes
Average Speed: 12.2 MPH
Max Speed: 30.8 MPH
Cumulative Ascent: 3,200 feet

May 10th Bike Ride

Even though I started relatively late (2:30 PM) and had to be back in time for mass at 6:30 PM, I managed a decent twenty-eight mile bike ride today. After riding through Fairmount Park, a common route to escape the urban core, I ventured through a couple neighborhoods that make up the Northwestern section of Philadelphia, namely Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill. Having ridden the prescribed hour and a half, I changed direction to head back toward the city, mostly along Forbidden Drive in Wissahickon Valley and the east Shore of the Schuylkill River, also part of Fairmount Park.

Today offered some of the nicest weather yet this year (70°, partly cloudy), but it was rather windy for biking. For the most part, I faced headwinds riding out and tailwinds riding back, which I prefer to the inverse, tailwinds preceding headwinds.



Trip Statistics

Length: 28 miles
Time: 2 hours, 40 minutes
Riding Time: 2 hours 30 minutes
Average Speed: 11.2 MPH
Max. Speed: 20.5 MPH
Avg. Cadence: 51 RPM
Cum. Ascent: 1,100 ft.

Haleakala Hike

During my recent trip to Hawaii, I enjoyed a 13.3 mile, 8 hour hike through Haleakala Crater on Maui. After watching the sunrise from the 10,000 ft summit, I drove to the visitor center to hitch a ride between two trailheads. I started hiking around a 9:45 AM at the Sliding Sands Trailhead (lower left on the map). This trail begins at an elevation of 9,800 ft and generally descends for the first ten miles to the 6,600 ft. Then, it steeply regains 1,400 ft before ending at the Halemau'u trailhead (upper right on the map), where I had left my car.




This post is my first attempt to integrate a Google Map outside of the main Google Map environment, which I find very difficult to use. While this process proved difficult as well, it promises to be more versatile. For example, the former split my track in to six separate paths; the latter kept it in one piece.