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Can Global Warming Be Fun....

....well, I guess you got to make the best of things and when record highs arrive an January, cycling beautiful gravel roads is in order....
This weather "forced" me to head out and hit some of the most beautiful gravel roads on the central Virginia area....

I stopped at an old church in Rapidan and had walnut raisin bread with almond butter and strawberry jam sandwiches, dark chocolate, and a homemade peanut butter energy bar followed by an orange...desert was the remainder of the ride...

Winter Solstice Ride - Four Rivers Loop...or....

...the Best and the Worst of the Area...

Things have been way too busy and hectic lately so managing to squeeze in a long ride wasn't going to happen but some riding is better than none...I had not ridden this loop in a while and it has about 7 miles of wonderful gravel roads and crosses the Pamunkey River and the three rivers which make up the Pamunkey, the North Anna, the South Anna, and the Little River. The loop passes houses built in the mid 1700s and farms with names like North Wales Farm and South Wales Farm which remind one of Great Britian. Its a good thing I was riding my trusty Sturmey Archer three speed hub from Nottingham built onto 700c wheels...my 3 speed rough stuff bike. The route also goes by one of the largest kings land grants owned by the same family but now due to the greed and short sightedness of the county the property will be sold for more houses, and more houses, and more houses...and it could be park... Just don't let the county find out about this little one lane bridge or they will be scrambling to replace it with something big, expensive and ugly.

Of course there is the bad...a two lane section of Route 30 which has loads (no pun intended) of homicidial garbage haulers and timber trucks and crosses I95 twice...you can hear the roar of the interstate from miles away...

Oh well, another successful winter solstice ride....

Tacky Light Tour - Second of the Season

Where is Richmond headed...two tacky light tours this season and within a week of each other!

This ride had a different start but followed much of the same route as the one from Friday and it had a smaller and different group...no tall bikes either....BUT fun was had none the less...

Second Annual Tacky Light Bicycle Tour

...or is that Tacky Bike Light Tour...tall bikes decorated for the seasons...the crowning glory of cycling events for the season started at the Black Hand Coffee Shop and ended there...with a "private" party of Pizza and beverages...and coffee...

Over a dozen miles of zig zaging though the city checking out the lights and just enjoying a very mild December evening perfect for night riding...

unfortunately some of the Richmond area's most tackily lit houses are located in the suburbs where SUV monsters patrol the streets looking to smash any thing that delays them a nanosecond...

The Fairy Agee Loop - Texas

Today I visited the Anderson Ranch where my Grandfather was born and later that afternoon parked at the Fairy Cemetery just north of the ranch and where my Great Grandfather and Great Grandmother are buried. I then on my trusty Sturmey Archer 3 speed cycled a nice loop ride around the area, circling the ranch and enjoying the wonderful fall day in Texas. I wish I had more time and could have cycled for miles as the weather and terrain were excellent.

Fairy is approximately 10 miles south of Hico which still actually has a few folks living in it. The area surrounding Fairly likely has a lot less people living there than 112 years ago when Grandpa was born. And Agee is no longer marked.

http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=31.81126&lon=-97.97315&size=m&u=4&datum=nad27&layer=DRG

Click on the above link to see the topo map of the area and the red X is on the location of the house.

I recall seeing somewhere the ranch was established in 1893 so I'm guessing the house is now 113 years old. Located nearby was the abandoned house of my Great Aunt Bertha and if you look closely you can see the footprints and handprint of a child in the concrete to the front step. They likely belonged to some long lost relative....

When I was cycling south of the house on a dirt road, the area was so deserted and quiet that I could almost imagine how things were 100 years ago. It was one of those magical moments in which a mild temperature, a gentle breeze and the total absence of any other people allows you to almost feel the desolation of how the area must have felt back then.

All in all a wonderful subtle adventure….

...if you gotta have a flat...its good to have a nice place...

Well, I was "homeward bound" and some pavement snake leaps up and nails my sidewall...insta-flat...well I guess there could be much worse places...clean, glass free sidewalk, golden fall sun shinning...and almost immediately a fellow cyclist stopped and asked if I needed anything...nope...just more time to ride...

Summer Solstice Solo Ride - James River Loop

Nothing like a good map, low traffic roads, pretty countryside and the whole day to ride









I'll bet people driving cars kill more people...








Lunch at an old church in Norwood...as you can see it had been redone several times...
and boy-o-boy it felt hot that day...I was hanging out eating in what seemed like a 3 foot wide strip of shade... Bike picture taken at the church...

Yes, that's a grocery pannier that had to carry water, gatorade, lunch and my toys...This picture was taken when I made it back to the campground... I stopped by Scottsville for the Batteau Festival overnight stop over...its an annual event and well worth visiting http://www.batteaufestival.com/index.asp

Golf Ball - The "New" River Trash

We did a float today along a fairly isolated section of the South Anna with merges with the North Anna and forms the Pamunkey River. You can't see any houses from this section its a pretty quiet float.

But today I notice a new river trash, something I have never seen before on this river or any other...GOLF BALLS...yes we found four golf balls on the bottom of the river in the sand and gravel...now I have floated this section a number of times and fished a bunch of Virginia's rivers and picked up quite a bit of trash but never a golf ball in the river...

The balls were all different makes/models and were found in both the South Anna and the Pamunkey...There are a couple (several) golf courses that now border the river...Is this a sign of the times...if it is...its a sad one

And just as strange when I picked up an old beer bottom I noticed a dead minnow inside the bottle as I was dumping the water out....

As Gas Costs More - Let's Rip Up the Walking and Bike Paths

As the price of gas increases, walking and biking are healthy alternatives however when I was in the west end the other day...this is the section of Richmond/Henrico County where you can't even cross a road without a car and walking...well only dishwashers do that, I noticed something shocking...

"They" had removed a perfectly good walking and biking path...and planted trees....


Now I think that planting trees is very important but to remove a perfectly good pedistrian path to plant trees, what a silly waste of money. If you look closely at this photo you can see where the path once was coming through the center of the photo and just to the left of the manhole and the grass area. The path was removed for about a quarter of a mile all the way back to the office building and the trees were planted in the hard packed base course to the asphalt path. (Click on the picture and when its enlarged you can see the location of the path much better.) And its not like there wasn't room to plant the tree closer to the road or back onto the grass area...

Only the US...as gas costs more, citizens will be discouraged from saving money and gas and forced to drive a car...

Winter Solstice Ride

It was a cold winter solstice ride...pedaled only 25 miles but that's better than nothing! And better than going to work...



Passed this old abandoned county store which the tree has grown into the corner of the roof...I took a picture years ago but it wasn't digital... If you look closely you will realize the store was actually built around the tree with the corner of store "cut off" yet the tree still managed grow into the store. Hopefully the tree will out live the structure and won't be killed when the building is torn down or burned...

and it was hard to beat these unpaved roads...looks like something out of Britain

Once I rolled back in I snapped this self pic....

Richmond Tour de Tacky Light Tour

The word had gone out earlier for folks to assemble on December 12th at ReCycles for the Tour de Tacky and a prompt ride departure at 6:00 pm was pronounced…yea right, prompt, sure. A mixed crowd of serious riders, a few (very) casual cyclists who hadn’t ridden in a while to racers mounting beater fixies to Rivendell’s Atlantis made of the “Tour”. Bicycle lighting ranged from the truly tacky and overdone light bikes to a few folks who forgot that you need lights to be legal at night.



Somewhere around 6:20 a group of about 21 hit Cary Street heading east for the James Center and the lights of downtown office buildings. We started lightening the posse right away with a double flat on a knobby tired mountain bike; the rider grumbling something about screw it and I’m walking home. The group finally reassembled at the Turning Basin at the James Center Plaza and then headed toward Libby Hill, the next stop.



We crossed 12th Street about a block past the James Center and headed down the hill through Shockoe Slip. One rider on a souped up coaster braked bike promptly did the most incredible imitation of Pee Wee Herman complete with sound effects of Pee Wee screams riding the entire length of the Slip on cobble stone paved street with his hands in the air weaving between the cars stuck in traffic. If I only had a video camera…I think the sight of this helmetless Pee Wee imitator riding no hands was enough to scare off a few more of the more conservative riders because the ranks had thinned by the time we reached Shockoe Bottom.

At the base of Church Hill we had debated cutting up 23rd Street, the steep cobblestone paved hill climb that Tour de Pont used to hit at some unfathomable pace but the thought lead to screams of pain the fixie folks. So we cut up the hill just past Poe’s Pub to catch a chained off cobblestone street up to Libby Hill. I was going pretty good until I hit the area paved with yellow leaves and promptly spun out. Never knew gingko leaves were so slick. At least I wasn’t the first or the last to bite it on the climb and I didn’t go down to kiss stone.

At the top we ran into the famous Ralph White who appeared to have brought under control an “illegal” fire left by the revelers had been watching the Parade of Lights which consists of the rich folks who decorated their boats and drove them up the river. Our noisy assent may have scared off the revelers but it may have been for the best. Seems our prompt departure and blazing speed had caused us to miss the boats…well there’s next year and with all the tax cuts they’ll have bigger boats for us to watch. There was already talk of a beverage stop and a debate as to the best location for liquids which was miles short the planned first stop.

The decision was made…Ipanema’s. The peloton headed north through Church Hill and cut over past Jumpin’ Java’s Coffee House (now securely in lock down) toward the Martin Luther King Bridge and Leigh Street. This section of the ride was relatively flat and uneventful and at Adams we zigged over to Grace Street and followed it west to Ipanema’s.

So we rolled in and locked up, and were down to about a dozen folks with only about seven miles completed. Ipanema’s didn’t have any stouts I was interested in so a Brooklyn Brown would have to do. There was a fairly rowdy discussion regarding veganism and sex, the details of which are not the subject of this ride report. The ride leader managed to push this herd of cats out the door before too much damage was done by the alcohol. A big plus is that Ipanema’s is no smoking until something like 9:00 pm…no bad at all…

The plan at this point was to head west on Grove, see a few lights and end up at the original first stop, a place named Freckles. By the time we hit Libby we had shed a few more riders and were down to about six. I think it was the blazing pace set to get to the truly tacky lights of the near west end. I know at one point I looked down and we had broken 16 mph not kph, that’s mph! Freckles was closed so the reminder of the riders decided a Fan bar would have to do so we headed back eastward. As we cranked back another of the fearless six peeled off and once we hit the front door to the Taphouse two more bailed. That left only three intrepid soles to “complete” the ride and partake in the delicious seasonal stout like offerings…no problem…until next year…

New Kent Harvest Ride

New Kent County had a Harvest Ride prior to their Harvest Festival and they couldn’t have picked a better day. Detailed queue sheets with rides from 12 to 100 miles were available and fully supported with nice rest stops all for free. All of the routes for the most part follow low traffic historic roads on which the biggest change from 150 years ago is the asphalt pavement.

We cranked out 25 or so miles on the tandem because my daughter can only get so excited about cycling as she doesn't want to sweat...weather was just wonderful...its great when you can ride in a long sleeve wool jersey and not feel hot or cold…

Ridin' to Vote!

On October 29, 2005 I rode my bike to the Hanover County courthouse vote by absentee ballot since I would be flying home from Colorado on Election Day and wouldn’t arrive until after polls had closed. It was a nice, crisp, clear, fall day. Cycling to vote reminded me of what it must have been like 200 years ago when people traveled from all over the county to vote at the courthouse for folks like Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry. The original courthouse still stands mainly as a “museum” and for use as an occasional meeting location for citizen groups. The Hanover Tavern is directly across the road and was likely frequented after and may be before voting back in the day.

All in all, a great 34 mile loop on roads which nearly all of which were present 200 years also. The bridges over the Pamunkey River are a nice improvement...

Labor Day Ridin'

Took a quick ride on this Labor Day holiday in rural King and Queen County and as I was cresting a little rise on a rough gravel road a car came from the other direction with quite a dust cloud following...I thought "oh boy here comes a dusting"...however the driver quickly slowed down, pulled to the side, inching along and yelled "Howdy"! It was a large black lady with a big smile on her face...I yelled back "How's it going?!" and then picked up speed dropping down the long rutted descent.

The next two motorists I passed on this little traveled road were both driving pick up trucks with the classic angry white man behind the wheel who "ain't gonna cut no bicycle no slack" attitude...and here came my double shot of dust...what is the attitude problem so many of these white males have...?

What a contrast with the cheerful lady I had passed a mile or so back...

Lady runs same red light twice during same red cycle!

I saw a new one as I returned from a bike ride...stopped at a red light on a 2 way street and a lady going in the opposite direction ran the red light with traffic coming from the one way cross street, made a quick U turn once she passed the intersection luckily missing me and ran back through the intersection and of course the red light...all the while the oncoming traffic with the green light had just stopped and watched (and blowing horns) in amazement...

The woman pulled down the street and whipped into a parking spot...must have been a special spot because there was no shortage of spots...when the light turned green I rode by her and looked her in the face and she seemingly was totally unaware of what an idiotic action she had taken...take her drivers license (if she has one) and her car away...!!!

humidity, code orange ozone and biking

geeze...days like today make me wonder about cycling....

Early June Country Ride

A picture from a nice solo ride in early June through Cumberland, Buckingham and Fluvanna Counties. This shot came from the entrance to an old home site next to an area with extensive quarrying dating back into the early 1800s. High quality slate was mined from this area. Note the stone "posts" one of which my bike is leaning against...would love to have these for my yard!