A Day Off From The Grind

Rejoice! The Sun! After a month of craptastic Sundays we finally got a nice one thanks to tropical dud, Dan.

After cruising up the hill from breakfast, we decided to celebrate the day by taking a drive up to West Milford to take a ride on Clinton Road. The road is closed to traffic because of a washed out bridge about half way between route 23 at the start and Warwick Tpk 9 miles away so we figured it would be worth using the car to get here.

Riding on the car free road was fantastic and I felt like we were on an Alpine tour. The area we were riding through is part of the Newark watershed and is filled with lakes and streams. Cathy posed in front of the stream that overflowed last year and washed out the bridge we were standing on.

When we got to the end of the road, a short ride on Warwick Turnpike brought us to our lunch stop where we ran into our neighbor, Kelly, and one of her riding buddies, Linda. Here the ladies share a laugh over lunch. It was a nice diversion and added to the holiday feel of the day. After lunch we pressed on and circumnavigated Upper Greenwood lake before making the return trip back across Clinton Rd to Route 23. All in all a terrific day!

After 6 weeks of almost constant work, bad news on the TV every night, politicians who can't get out their own way to just do the right thing for their constituents, and on and on... a nice bike ride is just what the doctor ordered!

Progress!

Mayor Hussa and Sgt. Donnelly
Originally uploaded by brendan61

Who You Are Looking At: Denville Mayor Ted Hussa and Sgt. Brian Donnelly of the Denville PD

What You Are Looking At: The start of the first Denville Town Bike Ride.

Why it is Significant: It is a mile post in our effort to make Denville a cycling friendly community.

Three years ago while Cathy and I were on a ride through Fayson Lakes a jerk in a car almost ran me down in an intersection and then tried to push me with his car because he was angry. In my years of riding I had become use to this kind of stuff and although I was pretty angry I would have just let it go and moved on. Cathy was not so willing to leave it at that and decided that we would have to do something. Three years later with two Washington bike Summits under our belts and a lot of talking with people and hard lobbying for our bicycle friendly agenda we are finally making some progress.

Last night we participated in Denville's family bike night. After the kid's safety rodeo we all went on the inaugural bike ride. The Mayor, who credits Cathy with getting him fired up for this work, has gotten the DOT to help improve roads and put up "Share the Road" and "Bike Route" signage around town. The Police are working harder on traffic enforcement and recently we got the town hooked up with some bike racks for parking down town. I know it may not seem like much but it takes a lot of cooperation to make this stuff happen. I think we are now ready to officially apply to the League of American Bicyclists to get our "Bike Friendly Community" designation. Very cool stuff!

Check out the photos by clicking on the picture above.

35 Days

IMG_0301
Originally uploaded by brendan61

It is the morning of day 36 in the year without cars and I realized that I missed the one month mile stone. I am now more than 1/12th of the way along. It has been a busy month at the store and these days pretty much all I do is work. It's a good thing I love my job!

In the picture above is Cathy patiently waiting while I snapped a shot of a huge traffic jam on Route 80 around 6:30PM. Knowing that traffic on all the roads in town would be a disaster we decided to ride our breakfast bikes into town to go to the hardware store for a new toilet handle. It's amazing how adding a bike ride into the mix turns a mundane chore into a fun adventure. From our vantage point on the bridge we could look down on all the unhappy drivers trapped in their cars. One guy in his car actually flipped us the bird as he slowly passed under us. A passing truck with two gentlemen inside motioned for Cathy to lift her shirt when she gave the universal sign for "blow your horn" by holding her closed fist in the air and giving two short pumps. She obliged them by reaching over and lifting my shirt instead. The guys in the truck cracked up and blew the horn. Good fun.

Before we got to this part of the ride, while riding in town, we almost got run over by a women who failed to stop for a stop sign. We were in the perpendicular lane getting ready to turn left and her poor driving forced us to swing wide barely missing getting hit. She pulled around in the direction we were going and parked her car so we decided we would have a chat with her. When I asked her why she did what she did she said that sun glare prevented her from seeing us. Huh? I said "so what you are saying is that you blew the stop sign and accelerated into the intersection because sun glare prevented you from seeing?" The woman started becoming belligerent at this point and when I asked her how she would feel if someone offered this excuse for running over one of her children she screamed "well no one got hit, did they?". This time, I thought to myself.

One thing I have learned since beginning my project is that people are much worse drivers than I realized. It's kind of shocking actually to see people being so careless in the operation of a powerful machine that has so much destructive capability. From this new perspective I wonder how it is that more people are not being killed or maimed by careless driving.

And finally, in my first month without cars I saved about $80 in gas (I used my bike for about 500 miles worth of transportation) and I lost 7 pounds.

Trek World!

Momona pano
Originally uploaded by brendan61

I love the panorama capability of my G10 and photoshop. Here is a three shot view from the Hilton Hotel in Madison, WI, overlooking Lake Momona and the Momona terrace convention center designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. I am here for a couple of days at "Trek World" the annual dealer show put on by Trek to showcase their new products and get us pumped up for the next season. It is tough to get pumped up for the next year because we are still pretty caught up in this year! But I won't lie and say that I am not looking forward to leaving 2009 behind us.

Trek is a great company and they make, arguably, some of the best products in the bike industry. But what I really love about Trek is the amount of resources they spend on bicycle advocacy. This year we were lucky to attend a fundraiser/thank you party for Congressman Jim Oberstar from Minnesota who is considered the father of the modern bicycle advocacy movement. Congressman Oberstar was the first elected official who had the vision to understand that bicycles could be an important mode of transportation in our country. He understood early on that bicycles are an efficient, environmentally sound, and healthy way for folks to get from point A to point B. Since the early 90's Congressman Oberstar, along with Earl Blumenauer from Oregon, has been a key supporter of legislation that has funded cycling and pedestrian transportation enhancements as part of our national transportation plan.

These events never fail to inspire me to keep trying to move the bicycle agenda forward. I will have to increase my efforts back at home and push to make Denville the first bicycle friendly community in New Jersey. John Burke, the president of Trek Bicycle and also a rabid dog advocate, displayed a map of the many League of American Bicyclist designated towns and cities that applied for and earned ratings. The number increase from 2003 to 2009 was dramatic but what stood out to me on the map was the big blank spot between Delaware and Rhode Island that had no stars. Pretty embarrassing for New Jersey. Anyway, at the Bike Summit in Washington for the past few years, we have been talking about a summit for New Jersey. I think it's time to make it happen. If you live in New Jersey, count on hearing from me in the coming weeks to get your help. In the meantime, if you have a bike, ride it. If you don't have a bike, get one. And then ride it!

Peace!