Introduction to an Epic Bike Ride

When I woke up on Monday and realized that it was going to be 80, there was no doubt that I was going to go on some type of epic bike ride.  I was having a hard time deciding between two places.  Up along the Schuylkill River to Conshohocken, or up along the Delaware River, I chose the latter.  I figured it would make a great blog post.  Well not only did I take nearly 100 pictures and venture into areas that are not appropriate for a bike, Loretta was feeling feisty. At one point her front wheel was doing something wacky so I tried to fix it by taking it off and was having a hell of a time putting it back on.  Then she decided that a rock along Rising Sun Ave. was too much for her back tire leaving me with a flat in the burned-out, quasi-industrial neighborhood of Hunting Park.  Now I do carry around a spare tube, air pump, and tire levers for instances like this.  However, little did I know I needed a wrench for taking off the back wheel. When that realization struck I had a momentary freak out.  After pulling myself together and observing that I was at the corner of 11^th and Rising Sun I noted that I could find the 23 bus on 12^th St.  Well, 12^th St. did not exist; in its place was a giant intersection between Old York Rd, Germantown Ave. and Rising Sun.  After another momentary fit of hysteria I asked some scraggly looking car repairman if he knew how to fix a bike tire.  He just stared at me.  Then in the distance, off of Broad Street I saw a tower with Temple University Hospital on it.  I have never been happier in my life to see an anchor institution.  I bolted over there like a white kid in Hunting Park, almost immediately caught a C bus, and then walked my bike to Breakaway Bikes in Center City.  Whew!

http://www.dailymile.com/people/Jerome9883/entries/6452153

Miles	Minutes	Speed	Calories Burned
22.3	111	12.0	1,336

This ride was not only epic because of Loretta’s stubbornness but also because of the places that I ended up biking through. It was absolutely beautiful out when I started and then got really hot toward the end of the ride, 82 to be exact. However, it is the height of spring here, every tree is in bloom which makes for some amazing scenery.  With the beauty of the trees and the warmth I just kept biking and biking.  If I didn’t get a flat I was intending on biking to Fairmount Park and then back home, making my ride approximately 28 miles all together. 

I’m not going to even going to attempt to explain everything I saw in this post, mostly because I need to not spend hours on one post.  Also I want to research some of the things I’ve seen.  It’s actually quite amazing how many new areas of the city I cycled through.  I’ll give you some highlights though:

• I biked past the Race Street Pier, which they were busy constructing still. It’s really coming together.
• There IS a “public” bike/pedestrian path behind SugarHouse Casino.
• There is a park that is tucked between the port and some oil field a little further north
• The Frankford Creek is just plain nasty.
• There are a lot of cute neighborhoods that are in the lower northeast.
• Lastly, the industrial area near Hunting Park/Upper Kensington/Juniata is massive and fairly deserted.

I’ll keep blogging about this ride over the next week.  Keep tuned.