Week 19 in Review (July 11 - 17)

I’m starting to realize with my schedule picking up and the fact that its 90 degrees out that my bike rides are not as frequent. I've only ridden 78 miles so far this month, last year I totaled 283 for the month of July. I don’t think I’m making that threshold, especially seeing this coming week is in the UPPER 90s. 

This week’s rides were fairly mundane, consisting of traveling back and forth along the Spruce/Pine Street bikeways. However the week was dotted by an epic first ride through New Jersey. It was less epic because of distance and more epic because it was through Camden/Gloucester City. Camden, as many think of it is a bit rough but not any rougher than parts of West and North Philly. It was more nerve-wracking because I have no concept of New Jersey geography.  Philadelphia is easy to figure out because if you are lost you can always look for a numbered street (2^nd, 5^th, 23^rd, etc.) or one of the main thoroughfares (Germantown, Baltimore, Frankford, etc.) and within 10 minutes you’ll find it.  In New Jersey if you find a main arterial there’s a high probability that you’ll end up on some freeway type road with jug handles and long impassable medians.

My Jersey ride was brought on by a few things. 1) The temptation of a new place seeing that I’ve not been there since blogging. 2) When I was recently fly into the airport we flew over South Camden and Gloucester City and I saw two interesting things from the window.  A park that seemed to over look the South Philadelphia Port (which is impossible to get to in Philadelphia, I’ve tried) and an adorable looking neighborhood plan that was tucked in between highways and marshlands. 

Once on the ground I found so many more interesting places it wouldn’t be fair to continue talking about it here. Look for a Camden/Gloucester City post coming soon.

As always here are the stats for the past few weeks. 

Routes	Miles	Minutes	Speed	Calories Burned
4	32	169	11.4	2,021

There were very little changes in the Philadelphia neighborhood composition of my rides. I apparently biked through a new portion of Rittenhouse which brought my total for the neighborhood to 99.8%.  However, with my Jersey ride I made some significant headway through new municipalities. I’ve still biked through a higher proportion of Philadelphia than any other city (30.49 sq. mi/21.2%) but I explored almost 1.5 sq. mi. or 13% of Camden. Make sure you check out the Geographic Analysis page for all the deets!