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.

Week 5 in Review (April 4 – April 10)

Well, I have reverted back to just one miscellaneous ride per week.  Worst yet, this one lone 4 mile bike ride was the only time I biked ALL week.  There were several factors that contributed to this though. First, and most importantly it was rainy and 40 degrees I’d say 4 out of the 5 weekdays.  Second, I wasn’t in town for the weekend.  I’ve already biked 6x this amount this week and it’s only Tuesday!

Routes	Miles	Minutes	Speed	Calories Burned
1	3.73	16	14.4	180

I’ve now biked through 6.35% of Philadelphia!  Not a big increase at all from the week before.   

Additionally, after creating the neighborhood map I have an initial neighborhood analysis.  Below is a map of all the neighborhoods I’ve visited over the past five weeks along with the top ten neighborhood coverage.  I’m still working out the kinks, I’d eventually like to combine these two things (the map and the chart) but ArcGIS is being very uncooperative right now and therefore wasting my time.  So maybe next week. 

Rank	Neighborhood Name	Total Area (sq. mi.)	Area Biked (sq. mi.)	Percent of Neighborhood
1	Rittenhouse Square	0.5778	0.5177	89.6%
2	Wilson Park	0.2018	0.1495	74.1%
3	Grays Ferry	0.6897	0.4846	70.3%
4	Passyunk	0.2967	0.1938	65.3%
5	Spruce Hill	0.4072	0.2330	57.2%
6	Bartram	0.2205	0.1260	57.2%
7	Graduate Hospital	0.5118	0.2867	56.0%
8	Washington Sq. W	0.3281	0.1802	54.9%
9	FDR Park	0.5308	0.2804	52.8%
10	Bella Vista	0.1546	0.0815	52.7%

I find it really fascinating that I’ve covered 6 other neighborhoods more than my home neighborhood, Graduate Hospital. 

COMING SOON: Neighborhood Analysis

After a few excruciating hours of filling in areas of the city where neighborhoods don’t exist I created the following map.  Now I’m very well aware of the fact that there are neighborhoods within neighborhoods in Philadelphia. I’m sure there are areas of South Philly that are such microcosms that a neighborhood consists of three Italian grandmothers’ rowhouses.   I’m not interested in trying to figure out if I’ve biked down that street.  However the neighborhood shapefile that I found had some strange boundaries, so if there are any GLARING mistakes, please let me know.

In the near future I’m hoping to add a few pages to this blog: an introduction to Philly, a running tally of neighborhoods and municipalities that I’ve biked through, and maybe a more extensive stat page on my statistics.  The last is a long shot – I still have to find a paying job. 

Week 4 in Review (March 28 – April 3)

I’ve broken my trend of biking only once extra a week, it’s a sign of spring.  This past week I biked all over the city, mostly to hang out with friends.  Since I biked more than just once I decided to show all of my miscellaneous rides on a map.  I was thinking of showing that and then eventually moving the buffer/where I’ve biked map to a new tab.  This is a new revelation so I have to figure out how to do that first. Anyway here is are the stats and maps for this week’s random rides

Routes	Miles	Minutes	Speed	Calories Burned
3	13.8	61	13.6	721

I’ve now biked through 6.27% of Philadelphia!  That is a big increase from last week; it also means that I’ve cover approx. 8.5 square miles of the city. 

Sunny Fairmount Park Sunday!

I’ve been itching to bike more and more but the weather has not been accommodating.  Today ended up being a beautiful day for a ride; sunny, warmish and a Sunday.  I debated with myself for way to long on where I should go (it was between Fairmount Park and the Delaware) and finally decided on taking a leisurely ride through the park. I ended up going a few more miles than expected.  The stats, link and map are below.

http://www.dailymile.com/people/Jerome9883/entries/6280086

Miles	Minutes	Speed	Calories Burned
14.7	77	11.3	927

Although the Schuylkill trail is a wonderful and gleaming case study in waterfront recreation and revitalization, on a warm early spring weekend it’s a bit TOO wonderful.  My disdain for braking for people with their dogs or runners that are oblivious to their surroundings and uturn in front of you leads me to choose routes that bypass the entire area south of the boathouses.  Additionally, the Kelly Drive trail is usually clogged up with high school, college and professional regattas (today was a high school regatta). While rowers tend to be great eye candy, they and their fans are too numerous for any decent bike ride. This is all leading up to the fact that I started my ride by biking up 22^nd Street into the Fairmount neighborhood.  Fairmount is one of the quintessential Philly neighborhoods, except that it’s really hard to get to on foot or transit.  The houses are very well maintained, they have a pretty vibrant commercial corridor (that contains a lot of bars that I’m not too familiar with so I’m not going to vouch for them) and lots of flowering trees. 

Biking north I turned left onto Parrish St and then veered onto Pennsylvania Ave. (the wrong way…shh) to an informal bike crossing of whatever railroad runs through there.  The crossing puts you onto Popular Drive, the east edge of the park, and then turns into 33^rd St. as you cross Girard.  There is quite a hill that takes you to the formally named East Fairmount Park as well as the neighborhood, Strawberry Mansion. Before entering the park I biked past a new, and enthusiastic, vegan restaurant.  It seemed a little out of place but via internet research it’s a real place, if you want vegan delivery as far south as Penn hit them up. Vegan restaurants are generally not that noteworthy, but in Strawberry Mansion they are.  The neighborhood is a classic case of wealthy, white neighborhood that was abandoned in the 1950s for the suburbs and became a poor, black neighborhood. Along the southern edge, primarily the area known as Brewerytown, there’s been gentrification by artists and young professionals (hence the vegan restaurant) but as a whole the neighborhood has a lot of large, ornate buildings that have been neglected for decades. 

                                                       

As I entered the park I realized something was happening as there were many parking attendants and a lot of signs for $12 parking. It turned out to be the regattas down the hill but it made for a really awkward confrontation with one such attendant that stopped me to ask me what I was doing.  I answered, biking and starred at her.  Anyway I toured around the drives of a few of the mansions that are settled in the park. A brief introduction to the park, it is approx. 4,100 acres and was formed in the 1850-60s as a collection of private estates and undeveloped land to prevent pollution of the city’s water supply.  One of the “estates” I visited was Mt. Pleasant.  Mt. Pleasant is a Georgian manor that was built in the 1760s by some guy named McPherson.  However, fun fact, it was owned briefly by Benedict Arnold until he became a traitor and they were forced to give up their country house.  Another nearby estate I visited was the Rockland Mansion, now home to PCOP.  I spent a good 5 mins riding around trying to figure out what that meant, Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia.  I got nowhere close to that. The mansion however was constructed in 1801 and is a great example of Federal style. 

After that I followed the roads around the reservoir located directly in the center of the park past some interesting park activities. Most people were doing “normal” things, i.e. flying kites, playing softball/baseball, etc.  However there was a group of guys that were all dressed in the same thing with back packs all huddled around each other and moving down the road looking like a bunch of lemmings searching for a cliff.  Upon closer inspections they seemed to be boy scouts that had a hold of some really large tree trunk and just moving it down the road.  There were like 40 of them it was a little strange.  Even though I wanted to I didn’t take a picture b/c I felt that would be stranger. 

Continuing my tour of the eastern portion of the park I biked past his old crumbling building that looked like it once used to be a concession stand.  It actually turns out to be one of the few structures left of the Strawberry Mansion Music Pavilion, designed by famed Philadelphia architect Horace Trumbauer in the early 20^th century.  It is a reminder of just how wealthy the area around East Fairmount Park was.  The structure now is crumbling and fascinating. Apparently as recently as 2004 there were plans to renovate the structure as part of a larger bird sanctuary/educational center to be constructed and managed by the national Audubon Society. 

After crossing the Schuylkill River along the Strawberry Mansion Bridge I biked along Greenland Dr. and up what seemingly is the biggest hill in Philly.  It’s not, but to give you context I live (as most of Center City is) around 10 – 30 feet above sea level.  When one is along Chamonix Ave, one is at approx. 260 feet.  Point being there are lots of hills in the park.  However, once you are that high you have the ability to bike DOWN the Belmont Plateau.  This plateau is where the Belmont Mansion sits and, possibly more importantly, has some of the grandest views of Philadelphia in the city.  The view is basically looking over the Art Museum at all of Center City and West Philadelphia. After snapping a few pictures, I biked down the hill and reached the fastest speed I’ve even gotten on a bike, 30mph. 

On the other side of Montgomery Ave. from the plateau is the Fairmount Horticultural Center.  It’s a 20 acres site that was formed for the Centennial Exhibition, the centers building was built in 1976 for the Bicentennial. Many of the trees and landscaping however date back to when the grounds were part of the Centennial.  I have never spent much time on the grounds; I’ve just biked through or have been cockblocked by the fence that seems to have irregular hours. I was hoping for some flowering trees but I think I was in between their blooms.  In addition to the gardens and the greenhouse the center contains a Japanese tea house and gardens.  The building is a replica of a 17^th century scholar house.  I think for $5, you can go in and visit it. 

The end of my Fairmount Park excursion was marked by Memorial Hall, the main hall for the Centennial Exhibition and now the Please Touch Museum, and biking around the relatively newly minted running/biking trails nearby.

After that I headed home through some relatively rough neighborhoods in West Philly, where one person decided to point out I was a cracker.  I should have told him that was really cheesy of him to say…ah, ha, ha, but in retrospect biking away is the best thing to do in that situation.  

Week 3 In Review (March 21-27)

So I seem to have a trend of only having one random ride a week. I blame Mother Nature. However this ride was very eventful. I was biking my way to Good Karma along the lauded Pine Street bike lane when this Fed Ex truck decided to turn right, right into me. It was not a cute situation. Nothing serious happened it was kind of in slow motion. I ran into his front bumper and skidded along the sidewalk. I didn’t know what to do so I kind of just stopped and looked at him and he looked at me and then while I was biking away he asked if I was ok. Based on his response time I’m glad I was.

Routes	Miles	Minutes	Speed	Calories Burned
1	3.88	17	12.8	192

Anyway, I’ve now biked through 4.95% of Philadelphia, making progress a few tenths of a percent at a time. Right now I don’t have any numbers from the Bucks County bike ride. I’m working on trying to figure out something with multiple municipalities.  I’ll keep you all posted.

Why am I up this early on a Saturday?

This is probably the most epic bike ride I’ve gone on. Not so much because the difficulty of the terrain or that it was a billion miles. More so in the fact that it was a very involved ride; waking up early, biking in 20 degree weather and riding other forms of transit. This whole ride began a few weeks ago when my friend Jeff asked if I’d go with him and a few people to help put up East Coast Greenway signs along an interim route through Bucks County. 

What is early? Well, it’s waking up at 6:40 to catch a 7:30 train. Jeff can back me up on the fact when I read 7:30am train that I wanted to punch him in the face. I don’t even wake up at 7:30 during the weekday, it’s one of the benefits of being unemployed. Why was it 20 degree weather? You’re going to have to ask Mother Nature because she’s punking us right now. Spring my ass. Regardless, I made it out the door all bundled up like I was biking among frecking igloos.When I got to 30^th Street where Jeff graciously and appropriately bought me a coffee. 

Here are the stats for this ride, including my short jaunt to 30^th Street Station and Jeff and mine mini bike ride from the Yardley train station to Yardley proper to meet up with our other bikers. This ride was outside of my preset map so I made another map to show the routes, as always the biking is in yellow but the train ride out and the drive back are in purple. 

http://www.dailymile.com/people/Jerome9883/entries/6126562

Miles	Minutes	Speed	Calories Burned
21.1	111	11.4	1,323

Now for all of those who don’t know what the East Coast Greenway is, it’s a traffic free bicycle trail that will eventually span from Maine to Key West, FL. It is planned and coordinated by a non-profit founded 20 years ago. The route is fully mapped on interim routes, and approx. 20-30% of the route is on a car free trail.  The interim route through Bucks County follows the Pennsylvania Bicycle Route E, administered by PennDOT. According to their website there are several PA bike routes, but very little information about them. Hmm…good enough for government work I suppose. 

This ride was the first time I took a bike on SEPTA, it’s an experience trying to get a bike up on the platform and then down the train aisle. Maybe it was the 7:30 start time. After Jeff and I got off the train in Yardley we biked down Main Street towards downtown/uptown, to the Wawa to meet up with Andy. Andy is the head of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the East Coast Greenway and a board member of the national board. He also had the signs, the route, and a car to drive us to our starting point. However a few sidenotes before I continue with the ride. 1) SEPTA has no business changing their regional rail scheme again when they haven’t even replaced the R3 sign. 2) Yardley is just adorable, maybe it was the morning sun. 

Andy drove us to some odd look strip mall in Morrisville and there we met up with another biking buddy, Chris from DVRPC. It was a plannertastic bike ride just by the people. From there we loaded up bikes with signs and tools and then headed to the beginning of the trail. For whatever reason I didn’t realize the beginning would be the state line. So I was all confused when I saw Trenton and the Delaware River. However it was a pretty awesome view with an old steel truss bridge in the foreground of the river and the Trenton “skyline”.

That was probably the most charming area of our entire ride. I assume due to political reasons the East Coast Greenway has to follow Route E. Well the Pennsylvania bike routes are only on state roads otherwise known as state highways. So that’s what most of the ride ended up being, wide shoulders, ridiculous turning radii and cars going in excess of 50 mph. It was a great bike ride for Jeff as it was his first in like 2 years. 

As we continued into Bucks County we entered a lot townships one being Fairless Hills whose name I find hilarious. These townships started to look like a lot of really old suburbs, with small or cozy houses lining roads that have large front yards and a small strip of sidewalk. 

The further we biked the house became more similar to each other and older, kind of like a 1950s suburb.  Then I realized we were biking through Levittown. Pardon me while I geek out about biking through Levittown, it’s a classic case study in planning. Levittown is considered one of the first suburban developments in the country, by far the most influential. While Levittown, Pennsylvania is not the first, the first being on Long Island, it is the same type of master planned community and is larger than it counterpart; 10 square miles. The developer, Levitt & Sons, purchased the land in 1952 and planned a community of over 17,000 houses, shopping centers, schools and park spaces. Most of the houses are tucked off of the main roads (hence why I don’t have many pictures) on a curvilinear street system. 

There are a few things I never realized about Levittown. Apparently it’s not a town or city, it’s a census designated place, meaning that it is worth identifying in the national census even though the place lacks its own municipal government. Levittown is actually FOUR different municipalities: Falls Township, Middletown Township, Bristol Town ship, and Tullytown (borough). Additionally, Levittown is divided into several sections, and they are actually called sections.Which reminds me of a communist settlement; surprising for a development that was built at the height of McCarthyism.   

The only pictures I have are in and around Middletown Township Park. The park is located at the intersection of Trenton Ave. and State Route 413 one of the worst spots for a park. It did have lion statues. 

Thanks for the geek out time, back to the bike ride.  After finding the lions, we biked down State Route 413 or Veterans Highway. A highway it was, not only did people zip pass us on this two lane expressway, the shoulder was made up of some of the worst pavement that I’ve ever biked on. Therefore it was often necessary to bike on the line dividing the shoulder from the vehicle lane, sometimes in it. Not cool.  

Jeff and I took a break for some Burger King and Andy and Chris continued to put up signs a few miles down. The Burger King was necessary. However I accidently tossed my Rango sheriffs badge from my kid’s meal.  I did get an apple juice though.

After eating we tried to cross the road. Now I’m not sure why we thought we could “jaywalk” across the road but we tried several times.We eventually biked all the way down to the turnpike bridge and turned around. Near the largest Wawa I’ve ever seen, it had to be on a plot of land that was the size of a Center City block. From there we biked back along our route putting up more signs and eventually getting back to the car. After some pizza courtesy of Andy, Jeff and I got a much needed ride back to the city courtesy of Chris.