Saturday, May 26, 2012

Off to Bear Mountain.

I met a cyclist on Tuesday and he told me Bear Mountain was a good climb and it was 30+  miles north of here... Well, I had to do it...
This morning I Google mapped it, downloaded Firefox and used an app to convert Google Maps to a GPX file  then I went to another website and converted it to a TCX file... then I loaded onto my bike computer. I later found out that Google maps does not use as many pick points as Map My Ride, and I would have had a better mapped course. 

Not having a great map allowed me to do the way of yore. Ride along a cyclist and ask for directions. I found such a cyclist and they had to stop in a LBS for air in their tires and the owner finally got my rear deralur dialed in after weeks of messing around with it, now I have all 10 speeds in the back on command! yea. Now for you cyclist, I had a 12-23, as I thought this area is flat, and no hills, I wished I had a 12-25 to get up Bear Mt. it was not hard, not much different than the Gatineau's climb... 

Once I got up, descending is easy but the ride home had some major "rollers" along the way, not to mention that a Thuderstorm was developing, but I can read them pretty good after all these years on a bike, and I made for a Motel, front room with chairs just before it started and sat out one hour of a major Thunderstorm. WOW it came down, and the thunder was fantastic! at the tail end I rode in the rain, cyclist can ride in the rain and I'm a "hard man" of cycling... I got to the small town of Nyack, NY where the bike shop was and it is at the bottom of the Appalachians, right on the Hudson and the streets were 2 feet deep in water... the bike got wet. I then climbed out  of town thinking I was a pretty darn "hard man" of cycling riding through all that, and head home on the last leg.... and I was on my last leg, this long in the saddle is hard, I'm good and strong for about four hours but this ended up being a six hour ride.


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