June 16, 2011 Werewolf Ride

Thursday evening we will meet in Madison for a ramble around or through The Great Swamp.  15 or so pretty easy miles.  Maybe we will stop for ice cream.  Precisely 7:30 or thereabouts we’ll meet in front of the beautiful Hartley Dodge Memorial Building 50 Kings Street.  (Across from the train station).  Bring your night riding gear, it will get dark!  Hope to see you there!

Update:

I hopped off the train with my bike to meet 10 riders in front of the beautiful Hartley Dodge Memorial Building in Madison. There were a lot of new faces on the ride and I think we all had a great time. I had planned on 15 miles or so, the group seemed frisky so we plotted a 20 mile loop around The Great Swamp with a dead end road reconnassaince mission to check out the trail surface. We ended up riding almost 30 miles!   And here are a few pics.  After climbing the hill to leave town the roads flattened out and the traffic got lighter, the trees got a lot older and we started seeing swamp water in the waterways we passed near. I heard a shout ‘fox right’ and we caught a cool view of a fox sharing a fenced in meadow with some horses. He watched us watching him as we whipped by. Someone said he was probably eating the horse poops. Eck. We took advantage of these flat roads and cruised along pretty quickly passing huge new xxl mcmansions and awesome old estates. We drafted each other a bit and did a great job calling out warnings for the giant potholes, cracks and roadkill the road dished up for us. It was cool to have a few members of the Bayonne PD along for the ride, I must admit feeling a good bit bolder out on the road, riding along with folks in official Police Department reflective vests! I also got to hear a lot about Brick City Bike Collective’s fun activities they are planning. We checked out the dead end, promising to revisit the smooth looking old road turned trail. Being almost summer, it took a long time to get dark.  We were having so much fun and cruising so quickly we extended the loop out to Morristown and took the paths through Loantaka back to Green Village Road.  Riding those swoopy paths in total darkness felt superfast. The moon didn’t show itself but I heard some howling anyway. Thanks for riding!