October 6, 2020 - Stroudsburg, PA, to Newark, NJ

Start: Stroudsburg, PA
End: Newark, NJ
Miles: 79.6
Feet climbing per mile: 72
Record of today's ride: https://ridewithgps.com/trips/57270389

Without an alarm I was up at 7:15 and on the road at 8:00. It was cloudy and cold, just 45 degrees. My torso was kept warm by my short-sleeve lycra shirt, long-sleeve wool shirt, and windbreaker, but my legs were a little chilly because I was wearing shorts rather than tights. I consider 50 degrees to be the cutoff temperature for shorts, but only when the sun is out. On a cloudy day I consider 55 or 60 degrees to be the cutoff. I knew that the temperature would rise through the day and I would soon be removing layers.

As I rode the Appalachian Trail across the Delaware River as I had done the day before, I was glad I had found a way to avoid the treacherous five miles I had ridden on PA-611 from Portland to Stroudsburg on Sunday. While riding Old Mine Road I noticed that even short moderate climbs seems more challenging than usual. I was clearly tired from the riding I had done the two previous days. I felt I had plenty of endurance but not my usual strength, and decided to take it easy and use lower gears more often.

Seven miles into my ride I dropped my chain, probably because I shifted too quickly from the large to the small chainring. I remembered how I had been plagued with chain problems during the first week or two of my 4,500-mile trip in 2019, and was glad the problems had not persisted past that time.

At mile 13.2 I encountered a climb that began with a grade of 10% and got as high as 16%. It took 27 minutes to walk almost a mile. Just before I came to the end of my walk the sun came out.

Two hours into my trip I stopped to take a picture of a dam and a lake on which some ducks were swimming. My phone showed being charged 100% when I disconnected it from its battery to take a picture. No more than 30 seconds later the charge indicator had dropped to 10% and the phone shut off. I reconnected it to its battery and was soon able to restart the phone which was again 100% charged after a few minutes. I'm glad the battery I use to keep the phone charged is not susceptible to cold the way the battery in the phone is.

Early in the day I noticed that when I'm on the hoods I place my two hands quite differently from each other. I tend to keep my right wrist in a neutral position but bend my left wrist backward and rotate my left arm inward. I've thought that the soreness I have felt near the lower right portion of my left palm was a result of my crash in March of 2019, but now I considered the possibility that it is due to the way I lean on my left hand. Supporting this idea is extra wear on the palm of my left glove, including the hole I've worn in it. When I did my best to arrange my left wrist as my right, something didn't feel right in my left shoulder, as if I didn't know how to arrange it to bear weight. I was excited to make all these observations, and continued throughout the day to pay attention to how I was using my left wrist, arm, and shoulder. I'm writing this post on Saturday the 10th, four days after I completed the trip. Each of the last three days I've had a five-mile ride, on which I've noticed that I'm using my left wrist, arm, and shoulder a little better than the day before.

After 32 miles I made my first rest stop of the day at Firehouse Pizza in Andover, NJ, where I had stopped on Sunday. By this time it had warmed up enough that I enjoyed a cold Mountain Dew along with some of the chocolate-covered almonds I had bought the night before. Before getting back on my bike I noticed that the Sussex Branch Trail ran parallel to NJ-206 and thought that it could be a way to avoid the traffic of 206. After being told by someone working at the Ride Bike Shop that the trail might be ok for me, I tried it for a short distance and quickly returned to 206. The employee ought to have advised me to stay on 206, which I rode three more miles until the bypass I had found when I revised my return route Sunday night. That bypass consisted of beautiful roads with almost no traffic, quite an improvement over riding the nasty section of 206 just north of I-80. As I entered Mountain Road I wondered whether I would need to walk any part of it as I had done on Sunday, but was pleased to discover that the eastbound climb was much less steep than the westbound.

Shortly before reaching Morristown for my second rest stop I enjoyed a two-mile descent on which I rode as fast as 38 miles per hour. I stopped again at the fountain in the Morristown Green, this time to eat some more chocolate-covered almonds. The sun was shining on the statue atop the fountain more than it had been on Sunday, and the weather had warmed enough that I removed my long-sleeve wool shirt. I had removed my windbreaker some time ago.

The fountain in the Morristown Green

As I wrote in my post about my ride on Sunday, I've ridden to Morristown several times and so have an excellent route between there and Newark. The only portion I might change is the one-mile segment on Springfield Avenue in Maplewood and Irvington starting at mile 73.9. It was fine Sunday morning when there was no traffic, but at 4:00 on a weekday afternoon when there's lots of traffic it's rather unpleasant. Zig-zagging through the neighborhood would be slightly longer but more enjoyable.

At 176 Clinton Avenue in Newark I saw a building with exceptional character. It needs a lot of work, but just imagine how it would look when restored to its former glory!

176 Clinton Avenue

Andre Schan told me that less than a mile away is a similar-looking building, the Krueger-Scott Mansion, which is being renovated. I wonder whether the same architect designed both buildings.

Krueger-Scott Mansion

I arrived at Newark Penn Station at 4:45. The PATH train was almost empty all the way to 33rd Street in Manhattan, where I was pleased to discover that the elevator to the street was working. As soon as I got outside I had that thought that in that instant I saw more people on 6th Avenue than I had seen in the past three days. I arrived home after a ride of less than a mile.

This three-day trip was only my second multi-day trip since returning home August 25th, 2019, from my 4,500-mile solo trip, and my first multi-day trip since my two-day trip to and from Beaver Pond Campground September 25th and 26th, 2019. In three days I rode a total of 240 miles and averaged 67 feet per mile of climbing. On each of the three days I had a challenging ride. I look forward to more such rides while the weather is conducive, both day trips and multi-day trips.

Go to OCTOBER 5, 2020 - STROUDSBURG, PA, TO PORT JERVIS, NY, AND RETURN to read about the second day of my trip.