ch0mb0

Early Tuesday morning I am taking off for Baltimore. Heading down there with one of my employers.
He's taking his ATB - I'm doing it fixed.

Distance road riding fixed has been a bit of a challenge in the past - the legs have long been accustomed to delivering in another way altogether. But I've been building them up the last couple months and working on a strategy, so I'm hoping to do this and have a good time too.

According to boss's maps provided by the ACA, the navigation reads somewhat like this:

-thru central NJ
-into PA somewhere around New Hope
-head west and then down into MD.

The boss is giving us a good 2 days to do it in - he wants to take it easy and take in the sights. We ought to be rolling into Baltimore on Wed. evening.


Since it is a touring map, it tends to go in a roundabout sort of way. We may try to shave off some time by hooking up with Route 1 somewhere south of Philly instead of going west along the Susquehanna river. The only problem could be crossing the other big rivers though. So we may just take the touring route depending on time allowed.

Stripping down to the bare essentials on this one, just like they did for the Doolittle raid.
No armor and no weapons...just tools and lots of chamois butt'r (for when I get hungry)!
Maybe I'll have the guncamera equipped on this sortie so's I can update later with pics.

If anyone around Baltimore is down for a ride and showing a stranger around town a little, drop me a line.
I'm there 'til Sunday. probably won't be able to access the interweb for a few days.
Otherwise, I'm just gonna roam it solo and see what there is to see in your crappy town!

riderx

Sounds like a good trip. Where in B-more will you be staying? A lot of locals will be heading out this weekend to SSWC05

Try posting here for local hook-ups for anyone who will still be around.

You can usually find good music at the Ottobar, Fletchers and the Sidebar. Check the basement of the Brewers Art on Charles Street for good beer, the house beers are a good price during happy hour and the tastiest in town. Usually a few fixies locked up outside to help you ID the place.

Ceya

Don't take route 1 it is all hills. Take 9 to the ferry at Cape May the ride to Baltimore. Been there done that in 1991. just be sure not to cross over to Garden State Parkway.

S/F,
CEYA!

H23

If you look around you'll find that at least one person has done route 40 from Phila into Baltimore. The only problem is that there is a bridge that you'll have to hitch a ride for (no bikes allowed).

Route 40 is busy but has a wide shoulder along most of it going into Baltimore from the north. There are relatively new "share the road' signs-- motorists are somewhat accustomed to seeing cyclists on 40.

Philadelphia to Baltimore along (mostly) route 40 is 100 miles, I suppose that extending that to NYC will stretch the ride into something that is easily doable in 2 days by decently prepared cyclists.

Ceya

NYC to DC - 16hrs,
NYC to Virginia - 25hrs

Yep forgot that bridge. We hitched it took awhile but somebody gave us a ride even though we had our own car..

S/F,
CEYA!

dirty cookie

have fun!

ch0mb0

went down hard day 1, mile 97. I'm ok but banged up a little. here now though. the area I'm in (harbor/convention center) is surrounded on all sides by nothing. empty streets and the hood. no clue where anything is. seen 1 rider on the streets.

last time I was down here a messenger told me how crappy some parts of the city is and damn do I believe him now. some parts of this city make nyc's worst look like fuckin disneyland.
hijacked a comp here but gotta run. see yall later. will continue to recon the city. will post more when I get back.

260 miles. 25 hours. the route thru PA was brutal. spent more time out of saddle than in.
R1 was a godsend. so is chamois buttr.

Ceya

good that you are ok! I told you it was hard on route 1 . I was thinking about you when I was at the track and remembered that you went away. keep us posted,if you need anything just let me know and I will do what I can to help.


take pics beause it good to look at and remember those good days.. your body won't forget though.

S/F<
CEYA!

luckycat

If you want to find messengers during the day cruise by the intersection of charles & baltimore streets. There's usually people hanging around waiting for work. Someone else mentioned brewers art up on charles street, I've heard people are also going to a new place called dionysus down the block from there, just look for the bikes.

And yeah, Baltimore's pretty sketchy here and there, just be aware and you'll be fine.

solostyle

wow ch0mb0.. that's pretty amazing. it makes me want to get off my ass and do a really long fixed-gear ride that i'd been planning all summer..

thanks for the inspiration.

carleton

Ouch.

riderx

Stuff to check out

modmon

FRI 19 at the ottobar: Murphys Law, Hell to Pay and guests TBA
Doors at 9pm/ Show at 10pm- ALL AGES

dustinlikewhat

ha, more baltimore bashing. honestly, do you all think it's that bad?

ch0mb0

Yeah, I'm back home now where I feel nice & safe
Now I don't mean to sound so harsh, but you just don't always see urban decay on such a scale and concentrated doses here in NY. Sudden changes in scenery can catch me off guard. Wish I could have stopped to take pictures - I could stare at & explore urban ruins all day (anyone remember that old busted-up building just off the CMWC course?)


* * *So going into Baltimore went like this:
R1 rolled on and on, long hills that you sometimes had to charge to climb up. Many cars and trucks, and the wide shoulder thinned out to a gutter about 10 inches wide at times. At first it was straight-up country riding. Finally, signs of civilization - car dealerships, strip malls, fast food joints. Had to time the stoplights going thru - the road was pretty much hill after hill. I guess that was the suburbs.

Eventually, that thinned out to some low-level shops and apartment buildings. Some signs of poverty. Several blocks later it started looking pretty severe - large, burned out buildings, fenced off, abandoned, collapsing in places.

Right around then, my boss pulled over to finish a pepsi. He then nonchalantly dropped his empty on the ground and started to push off. A bunch of locals saw him do it and started calling him out to pick it up. I hadn't stopped rolling but I was like "dudewhatareyoudoing?!" and punched it. It felt good to be back in the city hauling ass again. When those downtown buildings finally came into view I started whooping it up.

One of the first things I saw when we got into the harbor area was a FG rider on what I believe was an orange KHS. But I never saw another one when I went out hunting on Thurs. & Fri. nights. Hardly any riders at all after dark, it seemed. Still, the varied terrain made for good riding. Very different than the ample flats of nyc..and those rails scared me. More on that later.

ch0mb0

Most of the ride was done in PA. I didn't expect the route to take us out over such remote roads but we ended up riding for miles without seeing anything but dense vegetation on both sides. We spent most of the second day climbing more long steep hills, and then we were going over mountains. Afterwards, it was farm country right down to MD.

My gearing was 46x15 all the way. Even with that, climbing was tough sometimes. And going down the steeper hills could easily get scary. There were so many, and the road conditions weren't always very good...it can make you feel paranoid as you descend. I was hitting 35 mph, and that was still with resistance, fighting to maintain control of the spin on winding, curving pavement.

We almost ran out of supplies a couple times - props go out to the Mennonites and their roadside grocery stands. I was also yelled at by a local when he overheard me say something about there being so many general stores & gas stations in the area that look like they've been closed since the 40's. Who would have expected to be overheard? I was riding between two cornfields at the time.

turd

hey chombo that's fkn awesome! racking up good "what i did on my summer vacation" stories

EnLaCalle

Chombo - Nice. I look forward to you regaling me with more stories about the mean streets of Baltimore next time you hit up the PP races. The only Mennonite I've ever met was an alcoholic. Not to slander Mennonites or anything... really.

Glad you made it okay.

J

ch0mb0

Yeah, this ride definitely spiced up the summer. It felt reeeeal good to get of town for a few days.
Thanks everyone for the words of encouragement.


The entire run took us west and south, thru NJ, PA and then MD, skipping Delaware altogether. This added a bit of mileage. We ended up passing through places like Valley Forge - this was too much of a "touring" route and after awhile decided to abandon the ACA maps altogether and find our own way through.

The first day we rode down thru NJ suburbs into PA with ease. It was threatening to rain all day long and finally it did, around 6. I hit a section of railroad track in this weather and had my first big accident in years. I cleared the first set, but my front tire hit the second set, locked into the groove and let fly so fast I didn't even have time to blink or breathe. One second I was up, maintaining a good cruising speed, and then I was hitting the ground hard on my left side, sliding on the pavement with the bike on top of me. Guess I didn't let up on the pressure in time.

I scraped up my left shoulder, elbow, knee, and ankle pretty bad. The thigh & knee still hurt, but the elbow felt like a thousand funny bone strikes at first. I don't recall if I hit my head, but my helmet was all cockeyed. We had no decent aidkit, so I decided to let the rain wash out the wounds while we hustled for the nearest town. I was in a daze afterwards - a mile down the road I realized that my riding glasses weren't attached to my harness, and thinking that they had gotten lost in the crash, turned back to go find them, only to realize that they were still on my head. So we called it a night and I patched myself up.

After the accident the ride was fine. There was a little pain but it wasn't gonna beat me.
My boss handled the ride well on his Canny Badboy, even though he was loaded down with panniers.
In with the lowest of gears he still had to struggle up those hills, but you could tell he was very pleased with himself doing the equivalent of 2 century rides back-to-back and then some.

Tell y'all what though, this ride was a good all-around teacher. A long road ride might actually be a little more enjoyable now. And climbing's gonna be a lot easier around here after doing all that shit..

wangster

should've ridden the pursuit bike...make the downhills even more fun. Glad your okay, relatively. Baltimore's an 'interesting' city... topic of many urban planning book as what NOT to do when designing a city. Still interesting things to see though. I'll see ya around soon, Nyack maybe?

chrisgraham81

Please explain. I went to school for landscape architecture and have never heard any one or any text say that. It is a small city with its fair share of blight but i think you have exagerated a bit