12.6 Mile Ride Along the Mohawk-Hudson Bike Path
Monday, June 30, 2008





Definitely a great night for a ride... sunny and cool! Between time constraints (I got a late start and wanted to get to the karate school in time to work with one of the instructors) and my legs being a bit tired from yesterday's long run, I wasn't able to get very far... but it was a good time all the same!







JMH

17.6 Mile Run at Beartown State Forest
Sunday, June 29, 2008

When I was first introduced to the concept of trail running, way back in 1997, there were three places I ran - the Appalachian Trail between South Egremont and Sheffield (pretty easy running), Mount Washington State Forest (hills! hills! hills!), and Beartown State Forest (hills... and MUD!) So Beartown will always hold a special place in my heart, and over the past few years I've tried to get there at least once each summer for a run.

Traffic over the western Massachusetts today was a killer... more morons per mile than I've encountered in a time. Sigh. Happily I made it to Lee without mishap, and made my way up the rough road into Beartown. I always have mixed feelings about my initial drive through the park... on the one hand, I love being there, especially since there's a stream that runs alongside the road with numerous small waterfalls. But the minus to driving through Beartown is that the roads, like many in the MA state forests, are poorly maintained, so taking my Civic along them is an exercise in picking a route that's least likely to rip out the bottom of my car or destroy my suspension. Today I ended up doing a bit of extra driving, because I left my trail maps at home and none of the kiosks I passed had any... so I ended up driving all the way to the other side of the park where I could pick up several maps at Benedict Pond, then headed back to the CCC camp roughly halfway through the forest to park and gear up for some wild and wooly miles of running/hiking.

Started out by heading down the road to the closer trailhead for the Beebe Trail, the start of a loop on several miles of multi-use (or more appropriately multi-abuse) trail. While these trails are designed for pretty much all trail users, nowadays the primary users in the spring, summer, and fall seem to be ATVs, and as I've ranted previously, they've made a real mess out of these trails. Hills are often reduced to eroded slopes of loose rock, and low-lying areas are gouged-out mud-pits. In the worst spots the trails have been widened to as much as 10 or 12 feet in an attempt to go past the mud and water, or side trails have been cut to get around areas that are too difficult to ride. These first trails that I ran today weren't as bad as some that I've seen (and some that I would see later today!) but the damage is still outrageous and I repeat my previous rants - ban recreational ATVs from public trails! (And for those who wonder if I can be equally critical of what I've sometimes heard referred to as "oxygen-fed sport", I also support banning mountain bikes from areas where the riders cause this type of trail damage... in some ways I think that's even more egregious, because mountain bikers have a choice - they can dismount and walk/carry their bikes through sensitive areas.)

OK, enough editorializing.

more to come...

SORRY, MR. MUSKRAT!
15.2 Mile Ride Along the Mohawk Hudson Bike Path
Saturday, June 28, 2008

A tough day today... left the karate school in Utica around 11:30 PM after last night's brown belt tests and needed to be up early enough this morning to get some breakfast before going to class, and the older I get the less well I deal with lack of sleep. But I was determined to get outside for a bit, so once Ann and her brother headed home I changed into riding gear and headed over to SCCC for a spin on the bike path.







I was almost all the way to the end of the path at Scrafford Lane when the skies opened up and rain started coming down in buckets, along with the occasional thunderclap. Initially it was pleasantly cooling, but since I didn't want to get completely drenched I broke out my rain jacket. Finished the ride to Scrafford Lane, found trains blocking the route across the tracks, and turned around to head back. After a few minutes the rain let up, the sun started to come out, and I had to ditch the rain jacket so I wouldn't get too warm.







On my way out along the old Erie Canal I passed several rabbits, a group of geese with goslings that have gained much of their adult coloration, and a rather noisy kingfisher. On the way back I passed the kingfisher perched in a tree along the path... sadly, by the time I'd stopped and gotten my camera out he'd flown off. A ways further down the path I had my run-in with Mr. Muskrat... or rather, he ran into me! Dashed out of the weeds and ran into my bike, then popped off into the weeds on the canal side and jumped into the water... hope he was all right...







Just past Lock 8 on the Barge Canal a series of signs are being mounted which identify various plants and trees along the path... that's pretty cool. Just beyond is a restored lock (old lock 23 - there is a detailed write-up about the history of the lock, which was the first one west of Schenectady and thus a vital part of the "Gateway to the West" on the HistoryLite website and a recent article in the Schenectady Gazette regarding efforts to restore the lock and improve the park there.) I paused to take some pictures of the lock, and surprised a very wet woodchuck who repeatedly popped out of his shelter down in the rocks to see if it was safe to remain out in the open.





My final surprise was a white-and-brown mouse looking for food on the path... clearly a domestic mouse that either escaped or was released into the wild, I suspect he won't last long, since he didn't seem to have much survival instinct. Then it was back to the car, where I fortunately managed to get everything packed up and was on the road before the next burst of rain swept through.





JMH

BONEHEAD TURTLE
7.1 Mile Run in the Pine Bush
Friday, June 27, 2008









Headed over to Rensselaer Lake (or, technically speaking, Six Mile Waterworks Pine Bush Preserve) for a medium-length run - I was planning to run over to the Pine Bush Discovery Center on Karner Rd and back. Looped through the park and along the lake, then out on the trails over to Rapp Road - and when I stopped to take a drink discovered that I had put one of my water bottles on my waist pack without filling it, leaving me with two bottles instead of three. Bonehead move! And given the heat, one that made me re-evaluate my plans, so that I ended up doing the entire run in this section of the Pine Bush, cutting about 3 miles off the distance I'd planned to do today.









The shores of the lake were pretty busy - some kind of fishing program was going on. Fortunately, the trails in the Pine Bush were much less crowded. Spotted lots of fish in the lake, a few turtles (including one pretty big snapping turtle doing a very good imitation of a piece of deadwood) and biggest surprise of all - a mole scurrying around on the trail. I managed to snap one picture of him before he burrowed under some leaves - I poked the leaves aside with a stick but by then he'd managed to burrow into the sand.







JMH

12.8 Mile Ride from Albany to Colonie
Thursday, June 26, 2008

I'd been planning to go for a run today, possibly even over to the karate school to teach class, but my stomach ended up a bit grumbly this afternoon so I ended up riding instead - my first true urban ride of the season. Riding through the city never gets any easier.

Made a few side trips to add a few miles to the ride... looped down around Buckingham Lake and also rode the loop around the state office campus between Western and Washington Aves. But my favorite part of the ride was, as always, the short stretch through Rensselaer Lake Park, riding along the shore of the lake and the edge of the Pine Bush Preserve.

One of the problems with a short ride like this - while I'm riding my legs feel like they're filled with cement, and by the time they get warmed up, it's time to stop riding and I want to keep going!

JMH

2008 WESTERN STATES 100 CANCELLED DUE TO CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES
Thursday, June 26, 2008

This will be old news for many folks out there (well, 24 hours old) but I just learned that the premiere event of trail ultrarunning, the 35th Annual Western States Endurance Run, has been cancelled due to the various dangers posed by the California wildfires.

The official notice can be read here.

In many ways, this emphasizes how much we're at the mercy of the elements when it comes to races and especially trail events. Sometimes nature just doesn't cooperate with our plans, no matter how carefully we make them.

I have to applaud the race organizers for putting the safety of the runners, aid station personnel, and volunteers first.

And I can only imagine how the folks who have prepared for months for this awesome race are feeling right now.

Sigh.

JMH

REST & REFRACTIVE DISPERSION
Tuesday, June 24, 2008

I went through several iterations of things I would do outside today, but in the end I drove straight back to Albany and got suffuciently distracted by things at home that by the time I tore myself loose it really didn't make sense to drive out somewhere for a short hike. So today ended up being a true rest day for my tired legs.

Refractive dispersion occurs because different wavelengths of light bend by slightly different amounts when the light enters a material where its speed is different (for example, when light passes from air into glass or water.) Since color is determined by wavelength, and white light is made up of a mixture of different colors, when white light enters a piece of glass or a drop of water at an angle, it emerges on the other side with its component colors split into a spectrum - the traditional ROYGBIV that most kids learn about in science and art classes.

Since it was a nice evening, I decided the get some fresh air by walking to the store about half a mile away to pick up some groceries. Along the way I was ambushed by a trio of extremely enthusiastic beagle pups (cute little buggers) and with about 1/3 of the distance to go, it started raining pretty steadily, leaving me good and wet by the time I got to the store (and anticipating a damp walk home.)

When I left the store I was pleasantly surprised to find that the rain had blown over and the sun was coming out. On the way home I was treated to the sight of a variety of birds, including a group of sparrows who appeared to be in sparrow heaven pecking away at a soggy chunk of bread along the curb, and a mockingbird. But the bigger treat came from the sun shining off into the rainstorm off in the distance, creating a broad rainbow over the rooftops - not something you see very often in Albany!

JMH

2.7 Mile Hike at Durand Eastman Park
Monday, June 23, 2008

Durand Eastman Park trail map (PDF)

Ann got out of work a bit early and the weather forecast wasn't entirely clear, with the possibility of thunderstorms... so we abandoned plans to go paddling and headed over to Durand Eastman Park instead. We'd hiked there very briefly back in March, until Ann got a fairly nasty nosebleed and we had to head back home, so today I was hoping to get to see a few more of the trails.





We started with a quick visit to the beach along the shore of Lake Ontario... unfortunately the water levels were high and we couldn't walk very far without ending up in the water. So we headed across the road and hit the trail around Eastman Lake, since it looked like there was a sizeable crowd of kids partying over by Durand Lake.







I really enjoyed the trails around the lake, except for one major aggravation - apparently this is a popular place for people to walk their dogs, and many of them don't see the need to obey leash laws. So we had several instances of dogs rushing up to us or by us, and their idiot owners calling for them to behave. Personally I like dogs, but when they're out in public they should be on a leash!









As we walked around the lake, we spotted a variety of wildlife - swans, ducks, herons, frogs... what a great place!





Eventually we rounded the far end of the lake and after a brief walk along the edge of the golf course, ended up on the much more overgrown trail along the opposite shore. On the plus side, the folks walking their dogs seemed to have headed off in another direction. We tried to sneak up on the heron we'd seen earlier, but he took off before we got too close. We also spotted a female wood duck with ducklings swimming quietly off - I found that unusual, since they're generally pretty noisy when they swimming or flying away.







We also watched more swans, and even saw a muskrat at one point - up in the branches of a low hanging bush! When we left the trails and walked along the shore of the lake closest to the road, Ann spotted a heron, and incredibly he didn't fly off, possibly because of the injury to his wing. That enabled me to get some of the best pictures I've ever taken of a heron... way cool!





We wrapped up with another visit to the shore of Lake Ontario, and had some great views of the sunset over the water... a beautiful and peaceful way to end our walk. I'm definitely going to try to get up here for a run or two this summer!







JMH

6 Mile Ride at Genesee Valley Park
Monday, June 23, 2008

Legs were feeling pretty beat up, so I decided to go with an easy day on the bike... ended up doing a very short ride around Genesee Valley Park just before picking Ann up at work. Along the way I saw several groups of ducklings and even a wood duck with two ducklings out in the river.









There's far too much construction going on along the western shore of the river - the University of Rochester is building a massive hotel complex, and there's also an upscale apartment/condo complex being built a little further along the river, in place of what used to be woods. Personally I say we need more woods and fewer buildings.









I almost snapped some good photos of a pair of northern flickers while I was riding along the wooded section of the path... unfortunately, when I stopped a deerfly or a bee flew down into one of the my helmet vents and started buzzing around and I was too busy trying to get my helmet off without dropping the camera! By the time I got my act back together, all the activity had scared them off... though I did get a few photos of one a little while later.





JMH