The person that drives this car...

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...is an asshole. I told him so to his face. Why? On my bike ride on Thursday, he buzzed me by a matter of a few inches going at least 40 mph. He turned into a parking lot about a half mile up the road. So, I stopped to give him a piece of my mind. He was in his early 20's probably a student at West Chester University. I told him he needed to give cyclist more room when he passed them. He ignored me. I then told him he nearly hit me and that he was a large asshole. 

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Well, well, well, what have we got parked here at the end of the alley behind our house. What I would have liked to do is taken some clippers and snipped off the valves to his tires. That would be an acceptible Philalelphia "City of Brotherly Love" way to handle things and it would have made me feel really happy. But, I kept a cool head and left him a nice little note to remind him to drive in a more considerate manner.

A Bonus Bridge!

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Most of my bike rides from West Chester head due west straight into horse country. Recently I have been heading south into Delaware for a chance in scenery. I usually take Creek Road which runs along the Brandywine River. I usually stop at first intersection that I come to in Delaware to figure out which way I’d going to go. One of the roads at this intersection is Smith Bridge Road.

I have never chosen to head down Smith’s Bridge Road, mainly because it heads right back into Pennsylvania and into some fairly urban roadways that are not fun for cycling. A few weeks ago at Kevin’s graduation party I was speaking to our friend Matt about the area. He pointed out to me that Smith Bridge Road has a nice covered bridge on it that is called, of all things, Smith’s Bridge.

With this new information in hand, I headed out to see it this past Thursday. Getting to the bridge was pretty easy. As the crow flies it is only about 10 miles away. Taking Creek Road it was a mostly flat (522 feet of climbing) and very pleasant 16.3 mile ride. This route takes me past the N.C, Andrew, and Jamie Wyeth house and the Brandywine River Museum that houses much of their work. The museum has a nice collection of early American artist. I particularly like the 4 or 5 Horace Pipin paintings. 

The bridge is a new one of sorts. As the plaque at the bridge states, the original bridge was built in 1839, modified in 1956, destroyed by fire in 1961, rebuilt with out a cover in 1962, and reconstructed with Burr Trusses with cover in 2002.

My return trip I decided to travel through the area that I have always avoided. With the exception of about half a mile along Route 1 I was pleasantly surprised at what a nice it was. I stopped at the Brandywine Battlefield Park, which I have never seen before. I also came across the ruins of an octagonal one room school at a place called Archies Corner in southern Delaware County PA. My route covered 30 miles and past some interesting sights! 

See photos from my ride here.

Ride lots, stop often!

Russell

Bicycle Botany: The Kudzu of the North!

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Back in Washington State I would occasionally be riding along on my bike when I would smell a particular fragrant plant then have the overwhelming urge to head to a mirco-brewery. The plant that would cause such an urge was Humulus lupulus, or Common Hops. I knew the odor well as we had a Centennial Hops growing in our back yard in Sequim.

Back in the spring I began to see a plant growing on the side of the road that looked very much like hops, but the fragrant smell was absent. I stopped and crushed the leaves to see if it had the distinctive odor and it did, but very faintly, clearly not the hops that I was familiar with back in Sequim. I took a chunk of it home and as it turns out, it was a species of hops, Humulus japonicus, or Japanese Hops.

As the summer has worn on here I have seen more, and more, and more of this stuff creeping along the roadways of southeastern PA. In fact, once I began to hone in on it, I’d notice it taking over whole fields! Instead of invoking pleasant thoughts of heading to a brewery, I began to have nightmare that if I stopped to long on the side of the road I would be swallowed whole by a killer plant. It reminds me of that other invasive vine from Asia – kudzu.

One of the things about the Northeast that I have always liked is that the winters here seem to be to cold for kudzu to thrive like it does down south, but where kudzu leaves off, Japanese hops seems to take over. One thing that is a little reassuring is that Japanese hops dies back completely in the winter, so its ability to cover entire forest is somewhat limited.

According to the USDA there is not much that can be done to control Japanese hops. The best method that I can find is mechanical control which, in the long run, does little to stop its spread.

As a side note, it is one of five members of the Hemp family found in Pennsylvania. According to the Plants of Pennsylvania common hopes and its more infamous cousin marijuana are also found growing wild in the state but in a very limited number of places. The two other members of the family are native. Hackberry (Celtis accidentalis) is found commonly throughout the state and dwarf hackberry (Celtis tenuifolia) is limited to the southeast and southcentral regions.

See more photos of the best here.

Ride lots, stop often,

Russell

A Week At The Beach

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Last week we finally got our act together and went on a long over due family vacation! We dusted off all the camping gear and headed to the Delaware Seashore State Park. Our activities were completely predictable. Mary and the kids swam at the beach. Russell rode on his bike. The gnats bit hard. We went to the boardwalk at Rehobeth Beach. Ate ice cream. Swam on the beach some more. See photos here. 

The Boys Go Camping

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Ever since school got out, William has been asking to go camping. The only problem with this request was one of shelter. We have two tents. A giant 6 person tent that requires two adults to pitch, and a small one person tent that I use for bicycle trips. Oh, we also have two old tents (over 15 years old) that leak lots of water in the event of rain. Since Mary wouldn't be joining us on the camping trip, the 6 person tent was out. What to do?

Then I remembered that we still had about $80 on our REI rebate! So, one day William and I went to the local REI and found a two person tent for about $100, which with our rebate, only cost $20. Not a bad deal! Now we had enought water tight shelter for all the Rogers boys to go on a camping trip! 

We chose to go to Hibernia County Park, which was only about 30 minutes away and had a primitive camp ground. Perfect. We also chose to go during the week in hopes of less people to deal with. We packed up are gear and headed out. We got the campsite and set up camp. It was a very nice camp site which we had all to ourselves! Even more perfect!

We then had lunch of standard camping fair (hog dogs) and then I headed over the to park office to pay for our site. At that point I learned why we had the campsite all to ourselves as it was only open on weekends. Total bummer! 

We headed back to the camp ground and took down our tents and packed the car. A quick search on my iPhone showed that there was a commercial campsite just a few miles away. It was considerably more expensive, but it had pool which which was a big bonus for the boys. We swam at the pool, had dinner of standard camping fair (more hot dogs) and s'mores by the campfire. 

The next morning I was glad that I went and bought the new tent as it rained cats and dogs! We had hoped to spend much of the day by the pool. Instead, we packed up the car, and drove over to Lancaster and found a dinner and got hot chocolates and sticky buns. 

Check out photos of our adventure here.

Covered Bridges Number 4 and 5

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I have finally gotten back to the task of riding my bike to all of Chester County’s covered bridges. In the post about my last visit, Speakman Bridge Number 1, I said that Speakman Bridge Number 2 was close by but that I couldn’t visit it. In fact there are two bridges close by, the other is called Hayes Clark, and the reason that I couldn’t visit these to bridges before now has to do with my shoes.

Both of these bridges, which are only 500 feet apart, are close to the end of my favorite ride in the Chester County countryside but I had never seen them until yesterday. At the end of Apple Grove Road there is a gravel road that goes off to the left to the Laurels Preserve. The preserve, along with the bridges, are owned by the Brandywine Conservancy. Thus, the roads to the bridges are close to traffic. So, you can’t ride your bike or drive your car to these bridges, you can only walk. The entrance to the preserve is 17.5 miles away and I have always ridden my road bike to this location, which has “Look” type pedals. You know, the kind that you have to wear the funny shoes that clip in. These shoes are great for bikes, but poor for walking.

So, in order to see these bridges, I needed to either ride my commuter bike with the mountain bike shoes that are good for walking or bring a pair of shoes with me on my road bike. Since my commuter bike, aka Bubba, is much heavier than my road bike, aka Zippy, I chose to strap a pair of sandals to the handlebars and hope for the best.

The walk to the bridges is down an old dirt road that goes along side Doe Run Creek and is just beautiful. As I walked along I thought it would be nice to load down Bubba with a picnic lunch and take a slow ride out to spend the day there with Mary and other friends. The Hayes Clark Bridge is the first bridge that you reach, which is only about a 0.7 mile walk from the entrance. It was built in 1871. The Speakman 2 bridge, which also goes by the name Mary Ann Pyle, was built in 1881. Both of these bridges were renovated in the 70’s or 80’s. What I noticed is that either of them had been modernized, with steal beams or such, in the way that the other bridges that I have visited have been. So, my guess is that these bridges appear much the same way that they would when they were built. This may also be a problem in that they are falling apart. So much so that the Brandywine Conservancy has limited their usage to only pedestrians (i.e, no horses allowed!). The Conservancy is working on permits to repair them bridges as soon as they can.

My ride out the Laurels Preserve was fairly standard at 36.18 miles. The only complication (besides the heat and humidity) was that some of the roads were getting a fresh chip seal coat on them. I tried to avoid those areas as much as I could because I always seem to get a flat tire when I go over fresh chip seal.

Now it is off to the other 10 bridges. The rest will all be over 60 miles round trip and will take some preplanning on my part. Some of them a clustered pretty close together, so I should be able to do more than one bridge per ride.

See photos of the bridges here, and the route of my ride here.

Ride lots, stop often,

Russell

Aquatic Vegetation

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Yesterday Mary, who was at the Jersey shore, called and said that our neighbor Miranda texted her and said that a wind storm blew a tree over in their back yard. I told Mary that I was not at home but on my bike. She asked if it was storm where I was but to be honest I couldn't hear her very well over the wind. Then I noticed that I was doing well over 20 mph going up a slight incline. If there was a storm, then the tailwind was doing me right! I was a bit worried over the darkening skies but there was nothing I could do but to keep pedaling. It began to rain quite heavily right as I got into West Chester. So my last 10 minutes on the bike were wet minutes.  

This morning we saw that it was a fairly large tree and it had fallen along side their pool! I told Damian that I thought reflecting ponds looked better if the vegetation were water lilies. See more photos here. 

Open Practice

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Whoa! Has it really be three weeks since my last post? You would think that being unemployed I’d have all the time in the world to blog away, but I’ve been so busy with other miscellaneous and sundry things that I just haven’t gotten around to it. From earlier post you might have noticed one of the things that keeps me off the street corner is that I have season tickets to the Philadelphia Union Soccer team.

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Back on June 21, the longest day of the year, the Union held an open practice for season ticket holders. Paddy and I, along with my friend Steve, jumped at the chance to see the players up close and see how they prepare for a game.

The practice was held at PPL Park where the games take place. Our regular seats are down at the “River End,” or as some would call them the “cheap seats” where all the hooligans sit. For the practice we got to sit in the midfield seats. The first thing that we noticed was that our regular seats are really cheap. The midfield seats are cushioned, and have armrest and cup holders. Plus you have an awesome view of the field!

I was a little afraid that the practice would be nothing more than watching a bunch of skinny guys run up and down the field sweating profusely. Luckily, this was not the case. Since this was the last practice before a big game on following Saturday, they did mostly ball handling activities and practiced setting up plays. It was truly amazing to see athletes at that level (i.e. professionals) kick the ball around.

Paddy, however, was unimpressed. He was there for two reasons. The first was to get a hot dog, fries, and some ice cream. The second was to get his Union tee shirt signed by all the players on the team. He got his hot dog, fries and ice cream and then had to endure the kicking of the ball for a while. As soon as the practice was over, they announced that the team would be available for autographs down front. Paddy immediately said “hey dad, can I go up front now?” Before I could even open my mouth, Paddy worked his way through the crowd and up to the front leaning over the rail talking to the players. Within a minute, I saw his little head pop up and head him say “hey dad! I got a goalies glove!” and he held up a blue and white goalies glove.

I said “dang nation Paddy! You give that glove back to whoever you took it from right now!” I said to Steve “you can’t leave that kid alone for even a minute without him getting into trouble.” Thinking that he conned the glove off of some other kid down there, I worked my way up front to let him have it. When I got there I asked him where he got it. A lady who was standing next to him said he just asked the goalie for it and he gave it to him. She said he gave the other glove to her son.

So it was, Paddy didn’t get his shirt signed by the team. Instead, he got his new, well slightly used, goalies glove signed by the team! I still think he is a little con artist. See photos of the event here.

Russell

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Speakman Bridge No. 1

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Last Wednesday I got up early (before the heat set it) and visited the Speakman Bridge No. 1 (Speakman Bridge No 2 is a few miles away and will probably be the next bridge that I visit. I'll explain why I couldn't go see it the same day later). It was built in 1881. This is one of the bridges that I see fairly regularly. It is about 20 miles from home out in the middle of horse county. To get there I ride along the Brandywine River and out to the end of Apple Grove Road, which I have stated on past blog post as being one of my favorite rides ever. If I do nothing but ride this route the rest of my life I would be pretty happy.

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The Speakman Bridge has been a topic in the local news lately. Back in November a tractor-trailer truck tried to go through it. In the process it severely damaged the bridge nearly knocking it over. Since then, the county and local residents have been at odds as to how to go about its repairs, or even if it should be repaired at all. These things are never easy. Read more about it here.  

The good news is that you can still ride a bike over it. As a result of being closed to traffic Frog Hollow Road on the other side has no traffic at all, which made for a nice bike ride. In all, I rode 40.29 miles to get to the bridge and back. Check out photos of the ride here and the route here. 

Now, on to the next bridges.

Russell

Ride lots, stop often. 

The Next Cycling Project

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My next cycling project will be "The (Covered) Bridges of Madison Chester County." There are 15 of them spread throughout the county and my plan is to ride my bike to see them. It’s not that I have any great interest in Covered Bridges. It's just that there are 15 of them spread throughout the county. As the old saying goes, "it is something to do."

According to this website there are 197 covered bridges in Pennsylvania, and of these 15 are in Chester County. Here is a map showing where they can be found. Two of these bridges are ones that I see every once in a while on my regular bike rides. There are three others at are fairly close to home and won’t be too much trouble to see. The other 10 will take some planning and would probably be an all day trip via bicycle. I estimate that, in all, it will take me 7 or 8 trips covering 300 to 400 miles to get the job done. Or in other words, a nice summer project. So, to get things started, yesterday I headed out to The Gibson and Harkin Bridges which are to the northwest of West Chester.

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The Gibson Bridge

Only five miles away, this bridge is the closest one to West Chester. It is along Route 322 going to Downingtown. It was built in 1872 and restored in 2003. It gets a lot of use still. In the 20 minutes or so that I was there about a dozen cars went over it. From underneath the bridge the ka-thunk ka-thunk of the tires rolling over the big timbers made a pretty cool sound.

The Harkin Bridge

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This bridge sits in an odd place over a drainage ditch next to a busy road. It looks pretty out of place when you first see it. In fact, it is very much out of place. It was built in 1854, then rebuilt in 1881. Then in 1972 the area was submerged to create Marsh Creek Lake, so the bridge was moved to a new location in the newly created Marsh Creek State Park. Then in 1998 the bridge was bought by Upper Uwchlan Township, who, in 2006, chose to move it to its present day location to be part of the Upper Uwchlan Trail System. Who knew?

See photos of my bike ride here. Also, here is a link to the route I rode my bike in order to get to these locations. In all I rode 30.85 miles. 

Ride lots and stop often!

Russell

School's Out!

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With out doubt, the biggest event in our household is that school has ended, well, at least for the kids. Mary is done at the end of this week. All in all, this past school year was good for all the kids. They all made great strides academically and socially. Emily wrapped up middle school and will be a freshman at Henderson High next year. Like most teenagers, we have great difficulty working any kind of emotional response out of her, but we have managed to discover two things that she is happy about; 1) Henderson High is only two blocks away so she will never have to ride a bus to school ever again, and 2) one of her electives next year is photography, which she is very excited about. Emily’s main summer will be a science-fiction writing camp that is held over at West Chester University. Emily still likes writing a lot and is looking forward to exploring some ideas that she has floating around in her head.

William wrapped up elementary school and will head off to middle school next year. Of our three kids, William probably had the most personal growth. He did great academically. His only downfall was a brief period of not following through with homework assignments. But the motivation of a trip to the beach and camping this summer, helped turn that around. Next year William will be in 6th grade at Peirce Middle School. William’s big plan for the summer is a marine biology camp, which is also held at West Chester University. He is very excided about this camp because they will get to study live squids and other marine creatures.

Paddy finished up first grade. His big achievement for the year is that he reads like a champ! At the beginning of the year, he could read almost nothing. Now he picks up books like Diary of a Whippy Kid and plows through it. We aren’t sure what Paddy is going to do this summer. We have not committed him to a summer camp yet. He may go to an intensive swimming lesson session for a couple of weeks so he can get his “green” armband for the pool. If he gets that he can go down the big slide at the pool, which would be the most awesome thing in the world.

Me and the boys also plan to go visit Grandpa and Grandma in North Carolina for a couple of weeks as well. See some photos from the last couple of weeks here.

Russell

Art on North Franklin Street

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Thanks to everyone to stopped by for our open house to show sculptures by Steve Garr and paintings by yours truly. Steve, Mary and I had a great time. If you were not able to make it yesterday, the works will be up for 4-6 weeks, or until we get tired of looking at it, or until we get another one of my friends to hang up their works on the wall, or until we get evicted. Check out photos of the installed works and of some of our visitor's from Saturday (I used the camera on Mary's iPhone, most of which came out too blurry to use). 

Congratulations Emily!

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Emily started taking fencing lessons at the beginning of the school year. Last week she moved up to the intermediate level where she can start fencing against other opponents. Here she is going through her intermediate evaluation with her instructor in front of the rest of the club (and dad). Now Mom and Dad just need to make sure she doesn't use these new found skills on her brothers!