Today was a fairly mellow day of riding.  Everyone bailed on today’s ride due to reasons beyond their control.  Seth and I decided we’d scout for places to ride off-road and basically just enjoy the sunshine.  We struck out trying to get up Mount Beacon again.  Dogs and land owners were upset by our presence, so we left.

We ended up in Putnam County, found many nice trails that (sigh) always seemed to have those nasty little signs that read “No Motorized Vehicles Beyond This Point”.  You have to love a state that provides people great places to hike, but nowhere to ride.  New York State, I love you — you are my home, but you suck for state-provided places to ride.  Take a lesson from California and others, will you already?  But thanks for Fahnstock State Park — we hit that and enjoyed a nice ride through there.

 

 

 

Survey Sunday

05.06.02

“No Motorized Vehicles Beyond This Point”...You have to love a state that provides people great places to hike, but nowhere to ride...

We met up with this crew from Backroads Tourmagazine on our way up Route 9 just north of Garrison, NY.  Brian Rathjen and Shira Kamil (publishers) were among them.  A nice group of people with a very diverse group of bikes, among them was Frank on a Honda TransAlp and a sweet Aprilia (Jeff?).  Brian and Shira were both on BMWs :)

Seth and I stopped for a drink and to talk to this crew.  They were all great.  We exchanged e-mail addresses and hit the road.  We decided to hit the power lines again for some playtime.  Just when we were having a little fun — RIP — there goes my tail light assembly for the second time.  BMW, please do not put on a heavy metal plate to attach a license plate to. This is NOT a good design.  The 4 little plastic tabs that hold the rear mud guard on will (and DO) shred right off. (see pictures, left) Now I have to order replacement parts from BMW and I am out almost $50.  Big thanks to Westchester BMW for getting me those quickly and doing  my annual inspection (and Seth’s) once I got my bike back together again.  Once I picked up all the pieces and sealed off the wires with electrical tape (I carry EVERYTHING in my tank bag), we went home to further explore the trails behind our neighborhood.  Future rides will definitely include these trails because we never found if/where they end!

We were obviously NOT the first ones to find these trails because they were not only visible but they had definite knobbie imprints and signs of railroad crossing engineering (above).  There were no signs of quad prints, either! Seth surveys a sweet hill in our woods (left).  This is the EASY way to get from my house to the trails (right).