The Other Don Kelly

Yesterday was some awesome mountain biking at Merli-Sarnoski Park, just outside Carbondale. I rode up with Scott S, and we met Mike K and Renee E at the park. This place is pure northern Pennsylvania, hardwoods-and-granite singletrack, with rocky surface and plenty of climbing. Those guys rode like the monsters that they are, and I managed to hang on the back…

Merli-Sarnoski State Park is named after Gino Merli and Joseph Sarnoski, two local guys who both won the Medal of Honor in WW2. I found no biographical information about these guys on the park’s website, which I thought was strange, so I Googled them:

• Gino Merli (1924-2002), one of the inspirations for The Greatest Generation, left high school and fought his way from Omaha Beach to the Battle of the Bulge. Along the way, in Belgium, he covered his comrades with machine gun fire as they retreated from a German attack. His position was overrun several times — he feigned death as he was bayonetted, then when the Germans moved forward he got up and shot everything standing. Twice. When the Americans counterattacked the Germans surrendered, and his comrades found him still at his gun, surrounded by enemy dead. After the war he returned to finish high school, and later in life he worked as an advocate for veterans.
• Joseph Sarnoski (1915-1943) was the son of a coal miner. He joined the Army in the 1930’s, became a bombardier, and when war came he was assigned to lead training and practice missions in Australia, where he started volunteering for other missions. In June 1943, with three days left before being sent home, he joined a B-17 flight crew on an unescorted photo-reconnaissance mission over Rabaul, where they were attacked by Japanese fighters. (Photography means the plane has to be flown straight and smooth over its target — no evasive maneuvers, they’d just have to fight it out as the cameras roll.)  Blasted from his station and mortally wounded by 20mm cannon fire, he crawled back to his guns and continued firing, while the mission continued, until he died at his position.

It seems fitting to recognize them here, and it was good to remember them as we rode in their park. I have no idea what they would have thought of mountain biking, but I’m glad that the Merli-Sarnoski trails have not been dumbed down; they are as badass as the men they were named for.

Anyway, back to our ride: it was really fun, and (luckily) uneventful. There were no serious crashes, no mechanical problems; the only mishap was when I looked at our ride time and distance (seven miles in three hours, according to my GPS), and panicked because Scott said the ride was 20 miles long — we had another six hours of riding to go! I actually volunteered to bail, so they could finish the ride at a more reasonable pace. They talked me into continuing, and the pace picked up, though not by much, as the trails became a bit easier in the second half — and then, just like that, the ride was over. My GPS read 12.9 miles total riding, but since it calculates distance by connecting the dots between location measurements, it was cutting corners and under-reporting distance on the twisty trails. Well, live and learn.

I’ve been getting out a lot more as the weather gets nicer…

Last Thursday I took a “mapping ride” on the Iguana, down the South Bethlehem Greenway and over into the Intermodal Facility, aka Commerce Center Boulevard. There’s been a lot of construction over there, new buildings as well as new roads, and there has also been a persistent (and likely erroneous) OpenStreetMap note connected with that location, that I wanted to clear up but I didn’t know the area at all. So off I went, to see it all firsthand and gather data. Total ride mileage: 14.8 miles in just over an hour and a half.

The result? After the ride I was able to update the map with several new roads and buildings, including the extension of Commerce Center Blvd into a huge, newly constructed loop. (I’d never been back there, and was amazed at the size of the place and its buildings.) I also updated the Greenway, which is now no longer under construction, and added a new access point.

On Friday I did a towpath ride, 23.5 miles in 2:04.

Wissahickon was on Saturday. I half expected this ride to be canceled because the weather was supposed to be bad (one reason for Friday’s ride), and the day started cold and a bit sleety, but things rapidly improved… I rode down with Lou and Scott, and we met Jason and Mike down there. I have not been to Wissahickon for mountain biking in probably 20 years, had no idea what to expect, and ended up having a hilly, rocky blast. We all felt good and rode well, especially for how early in the season it was — weather-wise at least, if not according to the calendar. Ride stats: 16 miles in just about 4 hours.

Monday was another Towpath ride, and yesterday I rode the towpath to my Canal Museum gig — on my ride home I was running on fumes.

Today is a rest day, and it’s raining anyway, and tomorrow I may ride with a few friends at South Mountain in Emmaus.

Morning weigh-in: 190.5#, 14.0% BF

Got in a good ride yesterday, going upstream on the towpath. I only went about 20 miles, but with the snow and the soft mucky conditions, it took almost four hours of hard work, so I feel I got a serious ride — and since I went out to a less fully developed portion of the D&L, there was also a bit of adventure and exploration in the mix too.

From Bethlehem I went west to Canal Park in Allentown, then north on some local roads and trails until I picked up the towpath again, off of Dauphin Street a little south of Catasaqua. I rode this to Race Street, and here my true exploration began: we normally turn right and then left here, to continue north on Front Street; I have contended that there is a bike path somewhere nearby we could take, while Anne feels that Front Street is the way — maybe the only way — to go.

It turns out that we’re both right, though first I had to make a wrong turn and end up on RR tracks for a mile or so, before realizing that there was a bona-fide towpath just a few yards out of sight to my right. I was riding on the ballast, cursing whoever it was that thought this was a good cycling idea — uh, oh look over there, there’s a real trail and it’s so much easier! I got that sorted out and continued on my way, but even this trail deteriorated after a while — nothing too bad for mountain biking, but it was certainly not straight, smooth and flat towpath anymore either, and definitely not ready for a loaded touring bike. Still, I was having fun even if the going was rough, but then I came to a spot where a construction crew was putting in a bridge. I got around them, but past the construction site the trail was pretty chewed up from all the equipment; that, I decided, was my turn-around. (I’d wanted to go all the way to the 21st Street Bridge in Northampton to prove it could be done, but since I was within a mile of the Northampton portion of trail — which I was already familiar with — I figured I’d seen what I needed to. Besides, I was starting to get tired.)

The ride back was pretty uneventful, though I did stop to note where I should have accessed the towpath in Catasaqua, and I did have to stop at a train crossing in Allentown. Back on the regular towpath at Canal Park, a snack break at the last lock before Sand Island, and I was home in no time. I then took a brief nap…

We went over to Two Rivers in Easton last night, to catch up with Judy. Nice night, good beers (I had their oatmeal stout) and good conversation. I slept like a log when we got home, and I was surprised and disappointed to find I didn’t drop 20 pounds overnight. Today was volunteering at the Canal Museum, and tomorrow it’s going to rain I think.

Morning weigh-in: 190.5# 14.5% BF

I went out for a chilly towpath ride this morning with Julie G (she has off Wednesday and Friday). I think she knew what was coming but I totally expected the ground to be frozen solid, and dry even if above freezing, and it was like that for the most part but there were long sections where it was soft, muddy or just plain wet. We had a great ride, 14 miles down to Hope Road and back, but we did come home dirty. I have my jacket and bike clothes in the wash as we speak.

I wonder how the mountain is doing, if it’s in any rideable shape. I did a mucky towpath ride a few weeks ago, then met Greg the next day and rode SMB and it was in great shape; we did Sals a few days later, and it was a bit wetter than SMB but still OK. Maybe a Sunday ride, at one or the other?

Morning weigh-in: 190.5#, 14.5% BF (still holding on…)

One more thing I added to my morning exercise: push-ups. They’re easy to fit into the day, don’t need special clothes or any special exercise space, and I’ve been doing them off and on, as a quick way to keep warm without messing with the thermo$tat, since that cold weather hit. Then the other day I saw some click-bait about doing 100 push-ups a day for 30 days and thought “why not?”

So I’ve been doing 100 push-ups a day, 50 in the morning and 50 later in the afternoon, for the past week.  I already think I see some more tone in my arms and chest, but it’s probably more like I’m just waking up my sleeping muscles rather than building more. But that’s just a week in, we’ll see what the results are at the end of the challenge..

When I went looking up the challenge online, I found a couple of  articles and some Youtubes, mostly of say, Buzzfeed writers, people who were basically not exercising at all, who needed to break their push-ups up into smaller, more numerous sets over the course of the day, and in the end had some, but not really all that much improvement. Both sides of the Dunning-Kruger coin may be coming into play here, but I don’t think 100 push-ups is really all that many, especially over the course of a day, and one month is not a long enough time to give yourself to see results. (I’ll also say that doing a lot at once is probably better than doing them in a bunch of smaller doses; the last few painful ones are probably the ones that do the most good.)

For now I’ll keep with the 100 push-ups, but at the end of the challenge, if I keep going, I’ll probably add more.

Meantime, last night was the first trainer workout with heart rate monitor. A half hour, fifteen minutes of which were in Zone 3 or thereabouts, boring as hell but I did have the music playing. Dinner was leftover ribs, and this morning’s breakfast was bacon and eggs with Danish seed bread.