Cycling the Canal Trailway with Depeche Mode and Detours

I leave tomorrow for Charlotte for a long weekend with Liam, Marcie, and the kids...and a somewhat belated birthday celebration for Liam.  I will be posting in my 2011 Trip Blog while I am there.  However, before I left I decided to do a bike ride since I won't be able to till I return next week and then I leave two days.

I took off this morning to do a quick 15 miles along the canal and then down the Genesee River Trail toward downtown.  I got Depeche Mode's "personal jesus" cranking on the Droid and off I went.  As you can see from the posting below, I ran into a couple of detours along the way.  However, I was pleased with my pace and overall progress.

Click here to see the route and results.

Bike Ride on the Rochester Junction of the Lehigh Valley Trail

On Friday August 12, we hauled the bikes to the Pinnacle Road access point to the Rochester Junction of the Lehigh Valley Trail.  This is trail is an old railroad right-of-way.  The original railroad ran from the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania to Buffalo.  There was a spur that ran up to Rochester from the Rochester Junction.  We rode the junction trail down to the main trail and then east into Mendon.

Marilyn coming up through mile 14

It was a 15 mile round trip but on very level terrain.  It runs mostly through the woods.   The day was partly sunny and very seasonable with the temperature around 80.

You can see many of the details of the ride by looking at the Garmin data.

Why this blog?

Every summer (or winter or spring or fall) Marilyn and I tell ourselves that we want to spend more time in outdoor activities.  This happens a lot as we are completing a bike ride as we were last Friday.  The trouble is that we keep saying that but typically are never as active as we envision when we make those statements.  If I learned one thing in the years I spent learning and practicing quality management, it is this:  If you measure something, you will manage it, and perhaps more important, if you don't measure something, you will never manage it.

So this blog will be my way of measuring my (our) outdoor activities so we can see exactly how active we are and how we can increase that activity as we say we want to.  This will be made easier by the fact that last May I purchased a Garmin 305 which is a wrist held Garmin that provides a number of measurements of physical activity.  This device is typically mounted on my bike or my  wrist so it is technically a measure of my physical outdoor activity.  The blog post will make clear when Marilyn is along.

I am starting this on August 14 and have gone back to last week for the first activity posts.  Oh, and I should mention that I work out regularly as a club nearby but those will not be included.  What will be included will be biking, hiking, fitness walking, xc skiing, snow shoeing, and perhaps even kayaking and golf.