Stony Point results

Shimon and I met up with Karen on the NJ side of the GWB and headed off up US-9W. As we rode through Alpine, Shimon suddenly found that he couldn't downshift his chain ring: he was stuck on the big ring. We all pulled into the Palisades Park HQ and had a look to see what was wrong. While there, we met up with Yehuda, one of my fellow Challenge riders from the 2009 Wheels of Love. He also looked but didn't find anything wrong either -- cable had tension and everything looked right. Yehuda suggested we take Shimon to either Piermont Bicycle Connection or further up on 9W to Toga Nyack.

I felt Shimon would have great trouble with the hills on 9W beyond Piermont and the best thing was to head for Piermont. So much for my carefully planned ride.




Shimon's problem was quickly resolved when we got to the store. That left me with the problem of us several miles east of our route, not to mention on the wrong side of a very steep ridge. I rerouted us on-the-fly to proceed north on the route I'd planned for our return. We went through Piermont and the towns north of it and into South Nyack Beach Park to pick up the bikeway through the park.


After exiting the park, we followed NYS Bicycle Route 9 the rest of the way to the turn for Stony Point Park. When we arrived at the park gate at about 12:40 PM, we found a sign "site closed. No restrooms available". We decided we were hungry and sat on some rocks near the gate overlooking a small pond and wetlands to eat our lunch.

Everyone was hot and tired. We took 9W back through Stony Point, stopped at a store and got cold drinks then continued on south. As we progressed, I saw that Shimon and Karen were not keeping up and having difficulty climbing. I changed our route from hauling down 9W to veer inland -- and downhill -- to take Piermont Road back through to Tenafly. It's a much less hilly route until of course the end when you have to get back up across the ridge. We stayed on CR-501 the whole way and climbed up Palisades Ave. . At the top of Palisades, Karen and I sat on a bench for a while to wait for Shimon, then headed on to the GWB and home.