How are you enjoying the Great Outdoors in your area?

mrodgers said:

I'm up in Butler. I love coming down to the Burgh with the bike. I'm down there very often on the weekends. We ride from Southside Riverfront Park to West Newton and back a lot.

Watched the fireworks on the 4th from a kayak on the Ohio. If you watch WPXI's video of the fireworks, I'm the front light furthest to the left.

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Great photo. The Zambellis always put on a great show.

Graybeard57 said:

Great photo. The Zambellis always put on a great show.

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Not Zambelli. I've read it's been Pyrotecnico out of New Castle the past few years. I know this year for sure was Pyrotecnico. Not even close to as great as Zambelli.

That wasn't my best photo. Just the one that showed the Yak the best. I didn't get many good shots of the fireworks because, well, little difficult to use a tripod on a kayak, LOL.

It was a meetup group. 16 people showed up and we launched at the end of the Penitentiary. Paddled 3 miles up the Ohio, hung out behind the stage at The Rivers listening to Bon Journey. Then tried to sit at the shoreline at Northside Park but got kicked out of there. Half of us went back to the Ohio and half went up to the Allegheny. Those on the Allegheny stated they saw the first 2, then it was completely obscured by smoke. The air was dead still and the smoke just hung there at the point. Ohio side was awesome from the water.

As for how I enjoyed the great outdoors tonight, 10 mile bike ride around home. It was hot, didn't expect it to be as hot as it had gotten. Was surprising since it was relatively comfortable at work (manufacturing, usually around 115° when summer gets hot.)

Working on deer blinds and gardening up at deer camp with my 7 year old son and Dad.
A lot of fishing and BB gun shooting in the afternoons.

I am recently divorced and don't have to spend my time sitting at home listening to a nagging..... anymore. It was absolutely beautiful out and this is how I spent my weekend....

Moraine State Park (PA) annual lake Regatta this weekend. I jumped in the kayak late in the morning and had a wonderful paddle up to the festivities.






Landed over on shore where there was activities for kids (didn't have mine this weekend), stand up paddleboarding lessons, kayak tryouts, and typical fair displays. Grabbed myself some yummy steak sandwich and fries....



....and found a place to sit and listen to some live music.









After they finished up, I jumped back in the boat to paddle an hour and a half back to the car to head home and change. At 8:00, on the venue was Dark Side of the Moon Pink Floyd Tribute band from Ohio. Changed out of my wet clothes, had a nice shave trying out another of my sample blades, the Gillette Blue Stainless with my Barbershop scented Stirling soap, and headed back to the lake a few hours later (only 10 minutes away.)

The sail boats were lining up out on the water and another band was playing.





The band finished about 8:15 and the Floyd band started setting up.





It starts to get dark and with the sun behind me over the trees, I could only get the east side sunset colors over the water.



Finally, the band is ready. I don't know who the sound guy was, I don't think he was with the band. He was there all day with the other bands. It took him about 45 minutes to get them straight. Lousy while the sound guy figured it out. Once he did though, it was fantastic. They played from about 9 pm til midnight. Great show.



I am probably the biggest Pink Floyd and David Gilmour fan in all of Pennsylvania.

How I spent my weekend part 2.

Buddy texted me while I was at the lake watching the bands during the day. He and his wife RSVP'ed to ride the Panhandle trail that was put up on Meetup.com for Sunday. I'd been wanting to meet the guy who is always posting these rides on meetup so signed up in between my paddling and going back for the Pink Floyd show.

The ride was to be 15 miles out to Burgettstown, PA to grab a bite to eat and 15 miles back. We don't play around with short rides when we have to travel an hour to get to the start of a ride. Met the organizer whom I had heard about many times. Great guy. Met a few others. And then there's John. I rode with John in the spring and he was an absolute riot! He did not disappoint on this ride.

We rode the 15 miles out to Burgettstown and had breakfast about 10 am at a little restaurant just off the trail. Trail was nice and fast crushed limestone in the beginning. About 14 miles out it turned to freshly laid blacktop. I don't think we could have had a better looking sky.










Mike the organizer was only planning on going that far along with the other guys I'd just met. They headed back and my riding buddy, his wife, the now infamous John, and I continue down the trail. We had about 10 miles of the fresh blacktop until it changed back to crushed limestone. From there on out, the trail was a little rough with a lot of deep soft spots that grabbed your tires and stopped you cold. Easy to navigate around if you see it coming up.





We had crossed into West Virginia missing the marker, so had to hit it on the way back. This is passing under Rt. 22 in WV at the end of the trail. We didn't make it to Weirton as we couldn't see a way to get off the trail other than getting onto Rt. 22. Couldn't see town from the trail. We were all in need of a quick snack, some water refills, and some sports drink as it was pretty darn hot out in the sun all day.







Heading back and got back to the state line. Had to set my bike in PA and myself in WV so I was in a different state than my ride...



It was just an absolute beautiful day.





Found this memorial along the trail.






Left just out of Pittsburgh at 8 am, 58 miles later, back to the car at around 4:45. All I ate was a light breakfast at the restaurant, 2 granola bars along the route, and we stopped at about mile 45 for some ice cream. Got home and didn't even eat anything for dinner. About nine 24 ounce bottles of water and 2 Powerade drinks. You would think after burning 2600 calories and only eating what I ate, I would have lost something. Monday morning, weight still stagnant.

Congrats on the divorce! It was the best thing that ever happened to my marriage certainly!
That looks like it was one Hell of an Awesome weekend!

Wow! Great posts!

It's been a Pink Floyd couple of weeks! Animals, Wish You Were Here and UmmaGumma have been on tap.


AA

Cash_Stronomer said:

Congrats on the divorce! It was the best thing that ever happened to my marriage certainly!
That looks like it was one Hell of an Awesome weekend!

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Same here! Welcome to divorcehood. You are making the best of it - well done!

Not so much today: 92 degrees F, 73% humidity. Found myself daydreaming about fall.

Got a new, lighter Spec Ops Gear pack this week, so we're going somewhere Saturday ... The heat is misery, though. Have to hike lite and early.


AA

Soaking wet sweating all day at work, may as well head out in the heat and humidity. Can't get any more stinky from the 9 hours of work. Quick 10 mile ride around the neighborhoods right after work. Thunderstorms booming all around but none hitting me (some rain falling down would have felt great though.) A shower, dinner, and best shave yet trying the Astra Superior Platinum from my sample blades.

I'm trying to lay wax on floors at night in extreme humidity. Not fun at all! Too bad you couldn't collect sweat like rain water!

Today I planted a holly bush in my yard.
Weather was perfect. Sunny but not hot, and a light breeze.

What a beautiful 3 day weekend. 59 miles riding around the streets of Pittsburgh on Saturday.



With a visit to Bicycle Heaven bike museum. Lot of cool stuff there.



Took a day off the bike yesterday to clean up the car. Then today on Labor Day, 44 miles on the trail with a stop at Subway for lunch at the turnaround point.



All in all, a fantastic weekend with some fantastic friends.

That certainly looks fantastic indeed! I would have taken a day just to run around the town with a camera too. But man, what an amazing ride that woulda been!

Am I the only one enjoying the great outdoors? I'd love to see people posting up. Motorcycle rides? Boating? Paddling? Hiking? Someone has to be doing something.

Threats of rain on Saturday and nothing happened. I could have gone riding. So, Sunday I'm definitely going out. Yup, I got wet, but only a little bit wet. Rode a new loop from home, a nice 27 mile ride. No pics unfortunately. I need to learn to take the camera no matter what. Had some great open road photo ops.

Almost all my free time is hiking and biking, and who knows how much time in the woods. In fact, I drag gear with me in my camera kit and probably 80% of my SOTD pics are out there whilst hiking. I do limit severely my pics though out there, as it's sort of more for just enjoying and relaxing, and then when I'm on the bike I don't like carrying the camera as it's probably a high chance something will happen to it hopping around.

Then there's car camping. I try very hard to have at least one over nighter somewhere out there every week. There's always a few nights in the winter that just get too cold, but otherwise, every month of the year I'm out there.

Thursday morning the guy I work with (there's only 2 of us in the department) said, "guess you won't be in tomorrow..." I asked why? "Al's taking off and going for a ride all day, figured you were going to go with him. Nope, I don't want to take any more vacation days off as we get paid out for them at the end of the year and I can use the extra $$$.

Noon on Thursday I'm in the breakroom and Al asks, "how much vacation time you have left?" Well, I'll have 1 less day left tomorrow.

We skipped work and he came up to where I live and I showed him the roads and hills I ride. 68 miles and had 2 nice 2-3 mile descents at about 40 mph.

Found a new little video thing to do post ride. This was Friday.

https://www.relive.cc/view/722568569

Saturday I was signed up for the Tour the Montour event on the Montour Trail near Pittsburgh. Rode 62 miles on the trail with an awesome lunch at the end.

Before we even started on the Montour trail, my buddy's wife is asking me what I'm doing next weekend. I was going to join another group riding the Allegheny River Trail but was waiting for what she wanted to do since he's heading out of State (no, get your mind out of there, LOL) She wants to get a group together and ride the Allegheny. The first group is a slow group and usually rides 20-30 miles, way too short to drive any distance to ride but since it was my home trail for a few years I was going to join them. Instead, I'll go out with my regular group and we'll do the whole trail Emlenton, PA to Oil City for 70 miles. Might even detour onto the Sandy Creek Trail which will get me my Century ride (100 miles) which I haven't ever done yet.

Like this...

Admittedly, I haven't enjoyed the outdoors enough in my area (GA). When it cools down a little, I intend on taking the missus out west to Providence Canyon near Blakely, GA to do a little camping. We haven't done any camping since our tent was totaled in Galway, Ireland a couple years back, so I'm itching to do it.