Much Ado About Everything

Haven't blogged in a seriously long time, but there is a lot of exciting stuff going on at the shop these days. 

We've been rabidly attacking all manner of advocacy projects. We even received an award for our efforts from the Tri State Transportation Campaign in November in Manhattan. In conjunction with the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, we have been working to get our county municipalities to pass Complete Streets Bills.  We have been meeting with the county engineer, and our Freeholders, to encourage the addition of bike lanes and trails. Just this week, we will be filming a video with the TSTC for The Circuit. The shop is determined to help this project get the funding it needs to complete the planned 750 mile network. Two weeks ago, our State Assembly Transportation Committee put a bill through to institute a safe passing law! Many thanks go to all of you who continue to support our efforts, adding your names to petitions and calling the appropriate elected officials when asked. Every piece of the puzzle gets us a step closer to much safer cycling in the state of NJ. Instead of sitting back and acting like nothing can be done, we are all acting together to make things happen! Stay tuned, we are just getting started.

On the cycling front, there was a distinct lack of support for women's bicycle racing in our area. We have so many strong ladies who do our group rides and showed an interest in competition beyond our "Monday Night World's" group rides. We set out to establish a small team of beginner road racers and ended up with a bunch of wins and a State Championship in our very first season. Now in our second year, we are working team strategies and training as a team to accomplish our goals and move up to the next racing category. 

Seeing the success of our women's team, and the budding talent of many of the men on our group rides, we decided to restructure our men's racing team and bring it in-house. With just a few veterans left over, we rebuilt from the ground up with a lot of new faces onboard. These guys have gone from fast groups riders to State Criterium Champions in just the first few months of their season. They, too, have proven that teamwork and selflessness, along with skill and competitive drive, can get you to the finish line first. 

While we are extremely proud of our teams for winning races, we are ever more proud of them all for their ability to plan and execute a strategy that has riders helping their teammates get to the finish line  without concern for their own placing. A win for the team is a win for all. What's better is that even when we don't win, we are so happy to be riding, racing and working together for a common goal: to do our very best.

These two teams and our existing mountain/cx bike team are now all OneTeam. We look forward to reporting on all the action and successes that our team has in 2014. More pictures and stories to follow.

These same folks are supporting charity events, teaching kids how to ride bikes,  and being all around good citizens. The teams would like to thank all our our sponsors: Republic Bank, Cavallaro Family Practice, TraceJenkins Law, DII Computers, SteakOut, More Than Just Rings, Specialized Bicycles and American Truck and Auto. 

Sunday mtb ride canceled

Sorry kids, too much rain. The beginner mtb ride has been canceled. We will try again next week!

Tuesday D Ride Time Change

The Tuesday D ride is moving to 5:45pm on September 18th. Please be ready to roll as darkness is falling quite early now.

Beginner MTB ride canceled

I am proactively canceling the Sunday beginner mtb ride. We are expecting big storms overnight. This should give riders enough time to alter their Sunday riding plans without waiting for the morning. There will be a group of road riders at the Scenic Schuykill Century tomorrow morning. Wear your Action Wheels jersey, iffin you have one. It's much easier to find everyone at the start and throughout the ride.

Patty

Congress to Decide Fate of Bike Funding: Congress is currently debating the massive transportation bill, which includes funding for bicycling and pedestrian facilities. Indications are that these programs could be entirely gutted. Our Senator is on the committee that can stop this.  Take Action Now! Please take a minute before Monday and call Senator Menendez's office in support of dedicated funding for bicycling and walking programs. Leave a message if you don't reach a staffer — Monday close of business will be too late! Below is an easy script. Senator Robert Menendez: 202.224.4744 Hello! I am (Name, Address, City). I am calling to ask for Senator Menendez's support of dedicated funding for bicycling and walking in the transportation reauthorization.  Thank you, in advance, for supporting cycling!! Patty Action Wheels

Awesome group rides!

If you haven't had a chance to join us recently, or at all, we have group rides for lots of different ability levels. We have paid ride leaders for these events and they are dedicated to providing the safest, most fun, and educational riding experience you can find in our area. As a matter of fact, I have had quite a few people tell me that they have been on group rides all over and ours is the one they find to be the friendliest and most well run. (Toot toot- that was me tooting my own horn, but I digress) So if you find yourself looking for some fun on two wheels, join us for a loop. We have rides on Monday (6p), Thursday (6p) and Saturday (8a) for intermediate to advanced riders and Tuesday (6p) for beginner road riders. We also run holiday rides! Sign up for our email list at actionwheels.com to stay on top of all the local cycling happenings. See you soon!

No D ride tonight!

Sorry, no ride leader available, so no D ride this evening.

Monday Night Ride canceled...

...due to wind.

forecast change

The high winds won't be coming our way till later in the afternoon. The Saturday ride is on.

Not looking good...

The current forecast has me leaning toward pulling the plug on the Saturday ride. The weather peeps are calling for some very strong wind gusts that will make cycling less than safe. I'll try to post by 7a tomorrow, but check the local forecast in the morning if you want to guess before that.

Thanks and see you soon!

Italy trip: Day 2

The ride today was slightly windy (for the guys on the front!) Our travels took us north through some beautiful medieval villages, over steep cobbled sections and around two large lakes. It's quite amazing just how old everything is here. It's all so very charming, with stone arches, castles, and narrow alley ways. You can't even imagine how they drive (like they're on fire) or how they park (randomly leaving their mico-sized cars just anywhere). Our loop was a challenging 100k with 32k of ascent. The descending was super sweet as some hit upwards of 80k coming down one twisty, long section. Everyone is still smiling, though that may be from delirium... We will see tomorrow how everyone recovers from a pretty hard effort today.

Ciao,
Patrizia

Monday Night Ride Canceled

Sorry everybody, too windy for the Monday Night Ride...seeya Thursday!

Day One: Action Wheels in Italy

Everyone was smiling at breakfast this morning as we prepped for a casual ride to start our week of cycling in Italy. We are on Lake Bracciano (Bra-Chano! Spoken with an accent and the stress on the second and third syllables) We took a nice spin around the lake with a side detour up a little climb. There will be lots of climbing in the coming days, but we only got a taste today. The weather is striking beautiful, like the scenery, here in central Italy. We are about an hour north of Rome and plan to spend our rest day sightseeing there this week. I can't post pics on the blog from my iPad, so checkout The Facebook for all the up to date goings on in the Lazio Region of Italia!

Ciao!
Patrizia

Italy pre-ride

I flew in to Rome early for this cycling adventure, to save a ton of money on airfare, so Saturday became a ride day! We rolled out this morning for an easy spin around Lake Bracciano. The lake is 32k in circumference, and fairly flat, so it wouldn't be too much to do before our "actual" trip begins on Sunday. The lake area is quite beautiful and the weather is perfect so it made for a great day on the road. Italian drivers are considerably less patient than those in Spain, but we easily adapted to being passed by Fiat Panda's while there was an oncoming string of traffic. There appears to be a Lotus rally going on in the area, so there's a inordinate number of race cars here, as well. After completing the lake loop, we headed back out to get in a nice 2 mile climb that starts about 5 miles down the road from the resort. The climb nets you a 2 mile descent, then we rode into Bracciano and grabbed lunch at I Love Pizza. The rest of our 14 person crew arrived this evening so we got all the remaining bikes assembled in short order and had our "Welcome" cocktail party. Dan Maker, tour guide extraordinaire, then apprised us that we are in for some killer climbing this week. Apparently, all roads do not lead to Rome, they lead to the clouds. Wish me luck!

Too foggy...

The National Weather Service has issued a dense fog warning and the radar shows more storms coming our way. We have canceled the 9a ride. Safety first! The weeknight rides start soon, so stay tuned. 'Like' us on Facebook to stay more up to date with what's going on at the bike shop.