The Longest Day
208 miles in one Day
(Last updated: Sun. January 01, 2012)
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The Longest Day Updated for 2012

I'll need to spend a little time here with an update of the current status and an update on last year's events. The plan for this year is to hold the event on Saturday, June 9th.

Happy New Year, 2012! I guess if you beleive Hollywood this is the year the world ends. They've never dealt with reality before so I don't expect they will this time either. So with the end of the world as we know it (hye, I feel fine) I suggest you get in one last big ride. ;-). At the moment I am looking for help to run the event. Last year my work managd to gobble up all my time and expect nothing less this year. That being said, I'm still running the event.

2011

2011/06/02 - Lots of updates! First, the 2011 cue sheets are up and ready to be printed. We've also got 40+ registrants (I just received 'a bunch more' of them in the mail today :-/ ). It looks like we're not going to have enough orders for the Jerseys (Rats!). The Regal Plaza's air conditioning unit went dead today and we don't know when it will get fixed. There are a number of people still looking for teams (I need one too but I'm working on teams for everyone) and there are less than 10 days to go. A lot of work and so little time! The good news is that our sponsor: GU has come through and the GU Rocktane is here (yes)! Now all I need to do is enter the registrations, find teams, get in the rest of my training miles (I still don't have enough, grrr!). Oh and actually do the ride.

2011/05/02 - A little more than a week away from the next meeting. :-) But we are starting to see some good news. The Ranger Station at mile 125 will be open for June 11th (and the entire summer).

2011/04/18 - I finally have the event registration PDF form ($20 - yes we lowered the price) online. I think I've also updated the correct pages so that the current form is the one showing and all the email addresses point to the gmail account for the Longest Day. Still a lot more work to do.

2011/04/10 - Tomorrow is the first Longest Day meeting at the Metuchen Public Library. The forms are posted and registration is open. So far we're aware of no road closures (so far) though we are looking into route changes that may affect the route. I'll keep everyone posted here.

2011/04/04 - My apologies, the loss of my job moved my priorities but now that I have a new one I can get back to work on the Longest Day (LD). This section is a bit rushed but should get everyone started. This year's LD will be on Saturday, June 12th, the first ride meeting will be on Monday, Apr. 10th, 7PM @ the Metuchen Public Library, the second will on May 10th at the Metuchen Public Library. This year's LD has a $20 registration fee, club membership is $15, there is an optional ride LD Jersey for $70 shipped to your home after the Longest Day (you should receive it by August). We need a minimum of 25 riders to get this price. I'll have more posted soon and the registration sheet post this week!. Sorry for the delay.

2011/02/01 - There's 56" of snow on the ground and freezing rain for tomorrow but efforts are underway to bring you this year's Longest Day. The roads will be interesting as I am already seeing huge pot holes on the roads and most towns have no maintenace budget left!

  • You must be a member of the club to participate on this ride!
  • Volunteers are needed to: meet and greet in Port Jervis & Cape May, several teams are needed to inspect sections of the route and a co-chair would be nice.
  • We will be dropping the vest as on option this year but the Jersey will be an option on the registration form. Jerseys will be shipped directly to your home. Most likely after the event.
  • The registration price will drop.
  • There will be no printed cue sheets handed out but the rider and SAG cue sheets will be ready online a few weeks before the Longest Day Event.
  • There will be two information meetings. One in April and one in May.
  • More details as I get everything finalized.

2010

2010/06/08 - I'll leave this up a bit longer while I work out the details so here's last years information:

  • The PDF Cue sheets are available: Cue Sheets
  • For those with GPS: The GPX file (there have been some problems with Bikely lately) Bikely LD 2010 route, I will be giving out printed version also but better to be safe than sorry.
  • Team Rosters:LD2010 Teams - I've included a roster (xls file) for people still looking for teams. Sorry I've been so busy I haven't able to make proper progress on this issue (I only have 3 members on my team).
  • LD2010 Jersey info (Due June 18th), must be sent via mail!:LD2010 Jerseys I want to give Kevin Tatoris a huge shout out and thanks for the work he did on this. As noted Kevin must receive the check and order form by mail. Don't bring it the day before as it will most likely get lost.

Note, some people have not gotten a meal ticket for their SAGS. Each SAG needs an $11 meal ticket just like everyone else (I'll word that differently next year). I'll be accepting meal tickets at the Port Jervis starting point and the breakfast. Sorry for the confusion.

2010/06/01 - Well we're down to less than two weeks and the crunch is on. I hope your training is going well as it looks like it's going to be hot and windy this year. Kevin Tatoris has done a nice job on the 2010 Jersey. The rest of the ordering information will be up in a few days. I'm still working on getting the team information online. Sorry but this is taking much longer than expect (lots of late registrations). The route checks are done and only one change is in progress (Foothill Rd in Bridgewater). At the moment I'm still very busy but overall I'm ready for the Longest Day.

2010/05/23 - While I may have been quiet I have been very busy. I'm still working on getting the registrations done (there are a lot of last minute entries). We have 150 miles of routes finished and only one minor change so far. The vest order goes in tomorrow. It's now too late to get a vest. I just found out the Jersey will cost $60. I'll make a formal announcement about that in a few days. So far everything looks good! Hope you're getting training in! There less than 3 weeks left!

2010/05/12 - Ah the excitement of the approach of the Longest Day is in the air! I hope everyone's training is going well. I just picked up the work for this year's Jersey so I hope to have information on that soon. Sign ups are flying in and I'm being kept busy with them. I've noticed that many teams are not getting a meal ticket for their SAGs. I'll be sending out emails on that soon along with team requests and other information.

2010/04/17 - We've started checking the routes, just preliminary work so far. Nothing really official yet. The roads from Blackwells Mill to the beginning of Rt 563 (Chatsworth/Pine Barrens) are looking good. I've worked up a few different ways to avoid the nasty pot-holes of Foothill Rd. This adds a mile or two. There is a rumor of bridge work at the Tuckahoe River Bridge and I've got a detour that adds 3 more miles for that detour. With both detours the route is as much as 212 miles. I'll work to cut that down as much as possible without adding too many turns. It's a tough balancing act to shorten the route but keep people from getting lost. I've found out that there is no closing of the Rt 130 crossing just completed repaving. Without any detours we look to be reusing the same 206.5 mile route as last year.

2010/04/16 - The meeting went well though we had a lot fewer folks than I had hoped for. A lot of good questions asked and hopefully I answered them. The registration is starting to come in now and I'm seeing a few folks who are a bit confused. The form is not a registration for the entire team. Each member of you team must fill out the registration form, be a member of the club (I will check) and pay the fees. The only exception is the SAG but they will still need a meal ticket so don't forget about them!

I've also posted a sample double century cue sheet (PDF). This was the route used in 2008 but it may not be the whole route this year. We won't know the official route until a week before June 12th when we finalize the route.

For those of you who are wondering, yes we will have a Jersey like we had last year. It's currently in the works and we hope to have the information to you in the next month.

2010/04/10 - Spoke to the kind folks at the Ranger Station and at this moment they don't know if they'll be open on June 12th. I'll have to follow up on this. Also even though Allentown appears to have a temporary bridge being built so they can replace the bridge/dam in the center of town, a new problem appears to be occuring there. The construction crews have done repair work on the road and left large section of soft gravel as roadway. THere were no signs warning us of this hazard and I will have to keep track of this. Remember, the first meeting is this Tuesday!

2010/04/03 - The PDF Registration form is now online. The price needed to be raised to $40 to cover costs, sorry about that. If anyone finds any errors please let me know and I'll correct them. Also the ride now has a mascot, Rosie (see right).

Important: A few people have sent in there money to reserve their rooms at Port Jervis and the Cape May Regal Plaza. Unfortunately they didn't contact the Regal for pricing. Please contact the Regal before sending money. I beleive it to be 129.96 (tax included) but I will check. Also it's less than 3 months until the big day have you started training yet? For those unfortunate to live in the North East we've had terrible weather for riding. Let's hope that trend changes starting now!

2010/01/28 - I just received a confirmation from the East Brunswick Public Library for Tuesday, May 18th? @ 7 pm. I tried to get it a week earlier but the library has already been reserved.

2010/01/26 - I'd like to welcome back GU as a sponsor of the event. :-) I have a confirmation for Tuesday, April 13th for the first Longest Day meeting at the East Brunswick Public Library. The second meeting date was already booked and I'm working on a new date or a new location.

2010/01/25 - Met with the board but didn't have time to present anything. :-/ But I did ask questions and I did get a bunch of needed answers. First there will be no price increase, $35 - same as last year (update: sorry it's now $40). I've also reserved the meeting rooms at the East Brunswick Library for April 13th and May 11th. I'm now waiting for confirmation from the library.

2010/01/24 - More minor updates, filling in the blanks, rewording some things, and a Video page. I'm currently looking into getting a helmet camera (http://www.tachyoninc.com/ - the XC) to record the entire ride. Then later cut it down to a respectable short. I'm also attempted to reserve meeting rooms only to find I have to do this during the week. I suspect I'll have to do the same with the hotel rooms and everything else (during the week, business hours calling). The sooner the better. :-) I'll be attending a board meeting tomorrow (01/25) to present and ask about this years Longest Day Event.

2010/01/22 - I've been busy with some minor updates to the pages and I've added a Twitter Feed

2010/01/19 - Just spoke with the President of the club and I can select the date for the Longest Day and report back to the board with that information. :-) So June 12th is now a firm date!

2010/01/17 - We're already at it planning out the 30th Longest Day. I've already got the TODO list together and ready to present my dates to the CJBC's board in February. We've already heard about two possible road closings which push up the mileage and we've already worked out a route around the problems. We've added new pages to the new layout (Calendar, History - very cool!, Longest Day Poem, Slideshow. Hand Positions, and FAQ). Hmm I've been a bit busy.

The Longest Day Updated for 2009

2009/09/24 - I've spent a fair bit of time pulling and tearing these pages apart to get them into better shape. I doubt I'm done but I'm certain that this will imporve the access to the information. I still have a lot of work to do on the Slideshow, Hand positions, Gas, Food and Restrooms, and Scheduling pages.

2009/09/22 - I've volunteered to be the Longest Day Even chair person. I'm sure this is a bad idea but I won't figure that out until I've done it at least once or twice. :-). As Fran has pointed out, I seem to know the most about the event and I am very enthusiastic about it.

Another year, another successful ride. Fran Sanchez did a wonderful job of running the event, thank you Fran!. As you can see the pages are being updated and reworked. Hopefully the pages will be a little more manageable. The original page ended up being some 25+ pages long (if you were to print them out). That's a lot for one sitting. More work to come and plenty of planning to do for next year's event.

Post-Aug 2008

As you can see I've been pretty busy putting the pages in order. Still needs a lot of work but I'm getting there. I'd like to see the order of the pages change, add a terrain section and maybe a sites section. Somehow I need to figure out some marking for local store, bathrooms etc. so people can find things along the route.

Pre-Aug 2008

Well this is starting to get huge! There's a lot information here but it's much to large to read in one siting. so I'm starting to work on new Longest Day page. This page will still exist but I'll divide the information to many pages. This will make it easier to read.

Hi we're at it again, another Longest Day ride! This year William 'Sandy' Somers is handling the management chores of the Longest Day. So far he's done a wonderful job (it's harder than you might think). He's put together the club's Longest Day site.

Note: This was originally written in 2007 after the Longest Day ride. It has been slightly updated since then and some new material added so it may read a little weird.

So far I've updated this site by cleaning up the phrasing, spelling, and town names but expect more unfound minor errors. While I know every turn, crack and hole in the road I don't remember every name. Sorry about that. This year I'll be leading training rides for the Longest Day starting in April. I intend to be ready early (it's looking good as of 5/20). Take a look at my bike blog as I'll be posting more information about the rides as the weeks go on. It looks like I've worked out a few new double metrics and centuries for training. I'll be testing them out come May. This year I'd like to see 18 mph avg riding speed. I'm in the process of getting my commuter bike ready for rides to work. That may not be realistic speed to keep but I'll train for it anyway. Remember you need to ride no faster than your slowest rider, anyway we'll see. Lastly I've added two of my posts from the newsgroup rec.bicycles.misc. They are reports on the Longest Day 2004 (our fastest yet) and the Longest Day 2005 (our worst though I should consider it a success, thanks Piers for pointing that out!). I may need to clean those up and add a few more facts.