Miss and Hit

   I was mentioning to a friend, during today's wonderful ride in Delaware, that it seems when planning the Cycle Tech Sojourns, I have more luck with participation when I reschedule the events on short notice. I'm thinking that when these rides are on people's calendars for three or four weeks, it only gives them an opportunity to find something else to get in the way.

   I proposed that I should wait just four days before an event is to take place, and then tell people to look at the calendar. Four days or less seems to be a pretty successful time frame lately, and I'd even had one ride (Amish Country) that we pushed back a couple of hours the day of the event because of thunderstorms, and gained a rider during that delay!

   The trip up and down the Delaware River from New Hope ended up being a bit of a bust, even though I had a group of ten cyclists loosely committed just a few days before departure. Again, family commitments popped up, work schedules changed, etc.

   I even had the feeling that a couple people, who had asked about prospective attendance and received the answer that I expected a decent group, ended up backing out because they felt their presence wouldn't be needed. Well, my wife and I ended up fending for ourselves - that certainly wasn't the vision I had for the event, though it turned out to be a beautiful day, and we had a great time.

   Again, the short notice plan seemed to do the trick, as the Delaware Greenways & Historic Towns ride had to be postponed because of extreme heat, and just a few days later I had a commitment from a handful of friends to take on the route the following Saturday. I've written (here) about most of the route we traveled, so I'm going to present details about this event in a photolog, using images contributed by today's riding crew.

After passing east of downtown Wilmington, we headed out the boardwalk over the marshes of the Russell Peterson Wildlife Refuge.

At the end of the Jack A. Markell Trail, we entered the First State National Historical Park in New Castle.

We pedaled around the perimeter of the park

.

...to see interesting structures like the Old Library

...and the Dutch House Museum

Next we headed through battery park and along the trail along the Delaware River.

We reached the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal after about 10 miles of street riding. Here we are approaching the railroad lift bridge.

At the end of the C&D Canal we entered Delaware City and followed the Branch Canal into the historic district

The Merchant's Row ice cream parlor was our next stop. 

We eventually returned to the Markel Trail, where we crossed the Christina River

...and made our way back through the Peterson Wildlife Preserve.

Pedaling the homestretch on the Wilmington Riverwalk