Took a ride today with 2 other guys, needless to say after a long hard winter the roads in South Jersey are in **** shape. I got to the point where you had to watch the road surface more than what was sharing the road with you.
Passed one creator (Rt.#50 Mayslanding) that could of eaten my Fat Boy whole.....and of course where there's potholes, there's also a lot of loose sand, stone, and broken asphalt all around it......
Even the Garden State Parkway has a few divots worth avoiding at all costs, especially at 70 mph, and those expansion joins on the Great Egg Harbor bridge will test the best suspension made......

The weather is great for riding here in the Mid-Atlantic, just keep a close eye on the road surface, even those gremlin bells won't save you from some of the bomb creators I saw today.....

 

Gotta watch out for the a**hole coming towards you who jumps into your lane to avoid a pothole on his side of the road! Gotta sit at a green light for a few seconds to let the j***offs finish running the red light. Gotta run down the middle of the lane to keep the s***bags from trying to pass you on the right, on a single lane road.

Don't know if it would be any better anywhere else but this ain't the Jersey I grew up in.

sorry for the rant

 

Ha I have only been driving for a few years now and riding for much less but I do not know any other type of Jersey driving. I have never been able to experience riding on a highway doing less than 80 miles an hour, six inches from the person infront of you, one person sneezes and its a thirty car pile up. Luckily its not too bad being south of Trenton but damn do I wish I could have open scenic roads where I dont have to pretend I am dodging mines in the road while avoiding every jackass that left 10 minutes too late, is texting, reading, and blow drying their hair or whatever else seems to disconnect their brain from spine when they get behind the wheel. Damn. Sorry for the rant.

 

Feel for u guys in larger metro areas. For potholes, come to Ohio. Around me the potholes are horrible, worse than I have seen in years. The crazy Ohio weather has destroyed the roads. We had snow then a ton of ice (6 inches around me) that melted replaced by 7" of snow. That melted with the four inches of rain which sent the rivers about 16' over there banks. So now we got mud stone and everything else all over the roads. I want to scream......

 

This will be (already is starting to) one of the worst pothole springs up here in New England. Exceptionally high amount of snow..and quite a few transitional periods of warm/cold/warm/cold/warm/cold throughout the winter. So expansion/contraction with all that water. There's your formula for potholes.

On my last ride about 5 or 6 weeks ago...coming back from one of my shoreline routes, I come around a corner..and I get a wide band of a break in the road...full width, like washout had occurred underneath. Couldn't avoid it...had to eat it. Didn't go down, but I hated the way the front wheel felt when I hit it. Kept my eye on the tires for a while, and paying extra attention to wheel balance afterwards.

Planning on going out today though! Should just top 50 degrees.

Everyone that lives in northern climates where you've had extra snow this year.....pay extra attention for them, ride safe!

 

Michigan Ride of Potholes ~ Spring of 2011

 

I recall several years ago one of the leading trucker's magazines would make an annual rating of road conditions, and Pennsylvania would always rate the worst, Jersey was always in the top 10 as were most of the Mid-Atlantic / North Eastern states.
I can tell you this, snow removal these past 2 winters was a total joke, I understand in this bad economy with budget restraints and layoffs, public works is always one of the first things to get the budgetary axe, but it's gotten ridiculous around here. If I didn't own a Jeep we would of been stuck in our driveway for days, and being an emergency responder....that's just not acceptable. The lack of proper snow removal only accelerates road surface damage...no money to plow the snow, and no money to fix the resulting damage......
It is what it is, we just gotta be that much more vigilant if we want to enjoy riding our bikes.....

 

And soon enough, the road crews will be out in the morning or middle of the day, causing MASSIVE amounts of traffic at the worst possible time to "patch" these holes with cold patch that will be gone the next time it rains. Gotta love Jersey.

 

You know it...I love when they just stop on a busy road, no flagmen, no warning, 2 guys jump out of the dump truck, grab shovels, throw some of that crap cold patch in the hole, then move on to the next one. Then you drive over that junk and it gets stuck on your tires and wheel wells.....

Seems the concrete bridges and overpasses really took a beating this year, went over a bridge today and every expansion joint had chunks missing.....