🏁 Cycling Classic weekend is here | Outdoorsy Newsletter

August is nearly finished. Are you looking forward to the fall? I’d love to know what you like to do outside this season.

In today’s edition:

☀️ Your weekend weather outlook: Splendid conditions. Light wind and little chance of rain.

— Paola Pérez (outdoorsy@inquirer.com)

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It’s an all-day party. It’s considered one of the best summertime days in Philadelphia. And it’s finally back after a decade.

The prestigious Cycling Class returns this weekend, attracting spectators and cycling enthusiasts from all over the city.

⏱️ The Classic kicks off Sunday and runs from 8:30 a.m. to around 4:45 p.m. The (free!) Fan Fest, located at the Iroquois Sculpture area by the Art Museum, will be open the entire weekend, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.

🚃 Consider public transportation to get to your spectating spot, as no parking is available and road closures and restrictions will be in effect. Don’t know where to go to watch the action unfold? We have you covered with our picks of the best spots, and information on nearby SEPTA stations.

🚴 You could also bike to your spot. Organizers recommend riding to the course via the Schuylkill River Trail. Free bike valet parking is available at the Fan Fest and Lemon Hill.

Use our guide to get ready for race day by taking a lap of the 14-mile course from start to finish, and to find all other important details about the race.

Last week, Barbara B. showed us a massive mushroom sprouting from a cherry tree trunk. She followed up with more details:

“I am not a forager but just appreciate odd and mysterious appearances in nature. Though from what I read about it, this fungus is probably in the process of destroying the tree from the inside.”

Yikes. I recently noticed a similar fungus, brick reddish brown in color, growing at the base of a tree in my neighborhood. I wondered if the same thing might be happening there ...

📥 How about you, dear reader? What are you doing or seeing out there? I want to hear from you. Send me an email with any recent or past stories in nature (and pictures, if you have them). You may see it featured right here.

🎤 My colleague Jason Nark reports on rural communities far from city life. I’m passing him the mic for his latest dispatch out of Cumberland County, New Jersey.

Taxidermy and weathered photos line the walls at Higbee’s Bait and Tackle in Fortescue, artifacts from bygone days when the sleepy Delaware Bay town was truly the “weakfish capital of the world.”

The taxidermy is a dusty, 12-pound “tide runner,” the nickname fishermen bestow on the biggest, trophy weakfish, a member of the drum family with a tan, often iridescent body and a reputation for fighting hard on a fishing line. The black-and-white photo shows a single fisherman standing beside his catch, about 30 weakfish of various sizes.

Tide runners are unicorns today, a rarity on New Jersey coasts and across the bay, in Delaware. Catch limits enacted by state fisheries would prevent a single fisherman from catching dozens of fish today, though most would be happy with one legal keeper they could fry up in lemon and butter.

Fishermen have plenty of theories about where all the weakfish have gone. They blame dolphins and dogfish for gobbling up the young; nuclear power plants; the rise of other popular game fish, like striped bass; and offshore seafood trawlers. — Jason Nark

Keep reading on the peculiar decline of weakfish.

🌞 A song: “Summer Madness” by Kool and the Gang.

💛 A sighting: A “superhero” Goldfinch that frequents Tom Pluck’s neighborhood.

🎒 A cool human: Finn Fremstad, 18, biked roughly 2,000 miles from Colorado to Delco for his first day of school at Swarthmore.

🦁 A moment of silence: May Makini the African lion rest in peace.

🌃 An activity: Bring a picnic blanket and kick back at Philly’s Magic Gardens (Saturday, $30), and at Clark Park for the Ethiopian Day celebration (Sunday, free).

Here’s the Wissahickon River, as seen from the Orange Trail portion of this loop that starts from Bell Mills Road East. (Turns out cast and crew of HBO’s Task were filming season two in the park that day, which explains why Bell Mills Road West was closed.)

😊 Nature calls.

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