The Nerve

11 May 2008


Despite my recent change in attitude about getting up hills, I’m apparently still a mess when it comes to being on someone else’s hilly ride. So I spent most of the time on Sunday at the back of the pack, not knowing what was coming next or how much farther we were going, afraid to expend too much energy on any given hill.

Bob P. led the ride out of Lambertville, and we spent most of the time in Pennsylvania, never too far from the Delaware River, but far above it, following or crossing streams that led to it.

Bob does not follow the Hill Slug philosophy of staying up on a ridge once you get there. No, he’d rather go up and down the same ridge over and over again, just for the sake of being vertical. That put The Fear into me for sure. I couldn’t relax. I could see myself being a whiny idiot but I couldn’t do a thing about it. I got my second wind, and started to relax, about twenty miles too late, about twenty miles past the halfway point, five miles from the end of the ride.

Nevertheless, it was a beautiful ride and I took a lot of pictures.

We crossed into Pennsylvania at Bulls' Island. These are pictures from the Pennsylvania side, in Lumberville.




We turned away from the river to go up Fleecydale Road. What a name! I looked for sheep but didn't see any. Dale wasn't there either, but she was wearing fleece on Sunday morning, so it all works out. At the top of the road is the Carversville General Store. We didn't go in this time, but I've been there before. It's huge, with lots of food and room to sit.





We went under three covered bridges on the Pennsylvania side. Here's the first one:




We rode along a lot of little and not-so-little streams, too. Here are a couple of them. I think that's my finger at the bottom of the second picture. Oops.




After forever we crossed the Delaware again. I thought we were entering Milford, but it was Frenchtown. This is what happens when you duck into the bathroom before the ride starts and miss the part where Bob says we're doing something different from what was in the book. That's Bill C. in the third picture.





We wound up at the Bridge Cafe in Frenchtown. After I inhaled a PB&J and a bucket of coffee (Small World; a smooth, chocolatey, dark Sumatran, Guatemalan, and New Guinea blend)I took this picture from where I was sitting:



The best part of the ride was when we climbed up Warsaw Road. Like the majority of roads on this ride, this was my first time up. The road follows a creek. If you ride on the left side of the quiet, wooded road and peer beyond the bushes you can see little waterfalls. If you ride on the right side of the road, you can still hear them. "I'd stop for pictures," I said, "but that would be cheating." So the only shots I got were from the top.




There were a couple of us who, at every intersection, wondered if we would turn, finally, towards the river. Near the end, as we headed south from Sergeantsville and reached a familiar intersection, I called out, "Mercy! Mercy!" But Bob went straight towards more rollers instead of down to the river. "Damn." This is about where I got my second wind and finally managed to see the route from the front. That, and I knew we were almost finished.

Anyway, if you see Bob's "Interstate Ride" listed in the Freewheel, don't miss it. I'm definitely going again, and I'm leaving my brain behind next time.