Catching Up

4 December

Yeah, I know, I haven't posted any adventures recently. I've been busy making jewelry instead. I'm within a handful of sales of breaking even this year, which will make both me and the I.R.S. happy. Take a look at the stuff I have for sale. At the very least you'll get a chuckle as you think to yourself, "She charges how much for this crap?" I custom-design crap, too, if you're interested.

But that's not why you came here today. On with the biking thing:

Our road rides are getting shorter and colder, but we're still out there. I haven't been stopping for pictures because, with full-finger gloves, I'd probably drop my cell phone into the middle of the road and watch it get run over.

We followed Mike M. on the road the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Common sense is the first thing to freeze up. We should have been on our mountain bikes in the woods, but no, there we were on Canal Road from Kingston to Amwell Road, spending half the time winding out our gears just to get feeling back in our fingertips. We left the canal to climb up Coppermine and Old Georgetown both. I'd never been up the latter or down the former. Did you know you can see the Sourlands through the trees on the way down Coppermine? Pretty cool!

At the end of the ride Mike B. was obsessing for more, and like especially daft sheep, Theresa and I followed him. We got as far as Main Street in Kingston, where we stopped at the bakery to use the bathroom. It was there that my senses, and a full-body chill, caught up with me. "This is stupid," I said, and we turned around. Theresa and I drove home; Mike pedaled all the way back.

I woke up the next morning with a sore throat, but Clayton Park was calling.

It was just me and Chris on our mountain bikes at Clayton. It was a lot of fun. All that Energy Zone training in Spinning class at RWJ-Hamilton is paying off. I didn't fall, and I made it up more hills than I did last year. But on the others I was downshifting too much and kept running out of oomph too early.

I hopped over a handful of logs, too, mostly because I didn't see them with enough time to panic. I just had to go over them instead. Chris said he'll need to remove the rubber chicken from the back of my mountain bike this year. I told him that Clayton isn't the place to test one's nerves, just one's aerobic capacity.

The shifting had been sloppy, so I took Grover to Ross' shop for a tune-up. Oscar found a bent tooth in the middle front chain ring. I have no idea when that happened. Somewhere out there a log is laughing. Oscar said, "We hammered it back into place."

By the time I picked Grover up on Monday I'd had a low-grade fever going for a day.

By Thanksgiving I sounded somewhere between a heavy smoker and a pubescent boy. That made Thanksgiving night at my cousin's house a little more entertaining for everyone.

Saturday was warm enough to ride on the road, and my voice was mostly back. Mike M. found himself scheduled for a ride on the same day at the same time. I worked out a route that had us meeting in the middle on the way to Sergeantsville. Like the space station and the space shuttle hooking up. All was going to plan until Mike M's seat post bolt exploded at the top of Lindbergh, leaving him to send a lone rider along the ridge to meet us. Mike somehow managed to get back to Rocky Hill without a saddle.

So that's it for now. My ride for Saturday looks like it's going to be canceled due to sub-freezing temperatures at start time. I'll either be falling off my bike at Mercer County Park or following Mike and Theresa on the road later in the morning. The former promises to be more of a story. Will I finally earn the right to remove my rubber chicken, or will I have to add another one?