Thursday, December 25, 2008

Christmas Ride

25 December

Mike B. and Cheryl pulled this one together, with me, Mike M., and Dan in tow. Cheryl had to get two chickens in the oven by 12:30, so we kept it short, meandering along roads I don't get to much because, ironically, they're too close to home.

I was dressed for the occasion, having rubber-banded a set of antlers with bells and lights to my helmet. I even wrapped a strand of mini plastic lights to Gonzo's top tube. My fellow Slugs expect weirdness from me. I can't disappoint.

At this time of year, if you go up Crusher Road, you can look down into the Hopewell Valley, into the center of Hopewell Boro where the church is.



Farther along Crusher Road you can see a blue bottle sculpture at the edge of a yard. If you look into the back yard there's another one, a blue bottle tree. These structures are said to ward away evil spirits.

Hey! I was just Googling "blue bottle evil sprits" and I wound up on our very own Glenn's Flickr page! Small world.



They don't seem to ward away bad photography:



Mike M. showed Mike B. the part of Province Line Road that's closed to cars. The bridge over the Stony Brook was iced over, so we took our time walking across it. All the rain we've had turned the quiet stream into a torrent:



Downstream was calmer:



It's difficult to imagine that this bridge was once strong enough to hold anything more than pedestrians.



The wooden surface is patched with plywood in places. Next to my left foot, as I took this picture, was a hole that let me see straight down into the water.



Province Line Road once delineated the boundary between East and West New Jersey (there's a little bit about it here and here). If you take a ruler and put it on a map of the state, lining it up with Province Line Road in Princeton, you'll be able to line the ruler up with Quakerbridge Road to the south and to the southern portion of Province Line Road near Allentown even farther south.

Here's a picture that Mike B took of me, my antlers, and the little lights on my top tube:



Santa didn't bring me a digital camera today, so it looks like we're stuck with my crappy cell phone pictures for a little while longer.

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