Slugsicles' Spring Thaw

7 March

I'm sitting here waiting for my beat-down. I guess I'm quicker to the blog post draw than Tom is, so I get to tell you first.

Cheryl, Mike B., Chris, and I have been riding from Lawrenceville to the Pennington ride start lately. I do my best to be on time but I usually fail. Today I was on time and they tricked me. I got to Mike's driveway several minutes before 9 a.m. but nobody was there. They'd already gone to the corner half a mile behind me, had shouted to me as I passed, and watched me completely not notice them as I rounded the corner. Mike chased me down. I can't win with these guys.

They were all overdressed. I was the only one sensible enough not to wear long pants, long sleeves, or a jacket. It was already in the fifties and I was in shorts, a short-sleeve shirt, and half-finger gloves. Mike asked me what else I could possibly take off before summer. "The sleeves," I said.

The crowd in Pennington was even bigger than last week, but only three of the Fixie Fleet were there: John W. and the Montreal Mayhem (Drew and Murdo). Howard is usually one of the Fleet, but he was on a real bike today. Good thing, he said, because he rode from home and was running late. He needed that big ring.

Tom was there. This will be important later.

It took some coaxing, but I'd convinced Marilyn to join us. I'd told her to bring a few selected njbikemap quads in case she wanted to drop off during the ride. This, too, will be important later.

By the time everyone signed in there were sixteen of us. I can only count to twelve without stopping my bike. This will also be important later.

I'd had a route in mind but ditched it while I was brushing my teeth this morning. Why not go back to Rojo's, but a different way, across the Sourland ridge? I told the crowd that we'd have a long, endurance climb on the way over.

Province Line from Cherry Valley north starts off fun. It's a series of big rollers (I'll have to get a picture someday) where you can see everything around you from the tops. Once you get across Route 518, though, the work begins.

It starts off pretty gently, facing west, and you can see the Princeton Ridge pretty clearly. Tom pulled over for some pictures.

Then the road turns north and gets steeper. A pair of wooden houses on each side of the road are good distractions. The one on the right looks like a ship. They both have numerous, large windows looking south and east over the ridge. The one on the right has solar panels.

Then the trees cover the road, and, just as with Poor Farm, the steep stuff kicks in. At the top (the first of two) the road divides. Here's the view facing north:



Phyllis gave a well-timed lecture on the necessity of preserving the Sourlands. There's a lot of development pressure, but a strong preservation movement is keeping the building at bay. Most of the mountain is still wooded or farmed.

We rode the ridge west towards Lambertville. That's when I decided to veer from my plan and take Gulick to Route 179. I got the map reversed in my head when I told people we'd take 179 straight into town. We were a lot farther away than I thought we were, but at least we were headed in the right direction.

The road is a relatively busy one, but it has a big shoulder. I've climbed out of Lambertville on 179, and I've been on parts of it for short stretches, but I don't think I've been on this much of it at once. The wide road allows for some good views, and despite its width the land around it is still mostly farms.

We were headed right into the wind. Drew and I were drafting off of each other. I don't think I've drafted a Fixie before.

There was more climbing than I'd expected, too. Nothing big, really, just long slopes out in the open.

When we finally stopped climbing we were hit in the face with a manure headwind. Now, sometimes a little natural fertilizer on a field can smell pretty good. This was not one of those times. I was looking for pigs it was so bad. It went on for quite a distance, too, the farm we were passing being a rather large one.

At last we got the downhill we deserved and flew into town at 25 mph. A few people -- Mike M., Tom (this will be important later), and Marilyn (this will also be important later) -- peeled off onto a side street near town but I didn't see them. We waited at the bottom for a bit but then figured that they must've taken another route in. Drew and Murdo headed off to Pure Energy Cycling across town; Murdo's cleat was acting funny.

The lost trio was waiting at Rojo's when we got there. The place was packed. The line was almost out the door. Cheryl let me know in no uncertain terms how much she prefers Lambertville Trading Company to Rojo's these days. We used to go there all the time until we discovered Rojo's. But that place is always crowded too, on a busy street, and has only one bathroom. Rojo's is in a warehouse with plenty of indoor seating, better coffee, and two big, clean bathrooms.

Rojo's shares space with a dance studio and Tony LaSalle's art studio. Today the place was teeming with baby ballerinas. We had to sit and stand outside. I did snag another bag of beans, though, and it fit snugly in one of my jersey pockets.

Rojo's makes their ice coffee with coffee ice cubes, which hadn't melted by the time I'd finished the coffee around them. So I dumped the stuck stack into my water bottle, where they melted right away.

We spent a long time at the rest stop. When Drew and Murdo returned they were worried that they'd hold the rest of us up. But Hill Slugs don't roll like that. We're mellow; we can wait. The Montreal Mayhem downed their espressos with one swallow nonetheless, and we were back on the road again.

Having gone a few too many miles before the rest stop, I wanted to get home the shortest way possible. So we took Rocktown, our usual hill back up the Sourland Mountain.

At the top I told everyone to go ahead on the turn onto Harbourton-Mount Airy Road, at Dinosaur Hill. "Tom, Chris, and I are going to take pictures." I wondered if I'd be able to get back on my bike again if I stopped in the middle of the hill, but it would be worth it to finally get snapshots of these rocks I've been talking about.

So, here they are. First, the dinosaur. I'm facing north.





Snoopy's head is in the driveway:





Since the rocks are past the worst of the hill I managed to get back on my bike without toppling over. I stopped again a few yards up the road to get a closer look at the third painted rock, one that's perplexed me for years. I see it as I'm going down the hill, and it's faded enough that I'm never sure if I'm looking at a pineapple or a hand grenade. Well, now that I've been up close and have seen the head, I can rest assured that the grenade is actually a turtle:



See the head off to the right? It's a head 'cause it has an eye. Now it makes sense.

I caught up to the crowd at Rock Road. Two people decided to go straight, so we were down to thirteen.

We turned onto 579, which can get busy and only has a small shoulder in some places, so I kept us in single file until things opened up south of 518.

And that's where the trouble began. I was already amped up on coffee, and drinking my now caffeineated water. By the time we hit the turn onto Pennington-Titusville Road I had put the hammer down. I looked behind me as we turned, saw a big line of people, and didn't stop to count them. It looked like a dozen riders spread over the road. Good enough.

Between the coffee and the tailwind I didn't notice that Tom, Marilyn, and Joe were missing until we were at the new shopping center, ready to cross Route 31 into Pennington. We all figured they'd turned onto Timberlane, which is pretty much in the Freewheelers canon as The Way Home.

They'd be there before us, no worries.

But they weren't. Worries.

I called Tom's cell and it switched directly to voicemail. I left a rambling "where are you" message and hung up. Next I called Marilyn. She answered right away.

"Where are you?"

"Dying by the side of the road."

"Oh my god. Are you okay?"

"Yeah. I'm just lost."

"Where are you? Is Tom with you?"

"Tom's with me. I'm on Titus Mill."

Having been just behind the crest of the hill on 579, they didn't see us turn, and I didn't see them turning onto Woosamonsa. We took the turn after that, avoiding a mess of hills that they'd now have to get over.

"We got to 31 and went down Titus Mill," Marilyn explained. "Where do we go from here?"

My usually sharp map-geek visual memory went all linty on me. I had to pull out my maps to figure out the best way to get them home. It would be at least another twenty minutes.

"I'm so sorry!" I pleaded. "I thought I had everyone!"

I hung up and told Mike, Chris, and Cheryl that I was going to wait for Tom and Marilyn to get back. Cheryl headed home with Howard. Mike and Chris waited.

Joe pulled in, having gotten himself separated from both us and the Tom-Marilyn diversion. I apologized profusely to him, too. "You're a ride leader, though," I said, perplexed, then remembered. "But you lead in Pennsylvania." Duh. Somewhere in my lint-brain I knew that.

So we waited, with Drew, Murdo, and John W.

"Y'know, Tom wrote a book of rides, and Marilyn has maps," I said. "How could they have gotten lost?"

I wondered aloud, "Is it worse to drop your friends or to drop strangers?" We pondered that for a bit.

"Friends," I decided. "They'll always forgive you later. Strangers stay mad."

Right about then Tom and Marilyn pulled in.

"I'm SO SORRY!"

They were both smiling. Uh-oh (but uh-oh in a good way). "I'm never gonna hear the end of this, am I?"

Chris wanted to know why Tom got fugawied. "I wanted to turn on Burd," he explained. "It's part of my cross-state route. But Marilyn said Woosamonsa goes to 31, so we didn't turn."

I asked Marilyn, "Didn't you bring the maps?"

"Yeah, I have them." She smiled. She was about to take them out when I called.

Tom said, about my ride descriptions in the Freewheel, "Laura has 'nobody gets dropped.'" He held up his hands like parentheses. "(Yeah, right.)"

I said, "(Not on purpose)."

"I know what's gonna happen," I said. "Some day this summer I'll be hurtin,' and you're gonna just keep on going and say, 'To hell with her,'" He just laughed. Uh-oh.

Then I said, "You're going to write about this in your blog, aren't you?"

"Yep."

So here I am, waiting for the beat-down. No sign of it yet, but I know it's coming. Check for it here. It'll turn up soon enough.

*****

UPDATE:

Dale just gave the dinosaur some earrings. Emeralds, I believe: