The Eighteenth Century

30 May

Before we start: Buy Tom Hammell's book, Road Biking New Jersey: A Guide to the State's Best Bike Rides.

*****

We haven't even left Brendan Byrne State Forest (Gah! I still can't get used to that. It's Lebanon, damn it!) yet and we're already talking about adding miles to make this ride a century. It would be pretty easy to do. Mary rode over here from New Egypt, something over twenty miles. We could ride back part of the way with her. If we do it then this will be my eighteenth century.

"Let's see how we feel on the way back," I tell Mike. It's Tom's ride anyway.

He's taking us south on Route 72. Last time we were here storm clouds hung low and cars coming towards us had their lights on. We never did get rain, but some of my riders were crabby about going down this high-speed two-lane highway.

The shoulder is plenty big. A tailwind pushes us as we move southeast to the West Penn Pygmy Plains. I have to stop for some pictures.

This is what the forest looks like facing north. These are full-grown trees.



Here's a mature forest with a man of questionable maturity insisting on being in the picture for scale.



Genetics and frequent fire keep these trees short. They sprout branches from the trunk at ground level, and half of the pitch pine cones only open when the heat of a forest fire melts the cone's resin coating. Oaks and pines in the rest of the Pine Barrens don't master this trick as often or as well.



This gas-guzzler looks even bigger against the small trees:



This sand road is one lane wide:



For a pack of leisurely B riders, we're flying. The longer we get a tailwind the more likely it is that I'll have enough energy for a century, provided we don't get slammed by the headwind on the way home.

We take Route 72 as far as Route 539, where we turn south. This is how I used to get to Tuckerton in grad school. A few of my friends did their research at the old Coast Guard station. I used to go on weekends to help them out just so I could be there. It was much more glamorous and scenic than my study site, where I would perch ankle-deep in sulfurous mud while being eyed by mosquitoes baffled by my head-to-toe repellent.

The Tuckerton field station was on stilts above a salt marsh, across the Great Egg Harbor from Atlantic City. I could never convince Jack to come with me, but he did put up well with my heading out there all the time. I stopped going when my friends left the university and I got busier with my own project.

Anyway, we're on our way to Tuckerton. I wonder how much of it will look familiar. We only used to stop there to go to the food store. I don't think I ever saw much of it by daylight.

Up ahead, though, is another pygmy pine forest. I remember the time Chris visited me from Boston. She drove out to the field station to meet me. About Warren Grove she asked, "Why is the road so high?"



It's not. The trees are so low. Tom is checking his new GPS. Herb has gone ahead. I guess he doesn't like to stop for pictures the way Tom and I do. Whenever I stop Mike stops with me, even when I tell everyone to go ahead. So far it hasn't paid off for him too well; as much as he tries he's only been in a few of my shots.



It looks like there was a fire here recently. Look at all those trunk branches. On a class field trip here I once counted a hundred branches coming out of the base of an oak.

So, this is a mature forest:



Here's a tree that somehow escaped the burn and the stunting genes:



The trees get taller again, and soon after we're back in civilization. We pass "Kangaroo Kourt Nursery School." That's so wrong on so many levels I don't know where to begin. On the other hand, might as well give the little tykes a taste of reality early.

We must've passed the road to the field station because nothing here looks familiar. Small houses crowd busy streets. Some people get caught at a red light so I have time to take this picture:



"Rugged?" Now I have Monty Python's lumberjack skit (5:44 minutes in) going through my head.

Under the sign a woman, obviously the owner, eyes me suspiciously, frowning. Mike calls to her, gesturing at me, "Insurance inspector."

I shake my head and give the "pay no attention to him" signal with my hands. She cracks a smile. I feel better.

As we pass the front of the store we see it's full of antiques. The guys marvel at a stack of cracker tins.

We ride slowly until we run out of road at South Green Street Park. I become a shutterbug.





My memories of Tuckerton are good ones that have gone bad over time. Looking out on the bay I start to remember some of the good stuff, like the sunsets and the sound of the black skimmers on the water at night.





The field station looked nothing like this. It was on a salt marsh, not open water.



I ask Tom, "How far are we from the Coast Guard station?"

He gestures to his right. "The next finger over. Six miles."

"I've been there," Herb says.

"Can we go?" Am I nuts?

"No. It's too far."

We turn back towards the road. The wind smacks us in our faces. I look down. It seems my cycle computer stopped keeping time right around when my own time travel started. I stop to fix the transmitter. I've managed to lose 2.5 miles, about the distance from the rugged man store to the park and back. Just like grad school: it might as well never have happened.

Now that we're fighting the wind I try to get a paceline going. I know it will make it easier for all of us if we stick to it. Mike and I also know just how fast we need to go to match what we've been calling our "century speed," the average we kept getting, without trying, on five of our six centuries together last year.

At a big river -- Tom says it's either the Bass or the Mullica, but it might be the Wading River -- we pass under an ugly drawbridge. The light isn't good, but that funky arch is a flat cement wall. You'd think that whoever owns this bridge would at least pretty it up for the tourists.



The bridge is ugly but the view isn't. Finally, salt marsh:



Nice toy:



Just like every other river picture I take: cement, railing, water, trees, sky, yawn.



Phragmites!



We're chugging along pretty well through the Pinelands. We pass a sign for the village of Batsto. A memory flickers by, of my aborted idea for my masters thesis project: studying an endangered plant that I looked for in a lot of places and finally found in Batsto Lake.

Tom calls out that we missed a turn. We stop and he looks at his map. He turns us around to the Batsto sign.

A little while later Tom says we're off course. We're not quite lost, he says, but we're not where he wants us to be. It's a good ten miles to the rest stop, so I suggest we just sit down where we are and eat whatever we have. We cross the street to the front yard of a small church. Next door music blares as a man works on his truck.

Ten miles later we're in Sweetwater:



Everyone orders big sandwiches except me. I still have a Jack-bread PB-Nuttella and J, my century staple.

Is the front of this store being held up by milk crates?



We take our time in Sweetwater. I call home.

Then it's back into the headwind with five minute paceline pulls. We come upon another ugly drawbridge, open. It's closing by the time we get up close.



Ugly bridge, good-looking river:



Now we're back into the Pinelands. We pass a driveway with the words "Kowboy Korner" written on a post.

We make a left onto a road that Tom says we'll be on for twenty miles, straight into the wind and straight into Chatsworth. Mike remembers this road from his solo rides from New Providence to Cape May.

I don't have to look at my computer to know I've hit seventy miles. It happens when it's my turn to pull, the trees giving way to open cranberry bogs and farms on either side of us. I'm looking at the clock. Five minutes. Four minutes. I have to stop. I've hit the seventy-mile wall. I have to distract myself. I try to pedal to the rhythm of the music in my head. Three minutes. Only two more minutes. I watch my speed drop. One minute. I know the rule about pulling: stop before you get tired. But I'm too anal, too proud, to reneg on my five minutes.

Finally I can drift to the back of the line. I coast to recover, sit up, stretch. And just like that I'm past the seventy-mile wall.

When we reach Chatsworth we pass a stand selling "ice kones."

OK, that's enough. Too many people down here are trying to be kute. It's not kute. It's stupid.

We finish the ride with eighty-five miles and hang out in the shade at the entrance to the ranger's station. After a little snack and a lot of thanks to Tom, he and Herb drive off. Mike and I will follow Mary for about eight miles then turn around.

Our course takes us along roads I used to drive all the time when I was at the Pinelands field station. We pass the field station too, just to make sure I have some more flashbacks from the Lost Years. This time my computer stays on.

By the time Mike and I finish our trip my legs are pretty well shot. It might only have been a hundred miles but it sure was a long eighteenth century.