Bloomsbury Again

28 June

The daylilies are everywhere.

Hilda has a box of doughnut holes she shares with the small crowd in the Mine Brook Park lot. I'm not so sure eating doughnuts before a slightly hilly ride is a good idea, but Mike B. has no problem popping them into his mouth. Chris shoves the box into his handlebar bag and disappears over the bridge by the stream. He comes back with a ski cap dampened by creek water and lays it over the doughnuts to keep them cool.

We're going to Bloomsbury and Upper Black Eddy again. I'm stealing Larry's route but taking some different turns on the way over.

These guys must've been bored, drunk, stoned, or all of the above when they made the maps up here. The road names have to be an inside joke. Bonetown? Whiskey? Boar's Head? Hinkley is a dirt road so we won't be able to get to those today.

"Anyone who finds a goose or an island gets a doughnut!" We find neither. The entire road cuts through woods.



On Rake Road we pass a little bird with a broken wing. Hilda turns around; Chris and I follow. We try to guide it to the side but in the end I have to pick it up and move it. "Let nature take its course," Hilda says. Better a vulture or a snake than an SUV.

Where there is sun there are daylilies.



Where Joe Ent meets Quakertown Road we can see the Cokesbury Ridge.



I think the Fucking Hill is over to our right somewhere. I suggest wandering that way for a bit to find it, but the road looks daunting from here and we just don't feel like it today.



Good thing we didn't go that way; going left instead we pass the Fucking Hill about a quarter mile down the road. I take a detour to the top of it just so I can tell the story again. Cheryl agrees it doesn't look as bad today as it did last year.

The intersection of Senator Stout and Hog Hollow. Does it get any better than that? I wonder if that house is for sale.



More daylilies.

A wall of green in front of us is getting closer. On the other side is Bloomsbury. Halfway up is the intersection of Sweet Hollow and Myler. This is Myler:



This is Sweet Hollow. There aren't many roads out there with a stream on both sides at once.



The top of Myler is the top of the Cumulus Ridge and the home to a herd of alpacas.
It must be a daycare center; these can't be all her own kids. They follow her wherever she goes, bleating all the way.



And daylilies.

Flying down Staats Road I catch a glimpse of the ridge across the Muscontectong. But I'm going too fast to stop for a picture. Next time.

We're pretty hungry when we get to Bloomsbury. I have to take a picture of the general store in order to remember the name.



On the other side of the Musconetcong we can see the Cumulus Ridge. I look to my right to figure out where that spectacular view from the ridge was. From here I don't see much at all. The ridge is a green wall.

We follow the Musconetcong again to the Delaware River. Somewhere along here Larry went off the cue sheet. I'm trying to remember what he did. I recall going under a bridge and crossing tracks. My cue sheet says, "L on River," but I see a bridge next to a set of tracks. We go straight. It seems familiar.

But if that's the Musconetcong on our left then it's pretty big. Too big. Chris and I are wondering out loud. When we come to an intersection I check my map. That's the Delaware River and we're heading north. "Turn around!"

Hilda remembers turning onto River Road at a small steel bridge. She's right; things look like they should again. The Delaware is on our right and we're following it downstream.

We follow a county road slightly uphill. By chance I look to my right at a narrow road. There's the underpass I'd been looking for. The potholes give it away.

"Turn around!" We follow it back to the river and we're where we're supposed to be.

This is a view of the Milford bridge from a dead end just north of town:



We cross the bridge, heading for the Homestead General Store. I have big pockets ready for two packs of coffee beans.

On the back patio is a tortoiseshell kitten. She rubs against chair legs, says "Meech," but won't let me touch her.




Hilda says it's because she hasn't been handled by people.



I ask inside. The owner says the kitten was brought here and they've been feeding her. "She rubs against my legs," the owner says, "but that's it. We named her Callie because she's a calico." Except she's not; she's a tortie.

After we walk over the Frenchtown bridge we have to climb back up the ridge towards Flemington. We're in the full sun. It's getting a little hot and we're getting a little spread out.

More daylilies.

I start thinking about the blog. These days when I ride I'm riding two rides at once. One is the ride itself and the other is the story that unfolds as the ride goes on. I don't tell everything; I can't. Some of it is too personal, stories people are living that they aren't ready to share yet, maybe will soon, maybe never will.

The daylilies are everywhere though, bright orange, impossible to ignore, like one of those unspeakable stories that is going to burst through the surface any day now.

Up here the roads have already been oiled and chipped, something that doesn't usually happen until August. It must be the stimulus money grinding underneath our tires. We stick to the back roads that parallel Route 12, turning south on the last possible road, Featherbed. We zoom down Hardscrabble and coast into the parking lot, coming in at exactly a metric century.

Chris chucks the rest of the doughnuts.