The Cokesbury Ridge

25 July

I've planned this as an easy ride: a slow ascent we'd hardly notice for the first 20 miles, a pile of hills, and then down the way we came up. We're even starting just north of the Sourlands so we don't have to climb that mountain.

There's a lot of water in the air when we start out. We finally get a decent view from Higginsville Road.

It's soybean and hay bale season.

Just north of Route 22 on Mill Road is the Readington dairy. The air always smells funny, somewhere between cow and milk that's gone bad. Around the bend in the trees is a pasture of cattle.

We're all taking in the peaceful pastoral until we pass the farm's sign. Beef. So much for that.

There's one warm-up hill on Halls Mills and then we cross Route 78.

Smolenyak hauled us up Deer Hill a few years ago. I remember it being tough then, but I was tired and I weighed more than I do now. But no, the hill is still a pain. It dumps us out near the top of the Cokesbury ridge, a mile or so from where we can see Round Valley Reservoir.

People catch their breaths at the top. Mike is circling, only he's going too slowly, he can't clip out, and he teeters over, busting his saddle on the way down. The front of the seat has come off the rails.

Fear not: "I have duct tape." I've been carrying about a foot of it around for years, just in case. I strap the seat to the rail as best I can. We only have a little more climbing to do before the first rest stop anyway.

The Mountainville General Store had been closed for years; now it's got new owners. Eddie comes out and reports that it's a sit-down place with not much to offer. "We could go on to Califon," I suggest, but the Mikes have the saddle off the post and are trying everything they can to get the two pieces back together.

I get in on the action. It's soon clear to us that only a machine could do what's needed. I take the saddle and go inside. "Do you guys happen to have any tape?" The woman behind the counter has a roll of masking tape.

Now we're in business. Here's where having gone to a piss-poor state school for my graduate degree comes in handy. I turn the seat into a tape and vinyl version of turducken.

By this time we've decided we might as well eat here. The cafe has some muffins and bready things, and a few fruit-ish drinks. The coffee is OK and they let us use the bathroom. We sit outside under the trees by the edge of the driveway. Across the street a machine is apparently moving gravel in a back yard. This is the heart of Mounainville: a cafe and half a dozen houses halfway up Cokesbury Mountain.

Philhower Road gets us to the top in a fashion that's much less gentle than Guinea Hollow, the next road to the east.

I hear a pop and Mike curses. The prongs of the rails have come out of the rear of the saddle. When we stop at the top to wait for stragglers I look under the saddle, straighten out, and slam my palm into the back of the seat. It slides into the rails. "There," I tell him. "Fixed."

It holds all the way down the mountain, up the next ridges as we go east on Fairmount, following it up and down for miles and miles. I double us back on Homestead and we cross to Hill and Dale. We've come back down the mountain a bit; maybe we're two thirds of the way up it now. I drop us down on Rockaway and double us back again onto Potterstown Road.

I know there's a short, steep hill coming, but it should be the last. In my rearview mirror I see Hilda turn around. What is she doing? I have a hunch. The rest of us haul ourselves up and over.

Wow. Even if nobody were behind me I'd stop here. I'm thinking, "This is what Nantucket would look like if it had hills,'' and then, "This looks nothing like Nantucket."

I'm standing next to an orchard.

I'm going to take a picture of grass. Maybe it'll make a good desktop background.

Hilda pops up behind me.

"I saw you turn around. Were you getting up a head of steam?"

"Yep!"

We coast into Oldwick, where I get a picture of Mike's saddle.

From here it really is almost all downhill. Now it's getting hot; we always bake on the straight, open roads south of Route 22 to Pleasant Run. All the trees have been cut down so there's no shade to hide in.

As usual I get turned around on Locust near Lazy Brook and we wind up back on Pleasant Run again. No matter. I can get us home from here. Near Neshanic I check the map again just to be sure. Ever since the Neshanic Station general store closed years ago I hardly ever come through here.

We're back in the parking lot at exactly 60 miles, just as I'd advertised. Pure luck, that.

*****

A propos to a conversation in Oldwick, although I'm fond of "slattern," "tart," and "bimbo," the reigning favorite is still "slut."

Should we finally tire of that one, here's a selection of popular terms from the eighteenth century, courtesy of Jack:

baggage
blowze
callet
doxy
drab
fren
giglet
hussy (we need to use this one more often)
jade
jilt
laced moton
oysterwench
punk
quean
scold
termagant
tit
trollop (this one too)
trull
virago