Hairy

13 December 2009

There's so much to put on in the winter. On top of the usual garb there are the toe warmers in the winter shoes, the booties on top, glove liners, toe warmers on the palms of the liners, winter gloves on top of that, and the balaclava pulled carefully over my head so as not to pull the mirror off my sunglasses.

I get all this on as the clock turns to 8 a.m. and Mike is doing his third loop around the block. He stops in front of my house as I crunch across the lawn.

"Is it raining yet?"

"Nope. We have two hours." He plots a course to the river, a route he says we can take that will get us back here before 10 a.m., before the rain starts.

The thermometer on his cycle computer reads 27 degrees, but we feel warm. Yesterday was sunny and windy; today is cloudy, calmer, and a little humid.

My new wheels feel so smooth as we pedal out of my neighborhood. Even with tired legs pedaling is easier now that I have a hub and gears that aren't full of bad bearings and road crud. I could have switched to Gonzo today, since there's a chance of rain, but it was too tempting to take Kermit out again instead.

The ice we saw on the way to Pennington is still on the side of the road today. There's no traffic and we have plenty of room to get around it.

Most of us turn off of Pennington-Titusville Road at Timberlane in order to get further north on the way to Lambertville or Sergeantsville. Today we aren't making the turn. I don't see this part of the road much, which is a shame. Minutes away from Route 31 and Pennington, this stretch is completely rural. I'll have to get back here more.

"Catch Hell Blues" by the White Stripes is going through my head.

With the leaves down we can see across Bear Tavern Road to the hill on Pleasant Valley. It's a long, shallow climb we've been doing for the past couple of miles, and I just assume we're going up Pleasant Valley too. But Mike signals a left instead. That makes sense; if we'd stayed straight and headed for the river we'd have had to ride on Route 29, which is just not done south of Lambertville.

I haven't been on this stretch of Bear Tavern much lately, so when I see the Highland Cow in the pasture on my right I call out, "Picture!"

"What is that?" Mike asks.

"An 'airy coo!"

"What?"

"An 'airy coo! A hairy cow. A Highland cow."

If this were summer I'd have had the camera out of the front pouch and open in seconds, but now I have to fumble around in my jacket pocket (the camera's there to keep the battery warm), get the cover up, which is no easy feat with two layers of gloves on, and turn the thing on. By now the cow has decided that he's seen enough. He turns and leaps over a small stream, his long furry tail flapping behind him. By the time I have the camera ready, in telephoto mode somehow (I have no idea how I did it), the cow is looking at us, walking away, and stopping to look again.


I lean Kermit against a metal table and wander up the driveway for some more pictures. I can't tell how in focus the shots are because my glasses are too dark and they're fogging up a little.




I hear something hitting my jacket as I get back on my bike. After a few more I tell Mike I think it's raining. "We should head back."

He thinks it'll stop, so we turn right onto Church Street and head towards the river. All this time his thermometer has been reading 27 degrees, but we know it's warmer than that.

Titusville is maybe a mile of little houses across a narrow road from the steep bank of the Delaware River. Along the water's edge are decks, summer houses, and patios overlooking the water. Every time I ride through here I say the same thing: "It would be great to live here. Until the river floods." The water would have a long way to go -- hundreds of feet probably -- before it even reached the road, let alone crossed it. But the way the Delaware has been flooding recently (too much development up north gives spring meltwater nowhere to go but into the river), I wouldn't want to be paying for flood insurance down here.

The rain is picking up a little as we turn onto Washington Crossing-Pennington Road. We climb the hill in silence. I hear birds calling from trees along fields on either side. My new wheels don't make any noise either.

I tell Mike I'm worried about black ice. If the road surface is colder than the air then the rain will freeze when it hits the ground. A lot of the road is still dry so that's where I'm riding.

I tell Mike the story of the winter of '93, when I was in grad school. I got up one morning to go to the lab. It was raining out, and dark, but I didn't turn on the radio because Jack was still asleep and we had a one-bedroom apartment.

When I stepped outside I landed on my ass. The ground was covered in a thin sheet of ice. So, naturally, I scraped it off the windshield, got into the car, turned on the radio to the local rock station, and proceeded out of the apartment complex. It was on that drive to campus that I learned how to break on ice (no anti-lock on this '89 Corolla), how to turn without skidding (break gently, then let off the breaks into the turn), and how to stop a very slow skid by steering into a curb.

"I ice-skated my way across campus," I tell Mike, "and there was nobody there when I got to the lab. I called Jack. He said, 'Did you even listen to the radio? There's an ice storm! They're telling people to stay home!' So I drove back home."

So now I'm keeping a close watch on the road. As long as it's dry, or so wet that we're throwing rooster tails, we'll be okay. It's the in-between stuff I'm worried about. Even though the rain is picking up it's still just a drizzle. Mike leads us through the Pennington circle. This is only the second time I've done this; there's no traffic at all. I'd never attempt this any other time. We only have to go halfway. It's no worse than crossing the circle on Route 130 near Cranbury, which we do a lot.

By the time we turn off of Blackwell Road it's really raining. The splashing water from my rear wheel is soaking my backside. "My butt is cold!" I tell Mike. We're getting near Route 206. A police car passes us, siren blaring. Mike says he wants to follow me home to make sure I'm safe. "You're better off just going home," I tell him. But he insists.

I have two choices. My usual route from here is to take 206, which is shorter, but there's more traffic and there's the highway overpass, with an entrance and an exit, that I'll have to deal with. The other route is to go straight to Princeton Pike and turn up there, which would be a lot longer. I'm not sure which way I should go.

I'm wet. I'm taking the short route. Another police car passes us as we turn towards the overpass.

Something is going on up there. A police car's lights are flashing and a few cars are stopped at the top. "Be careful," I tell Mike, who is riding a little ahead of me. "Cars are going to be looking at the cops, not at us." I tell him this again as we get closer.

We start to climb the overpass. "It looks like they've got the ramp closed," I call out.

And then I'm on the ground, sliding with Kermit. In less than an instant Mike is doing the same thing.

Black ice at the top of the overpass.

I'm up as quickly as I went down. Mike is struggling to right himself. On the median strip a policeman turns and asks me, "Does he need an ambulance."

"No, thanks. We're fine." I get my cleat covers on. Mike finally manages to stand. He staggers to the curb, puts his bike on the sidewalk, and sits down. I lie Kermit on the sidewalk and sit down too. Mike stretches his left leg.

"You allright? Where'd you land?"

"My favorite hip," he says. "And my shoulder."

The policeman asks again if we need help, but we don't. Mike just needs time to collect himself. As for me, I'm used to falling off of Grover, and years of ice skating as a kid have made this spill mundane. My right thigh took the hit. It's gonna be bruised.

A red car passes us, sees the minivan slowed in the road ahead, hits the breaks, and goes into a slow-motion skid towards the on-ramp on the down-slope of the overpass. I motion to Mike to look. The car careens towards the curb, deflects, spins a little, and rights itself within feet of the van, which is now behind the car.

A gray car drives past, its left front bumper hanging off. The driver gawks at us.

Mike says, "We need to get out of here. But not that way. We need to go back down the way we came."

I tell him to hold onto the chain-link fence as we go back down the overpass. A paramedic car drives by us. "You need help?" the driver asks. "No, thanks."

"Let's walk in the grass," I suggest. Halfway down the ice is gone.

By now there's a police car stationed at the off-ramp and a fire truck completely blocking access to this stretch of road. We were two minutes too early, five minutes too late, and exactly in time for the pavement to freeze just enough that we couldn't see what we'd hit.

We cross the wet -- only wet -- road and check our wheels, brakes, and selves. I'm a little shaky getting back on the bike. Mike is behind me, still rattled. "I want you go go to my house," he insists. "I'll drive you home."

Mike sheds his outer layer while I search for paper towels. "Call Jack," he says. "Let him know you're okay." So I do, while Mike disappears to change out of his wet clothes.

Our bikes are dripping black grit onto his floor. "That's what mops are for," he says and disappears again. As he re-emerges with two towels and begins wiping down my bike he apologizes. "This is my fault," he says. I move on to his, which is grittier than mine.

"No, it's not." We were both stupid. "Look, if I hadn't gone riding I'd have gone to the gym. I'd be driving home right now and I'd have hit the ice anyway. We've just learned a lesson."

There's ice on my chainstay. I un-pin Kermit from the saddlebag. He'll need to go into the washing machine.

Still rattled, Mike fetches his car and drives me home. "Come in for a while, calm down. I can make some hot chocolate."

There's a thin film of ice forming on my front steps. "Oh, shit," he says. He's carrying Kermit on his shoulder.

Jack is in his bathrobe, reading. Mike takes his shoes off and melts into the floor at the edge of the sofa. For a minute he doesn't speak. Then it all comes out. "There are too many what ifs," he says. What if I hadn't stopped for cow pictures? What if we'd turned towards home as soon as the first drops fell? What if there'd been black ice on Washington Crossing Road?

As he calms down I start to shiver. I have to get out of these wet clothes. "I can make some hot chocolate."

"No, thanks," Mike says, and puts his shoes on.

The extent of our stupidity and near-miss doesn't hit me until I'm in the shower. Both of my outer thighs are red from the cold, but I can't see a bruise where I hit the ice.

Mike calls later. "There's a hematoma the size of a softball on my leg," he says. He wants to make sure I'm okay.

"I'm about to blog about it. I'm uploading the pictures."

Four paragraphs ago Cheryl called. She started with, "Oh my god."

I laughed. "Did you just talk to Mike?"

"Yep."

"I'm just finishing the blog."

She's just finishing some errands on her way home from teaching at the gym in Princeton. Up north where her boyfriend lives the roads are closed. I tell her to be careful. We try to plot a course for her to avoid the overpasses. "Call me when you get home so I know you're safe," I tell her.

It's 1:20. It's time for lunch.