Interlude: Richmond, Virginia

25-29 April

Jack was presenting at a conference in Virginia, and because Sean and Dale would be there, I tagged along. Long story short, if you never get to Richmond you won't have missed much.

We took Amtrak. Somewhere south of DC the engine conked out (I'm used to it; SEPTA's express train engines are the same kind). It never takes long to "re-cycle" the engine (whatever that means), but I had enough time to take some pictures of a muddy body of water outside our window. Maybe it's the Chesapeake River.





The conference hotel and the one across the street were so overwhelmed by the number of people that they couldn't manage to feed us all. Several times we walked out in search of food to find, once, a solitary restaurant (good Thai), and (once) a deli so small and packed we turned around. We did land at a very good Ethiopian restaurant our second night there, but it was at least a mile away from the hotel. One day I had two packs of trail mix for lunch. Twice Jack skipped lunch entirely after finding nothing edible in the hour or so we had to hunt.

This is because downtown Richmond is empty. Clean, renovated, and empty. So empty that on Friday took a taxi three miles west to Cary Street, Carytown, which is maybe a mile long, probably less. There the city is alive with funky shops of artisans' work, guitars, wine, and chandelier parts.

Yep, chandelier parts. The front window was sparkly so I had to go in. This was after Dale and I spent half an hour in an artisan's shop looking at hanging gourds painted like sea creatures (Dale has a whale!) and dichroic beads the owner made. We ended up surfing my Etsy site so I could show her my favorite bead artists.

Anyway, the chandeliers. The front half dangled and sparkled. We were okay with that, but it seemed a peculiar business to be specializing in. Then I looked farther back and saw the necklaces hanging one after another, panel after panel: watch parts -- faces only, or cases only -- dangling from overwrought chains; rhinestone brooches, half a dozen to a necklace; yard sales, estate sales, chained together and pinned to panels.








The woman at the register saw us looking and was more than happy to tell us she'd made them all. She and her mother owned the store.

We wandered to the back.

"This place belongs in New Orleans," I said. "This place is under water." Even as I said it I wasn't sure what I meant. There was an unnerving too-muchness in this place.

We talked with the owner some more about selling jewelry online, about taking pictures. Then I saw the bowl of tiny chandelier crystals under the counter, $2 each. I bought enough for a couple of bracelets, my own little bag of creepy.

Outside again, Dale said, "Too many stories."

"Huh?"

"Too many stories all smashed together. Too many grandmas' watch parts on one necklace. The stories are all split up and different parts smashed all together. That's what's wrong in there."

A cat napping next to a stuffed leopard distracted us.



We found a coffee roaster. Jack went down the street to a wine store while Dale, Sean, and I loaded up on bags of the Evil Bean. Dale bought me a travel mug (when, after we'd left and I'd said I was thinking of getting it, she ran back ahead of me and bought it).

Across from the wine store we sat on concrete steps waiting for Jack. I went in to fetch him and found what was keeping him: Occhio.




We decided to walk the three miles back to the hotel. There was little to see on the way, save for an obvious head shop and a row house converted into a natural soap factory. Dale and I got stuck in there as the owner, a former air force soldier and button-down corporate drone, let his inner hippie bust out to make soap. Between the coffee and this, my luggage was going to smell pretty good.

Here are some pictures of downtown Richmond on a Saturday afternoon, the day after our time in Carytown. All the storefronts are empty, clean, renovated, waiting for something to happen.








(And yeah, for those Hill Slugs reading this, that sign does say Cokesbury. It was a book store. It's empty now.)

Later, Sean, Dale, and I walked along the James River and the canal alongside it. Here's the canal:





We're standing on the lock.



No Segways? There aren't even any people here.



The James River is loud.





Dale and Sean on the memorial bridge built to commemorate the bridge destroyed during the Civil War:



The edge of the old bridge: More moose!



If you look closely you'll see a suspension walkway under the bridge. We didn't have time to get over there. We had to get back to a session about defining when the eighteenth century happened. Jack and Nora were on the panel and Sharon was chairing.



Canada geese in the James River:



I went to only one other session because Rebecca was presenting. She and Dale and I are all on career tracks that don't fit the accepted ideas of what one is "supposed to do" with a PhD, or an MS for that matter. We have a lot to say to each other; we only wish more people would listen.



Our train home was on Sunday morning. This is the Richmond Main Street train station.



And yes, those are real sofas, in a restored historic building. "This ain't no commuter station," I told Jack and Mary.









Here's what Richmond looks like from the train station's single track platform.





Nearly everyone I've talked to since I got back says, when I mention Richmond, "I've never been there. I've driven through it on I-95." I tell them they're not missing much, but now that I look back at the pictures, maybe that's not really true.

If you find yourself on I-95 passing through Richmond, slow down and take a look. Just bring your own food.

Interlude: What Dad Says

29 March

"The railroad cars look like ballast gondolas. Ballast is the rocks used for stabilising the ties and railbed. I saw these when they were redoing the 'main line'.

Your writing is OK but your photography is very much better.

Your cartooning sucks."

Muffin Zen

21 March

My life has been very stressful again recently. I needed a good, long ride to pull my head out of my ass. I needed to get out and find peace on the road.

I took Cheryl and Mike B., my best riding buddies, with me. Mike drove us to the Orchard Road elementary school in Skillman. I bitched about my life the entire way. As good friends do, they listened, sympathized, and tried to talk some sense into me.

The goal today was to get to the Oldwick General Store to, at long last, snarf some homemade muffins. I wore my big-pocket jacket to haul some home.

We had a cold start. Mike made sure we knew the temperature by announcing, "It's thirty-two degrees!" every few minutes. He has a thermometer on his cycle computer.

I always head for the Sourlands via Camp Meeting Road. Today there were train cars stopped on both sides of the railroad bridge.



I don't know what these are, but there were a lot of 'em.



Going up Hollow Road warmed us up. Going down Long Hill froze us again. Especially me: I stopped a few times for pictures.

This is at the top of Long Hill, facing north.



Halfway down the hill is where the view gets good. In the distance is the ridge where Round Valley Reservoir sits.



Past Wertsville Road are two little hills. From the top of the second one, close to the end of the road, the drop is pretty steep.



I wanted to go west on Amwell Road for only a little stretch before turning north again, but the bridge between us and the turn was out.

Now, most of the time we see a sign that says "bridge out" we end up biking across a perfectly normal stretch of pavement interrupted only by a few concrete barriers. The barriers can stay there for years (Bayberry Road, anyone?) before something happens. Sometimes we have to wade through a little mud and walk around some backhoes, but we get across just fine. And then there are the times when there's just a yawning gap where the bridge is supposed to be. Once, mid-summer, we simply waded across the shallow stream.

But today the bridge was out. Very out. I-beams-only out. Straight-drop-from-the pavement-to-the-stream out. So we turned around. I asked a workman how long it would be before they finished. "End of the month," he said. "Now you will have to go into the hills to get around."

"We just came from there," I said, and we headed east on Amwell Road until I realized how far out of the way we were going. Cheryl suggested going back up the last bit of Long Hill to Wertsville and around to Amwell Road that way. So we doubled back again, hauled ourselves over the steep incline at the edge of Long Hill, and made our way to the other side of the closed road.

We turned onto Woodfern and then onto Three Bridges Road, one of my favorites. It follows a stream on the right. To the left is mostly farmland. We passed a man jogging in shorts. It made Cheryl cold just to look at him.

When I stopped for some pictures the man said, "I finally caught up to you guys," as he ran by.

Here's a farm on Three Bridges Road.



A dead branch and the stream through the trees:



Next up, Higginsville. It starts off innocently enough, then throws a steep railroad bridge at us. The reward on the other side is an expansive view of the ridge to the north...





...and the Sourland Mountain to the south:



Cheryl was pointing out something to Mike:



We figured we might as well stop at the Wawa at the corner of 202 and Summer. If this is going to be our default rest stop now that Stanton is gone, this place had better get some picnic tables. As it was we sat on the curb in the sun, across the parking lot from the store.

We were talking about careers again. I hadn't really let up on the subject much in the past five miles. I was looking down at inches-wide potholes forming in the blacktop.

"They say that if you do what you really love you last twice as long," Mike said. What about writing, he asked. "Who else has a blog, besides Jack and Mike and Tom?"

"Everyone has a blog," I told him.

"I don't have a blog."

Cheryl said, "You're creative. Who else would think of 'slugsicles' or 'boobsicles'."

"You can't make a living off of 'boobsicles'."

"You could expand on it."

"Double-D boobsicles?"

Across the lot a man was peering at Kermit. "He likes the paint job," I said, and got up to talk with him. Then he went into the store and I went back into the sun. Cheryl gave directions to a driver looking for something up in Bridgewater.

Then we crossed 202 and took our usual path to Pleasant Run. "We're five miles from Stanton," Mike sadly reminded us.

I didn't take us past the abandoned store. Instead we went north, up quiet roads that paralleled Whitehouse Station. We went by the Readington Farms dairy, where Cheryl's first real job was. "Our office was in the barn," she said.

"You worked in a barn?"

"They converted it," she said.

I was still feeling antsy. I'd wanted something to snap me out of this, and when we turned onto New Bromley I finally got it. I was a little ahead of Cheryl and Mike, off in my own world, when the trees parted, I crossed over a little steel truss bridge, and saw the cows dotting the side of a hill at the edge of a forest. I hit the brakes to make the moment last longer. I didn't take a picture. It couldn't have captured everything.

We burst out of the country onto Route 523 but we weren't in traffic long. We turned onto Rockaway Road, which beats Three Bridges and even Alexauken Creek no matter the weather or season.

There are these castle ruins



(because out here everything is a castle)



and an old tower, both at the intersection of Rockaway and Taylor's Mill.



This is the Rockaway Creek:



We passed the "gingerbread house," the one bursting with tulips last spring. Only bunches of daffodil leaves were pushing through the ground today. I didn't even see the "for sale" sign.

My plan had been to take Rockaway all the way to the end, turn onto Sawmill, and plummet all the way back to Oldwick on the county road. But our miles were high and we were hungry. When we got near Hill and Dale, Mike said, "There's a beautiful road to the right." I'd only been on it once before and had no memory of it whatsoever. I turned.

I don't know how I forgot this road. Here's a view from the top of it, looking south



and east.





We did get a mini-plummet into Oldwick. The place was packed. In the yard a sweatered miniature poodle showed off for us. Despite the temperature people were eating outside.

I bought a cranberry muffin and stuffed it into my pocket, and a cappucino muffin to share with Cheryl. The top was the perfect texture: a little crunchy without being stale. The three of us tore the poor thing apart as we sat in the yard.

"How are we getting home?"

We looked at the map. "I'll skip Vliettown if we do Zion," I said.

"Ugh," Cheryl said.

"It's not that bad." Sure, I could say that now, sitting in the sun, full of muffin, finally at peace.

There was still some room in my pocket. I went back in to cram a raisin bran muffin next to the cranberry one.

"I can carry them," Mike said.

"One must carry one's own muffins," I counseled.

So we skipped Vliettown and went down Lamington instead. We turned south onto Rattlesnake Bridge, which becomes Lamington again at some point. This is the western edge of Bedminster; this is the lull between the climbing, a slight downhill even. This is the road as seen facing north:



But the lull doesn't last long. When the message appears in the shoulder, it's time to switch back to the small chain ring:



Yeah, there's a hill just around the bend. It's not much, really, but we were getting used to not working very hard. At the top is Raritan Valley Community College.

We turned onto Station Road, and we weren't on it long before we smacked into another obstacle: "Bridge Closed," the sign said.

"Closed but not out," Cheryl said, so I nosed forward along a road that was more pothole than pavement. The bridge, wooden slats intact, was safe to cross, so we did.

Getting across Route 22 was interesting. There's a traffic light for left turns but nothing for going straight except a merge lane not far from a left-turn cutout in the median. Before I could ask any questions, Cheryl was in the road, making the turn.

"I can't look!" Mike said.

So much for leading a pack of sixteen through here.

On the other side we were greeted with yet another orange warning: the bridge on Old York Road was out. We got lucky, though. The bridge was, indeed, out, but we were headed in the other direction.

"That's three so far," Mike said. "It must be the stimulus money," he added later.

We managed to get across all the bridges between Old York and the Neshanic River. They'd all be re-done in the past few years.

There's more to marvel at than just the insane road naming scheme where River and River intersect. There are also the monstrous berms on both sides of the road:





Anywhere else, the bigger the berm, the uglier the edifice hiding behind it. Out here it's just farms. Cheryl shed a few layers here; I'd already ditched my balaclava and glove liners a few miles back. As far as I could tell, though, Mike was still dressed for the Arctic winter.

We passed the newly-refurbished Neshanic Staion bridge and stopped at the corner of River and Amwell. Across the street was our last climb, Zion, the hill that keeps on giving. But we had to get past the construction to the right of us on Amwell, where yet another bridge was out.

"That's four!" Mike said.

"We're going to be left doing circles around our neighborhood," I said, "if they keep this up."

We spread out on Zion. Cheryl, now unburdened, popped up the hill ahead of us. Mike, now burdened with Cheryl's cast-offs, plodded up behind me. I, pockets bulging with muffins and clothing, stuck to the middle. Zion is mostly not steep, but it has its moments. It does go on, though. And on. And on.

After that we didn't have much climbing left to do before flying down the other side of the mountain. We'd just turned onto Hollow for our final descent when a man in his driveway stopped us. "Do you want some rollers?" he asked. A former racer, he was asking every biker who passed by. I had a fleeting image of the three of us trying to carry a set of rollers down the mountain on our bikes. "No, thanks," we said, and moved on.

We got back to the car with a metric century.

The muffins were only a little bit squashed.



POSTSCRIPT:

Smolenyak wrote to me to explain why he didn't go with us today. He was hauling home a 40-inch TV set on the back of his bike. Apparently the 32-inch screen he dragged home a few months ago wasn't heavy enough.