Home Away from Home

22 August 2010


29 August 2010


The subject of Lynne's email is "Home Away from Home." We're trying to work out where we're going to stay when the four of us make the trip up to the northwest corner of New Jersey for a two-day biking trip. Lynne's sister has a house outside of Milford, PA, and we've been invited to stay there.

I'm gummed up at work, and all I can do is watch the flurry of emails among Lynne, Cheryl, and Tom, as they try to figure out if we're driving up on Friday night or early Saturday morning. On Thursday afternoon I find out that Cheryl and Tom will arrive at my house at 6 a.m. on Saturday morning. Cheryl's driving me. Tom's taking my bike. I'm bringing surplus vegetables from the farm. Lynne will meet us up there.

We've got two sunny days forecast for us. Somehow I manage to be ready to leave before anyone gets to the house. Tom arrives first and wisecracks about the amount of stuff I'm bringing. I have to explain the backpack full of jewelry projects -- I get more done on vacation than at home most of the time -- and the bag full of squash, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, and a large coffee press. My clothes take up hardly any room at all.

Usually on time, Cheryl is late. We wonder if she's still asleep, so I call her, ready with "Wakey, wakey!" but she answers "I'm on my way" before I have a chance to say anything. A few minutes later she pulls up. There'd been an incident with the dogs that set her back.

I fill her mug with the coffee I'd brewed for the both of us and we're on our way. Tom follows us through the back roads of Princeton that we always take to avoid driving on Route 206. We hit two detours, snaking our way around them in a pattern that must be confounding Tom. Cheryl says, "Should I call him and tell him what we're doing?"

"Naaah. It'll be more fun to hear him tease us about it."

Which he does, when, finally, we're out of Hillsborough, off 287, back on 206 well beyond Hill Slug country, and stopping at a McDonalds for a potty break. Cheryl changes into her biking clothes.

We're half an hour early when we arrive at Milford Beach park. Tom, in front of us now, pulls up to the entrance gate and stops. It's a state park with a $10 per car entrance fee. Cheryl doesn't want to pay it and neither does Tom. So we pull over and park.

Beyond the gate, sitting on something like a golf cart, is a well-rounded, uniformed fellow who might be a park ranger. I need to pee again. I look at the golf cart guy to my right, the pavilions by the lake in front of me, and decide that, if need be, I can outrun him. But I walk towards him first. "Has anyone with a bike driven in here?" I ask him. He's friendly, and says he hasn't seen anyone like that. I tell him we're supposed to meet a friend here, thank him, and walk on towards the bathrooms.

Back at the cars, Tom and Cheryl have been trying to call Lynne. "The voice mail box is full. We keep getting dance music." Maybe it's a wrong number. I look up the number she gave us in an email and dial it. Dance music.

"Well, we can always stay at a hotel," I offer. Tom decides to drive into town to look for Lynne and free parking. I pull my camera out of Kermit's bag and walk back to the lake.




Cheryl and I hang out at her car. "I feel like doing a cartwheel," I tell her, and then do one. "I can't remember the last time I did that." She says, "I don't think I've ever done one," but that's got to be impossible, I tell her. No girl can never have done a cartwheel. I do another one. All caffeinated up and nowhere to go.

Then Lynne arrives, with Tom pulling in a few minutes later. We tell her about the music. Typo in the email. Tom leads us to a supermarket parking lot in town.

The High Point monument will come towards the end of the ride this time. We start with a gentle descent towards the Delaware river, where we cross at a toll bridge. Tom takes us up Old Mine Road, which he says is supposed to be the oldest road in the country. I'm skeptical. But if Wikipedia is to be believed, then, well, it must be true.

We climb and descend and find ourselves in Walpack, at a bridge over a stream leading into the Delaware River. Beyond the bridge is a field. We stop to take pictures.

I turn towards the steel grate bridge get some shots of the water. Tom says, "Don't look down," so I do.



A field by the road is dotted with people emerging from and disappearing into the tall grass. A woman pops up by the roadside. "Butterfiles!" she explains.


Tom warns us of another ascent, a little worse than the last one. I stop at the top to marvel at the trees. Everyone else moves on.


Our rest stop is at a deli along Route 206. There's nothing else around but farmland. The joint is jumping, though, for 10:30 a.m. For the first time in a long while I get a muffin. It's not very good. I leave most of it for everyone else.

We're on Deckertown Road, just a few miles from High Point, when we start to see the "road closed" signs. 4.5 miles away is our left turn that gets us to the base of the monument, and the signs start about that far away from our turn.

Now, "road closed" in central New Jersey usually means this: A pair of concrete barriers go up on either side of a tiny stream crossing. Time passes. Maybe months, maybe years. Nothing happens, and when it does we can usually get around the problem. Sometimes we can just ride around it (Dunkard Church) or walk through some mud (same). Once we crossed a bridge that was one good storm away from disintegration. Once we waded across a shallow stream.

But this, this is a major hole in the road. I start laughing.


Tom dismounts and lowers himself into the hole, balancing himself on one of two cement pipes.


"This is doable," he decides. We're wavering. I've been to High Point before anyway. Then, prodded on by nothing, I say, "Let's go for it."

I hand Tom his bike and he carries it across.


I hand him Kermit and slide into the hole. Lynne's bike is next, then Lynne, then Cheryl's bike, then Cheryl. I'm still laughing.


Well, now I have something to write about. Around the bend is our turn. Four people are at the corner on two motorcycles. Tom is stopped in front of them. I pull up in time to hear him say, as he lifts his bike, "Yeah, but this is only fifteen pounds."

I suggest an Evil Kenevil-style jump as I ride past. They laugh and shake their heads.

And then we're there, at the base of the steepest part of the hill that leads to the High Point monument. Last time I did this I had some James Brown's "Static" playing in my head. I think I'll use that again.

Out of the corner of my eye, as we pass a lake, power lines look like guy wires for the monument. I have to look again just to make sure I'm not hallucinating. Cheryl's phone rings so the two of us stop. It's her pet-sitter, letting her know that all is hunky-dory with her little dogs. I snap a picture of the lake and wires and push off again.


There's a parking lot maybe half a mile down from the monument. A couple with a kid are walking to their car. The woman looks over at me, confused.

I smile. "It's possible," I tell her. "I've done it before."

At the top, Cheryl is rewarded by a woman walking two small terriers. They get to chatting and the rest of us walk around.




I take a few pictures with my cell phone and send them off to Jack, who is lounging around in New York City with Sharon and Nora.


I sent him my monument; he sends back his:

Tom, Lynne, and I hang around the base. Cheryl, it seems, has disappeared. It's at least five minutes before she emerges, out of breath. "I couldn't find you!" she exclaims. "I went all the way to the top! Twenty-three flights of stairs!"

"Oh, lord. We're never gonna hear the end of this," I lament. "Is the view worth it?"

"No. And it's hot up there."

Tom asks someone to take our picture. [You'll have to go to his blog for that.]

We get back on our bikes and we're down at the bottom in minutes. "Geez. You'd think we just came down off a mountain or something," I suggest as we finally come to a stop twelve hundred feet and five miles later.

We're pretty much ready for this ride to end, but we still have at least ten miles and some climbing left to do. Tom promises just one more ridge to get over, but it seems to me that we're just riding roller after roller after roller.

Fortunately, I tend to get a second wind around fifty miles.

We cross the Delaware at the toll bridge, but this time we have to walk. Far below us are kyakers.

Traffic is heavy in Milford now as we pull into the IGA parking lot.

This weirds me out a little:

After going into the store to get milk, juice, and fruit for breakfast, Lynne drives the lead car out of town towards her sister's house. We seem to be going up a mountain, down the other side, and back up again. Through the trees is an enclave of houses, and behind that a lake. She pulls into a long, stone driveway. A man reading a book on the deck looks over and stands up.

A woman who looks very much like Lynne meets us in the driveway. This is Mira and her husband, Ron. At their feet is a shaggy, poodle-y blur of Muppety cuteness. "This is Greeta the Wonder Dog," Mira says.

We unload the cars. I think Ron is overwhelmed by the amount of food we're bringing in. But the bag full of squash, eggplant, peppers, cherry tomatoes, and whatever else I dropped in there yesterday, is welcome. He's been making barbecue sauce all day; now he can grill up some veggies too.

Mira puts the cherry tomatoes and a bowl of nuts out on the deck. Wine appears. We dig in, ravenous, waiting for each other as we shower in shifts.

Cheryl has a friend.


Lynne and Cheryl take up an offer to be "Rolfed" by a neighbor across the lake. Tom and I, not big on massage, let alone a technique that sounds more like cookie-tossing than therapy, decline the offer.

A well-worn paperback copy of David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" sits on one of the picnic tables. It's the book Ron was reading when we pulled in. "Any good?" I ask.

Ron mulls it over. It hasn't been easy going, he says, although he's almost through it. "Nine hundred pages and I can't tell you what the book is about." [Jack now tells me he's heard that description from a lot of people.]

While we wait for the Rolfing to begin, the three of us walk down to the lake. Although it's getting close to 7 pm, the sun seems high in the sky. Clouds are moving in.

I sit against a tree trunk and take pictures.



"Hey, Tom. Here's my attempt at your Spruce-Run-Rock-In-The-Fog shot."


It's well after 8 p.m. by the time we sit down to dinner on the deck. The din of crickets surrounds us. After dessert we move inside. I lean back on a chair and look at the wood beams flanking the skylight. This is wonderful. I'm forgetting all my stress. Time is standing still.

Tom has been checking the weather. It doesn't look good anymore. I pull up the forecast on my iPhone. "Yeah, we're screwed."

We plan as if we're going to ride. Tom says he'll wake up at 6 a.m. and check the weather. Then he'll text Jeff, who is planning to meet us at the ride start, half an hour south of here.

It's tough to get a picture of Greeta. When she's not on a lap, she's always moving.


With rain in the forecast, Tom and I decide we should take our bikes out of the back of his truck and indoors. We wheel them under the deck, through a sliding glass doorway, and into the large room where Cheryl and I will be sleeping. Against the far walls are two beds.

Mira has put two bottles of water and an electric lantern on the nightstand between our beds. We each have our phones hooked up and the alarms set for 7 a.m.

I change into my "I Moose be Dreaming" nightshirt (I have two, given to me by different people) and pad upstairs to brush my teeth. By the time I get back downstairs, Cheryl is out cold in her bed. On a table at the foot of my bed a lamp is still on.

I still have to put goop in my eyes to prevent more corneal abrasions. I haven't planned this well at all: the only mirror down here is a small one packed away in my toiletries bag. Once I goop my eyes I'll be pretty much blind; I'll see through a thick, yellow haze. I have to be as quiet as possible. Kneeling on the floor, I dig out the mirror and lean over it to put the ointment in. By feel I put the tube and mirror away. Squinting, I reach for the lamp, feeling for a switch. I can't find it on the base. I reach towards the bulb, finding nothing. The only thing left to do is to unplug it, I guess. Still squinting through yellow haze, I find the socket, unplug the lamp, stumble towards the bed, get in, and turn down the lantern.

The racket from the crickets drowns out my tinnitus. Through the night I wake up to the sound of crickets through the screen door. Then it stops. There's a breeze, and I hear rain coming down hard.

There's a sudden light in the room. I open my eyes and look over just in time to see the bedroom door close again. It must be Tom, checking to see if I'm awake. It must be 6 a.m. already. I guess I'll go upstairs to talk to him. It's pouring, so we're not riding anywhere today.

I get out of bed and tiptoe through the doorway. At the top of the stairs I hear the door there close. Damn. Just missed him. I stumble up the stairs and open the door in time to see the bathroom door close.

But there's no light under that door, nor is there light coming from the bedroom at the end of the hall. The door behind me closes, and at once I realize what's been happening. It's the wind. It's all been the wind.

Oh well. While I'm up here I might as well pee. I should goop my eyes again, too, now that I've opened them. I'll use the lantern for light this time.

That done, I get back in bed. What time is it, anyway? Reaching for my phone I knock over the bottle of water. Damn. Now I've probably woken Cheryl up.

No? Wow. She'll sleep through anything.

2:54 a.m. Sheesh.

I lie on my back. The rain is loud but my tinnitus is louder. I don't know why that is: some sounds seem to make my ears ring louder. The rain is dying down. The crickets start up again.

I don't hear any rain when I wake up again, but it's wet outside. Calling off today's ride is a no-brainer. We take our time with breakfast, spreading whatever we brought with us all over the table. When Mira and Ron come in, they're amazed at the amount of food we've brought. I have to explain that we eat as hard as we ride.

I learn from Mira that humidity makes tinnitus louder. That explains last night.

We're perfectly content to lounge around the house today. If you're going to be holed up during a day-long summer rain storm, this is the place to be. Cheryl and I are sort of glad the ride has been canceled. We'd been worried about going into it with tired legs.

Jack texts me that Burnaby is off his feed. This is a cat who will eat anything at any time. I text back questions about his behavior and hydration. Jack is leaving for another day in New York City.

It's raining and then it isn't. There's a break in the storm, enough time to load our bikes and pack our gear. We need Lynne to guide us off this mountain. Mira leads us instead to Raymondskills Falls, yet another section of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.

We give Mira our goodbyes and a million thank-yous, and in a light mist we walk down a path to the falls.


Four pictures down from this one you'll see this rock from the other side:









As we make our way along Route 206 towards Route 287, traffic builds and builds. Cheryl and Tom conference over their cell phones about what route to take to get out of this mess. Tom decides on the NJ Turnpike, which neither Cheryl nor I understand. It ends up being crowded, too, but we get back to my house in under three hours. We've driven through torrential rain and over dry roads; I assume my bike will be filthy. But it's not. It looks as if it's been through a car wash. It's cleaner than it was this morning.

Cheryl and Tom stop inside for a few minutes. I call Burnaby but he doesn't materialize. We go back outside to say our goodbyes, thanking Tom for putting this whole weekend together.

When I come back in, Burnaby is in the living room, looking a little shabby. For the rest of the day, every few hours, I ply him with bits of Fancy Feast, first from my fingers, then from a dish I hold up to his mouth. He spends most of the day on his hammock by the front window in the living room. By the time I bring Jack home from the train station at night, Burnaby is snarfing up his Fancy Feast without my help.

(I do have to admit that, late in the afternoon, I hopped on our elliptical cross-trainer for almost an hour. I had to burn off everything I ate at the Home Away from Home.)

*****

28 August 2010

Tom led a ride to my favorite puddle -- Round Valley Reservoir -- today.

I've given up trying to get pictures of the place from the road. It just never looks right. It's that damned fence, I think. I'll have to go hiking in there, I guess.

Glenn took a weird spill when we were going slowly around a curve at the base of the reservoir. We were in mid-conversation when I heard "Fffffft!" and the unmistakable clatter of a bike hitting blacktop.

Glenn stood up, said he was okay, and walked to the side of the road. "I gotta lie down for a minute," he said. He lay on his back in the grass while the rest of us inspected his bike.

Tom found the flat in his front tire. That explained everything: the front wheel didn't take the curve and the back end spun out. There was no damage to the bike, though.

Tom got to work on the tire. "You want CO2?" I asked him.

Glenn, sitting up now, shouted, "NO! You kill mice with that stuff! Get away from me!" I was cracking up, and I'm pretty sure that Glenn and I were the only ones to get that joke. Science nerd humor.

Before he got back on his bike, Glenn pulled out his cell phone. "I need to get a picture of my elbow," he said.

"I'll take it with my camera," I offered. I think we've just started a tradition. Tom jumped in for a before-and-after shot:

After the reservoir we passed the Stockton General Store. The group stopped to pay homage to long-gone muffins. So sad.

I didn't get many other pictures during the ride. This one is of a farmhouse where Higginsville Road intersects with Three Bridges:

We had a second rest stop (the first was at Jerry's Brooklyn Deli in Whitehosue Station) at Peackocks. It was rush hour; we were one of at least three groups descending on the place at once:

So that's it for cycling in August. Coming up, scenes from Cherry Grove Farm and the Picture Ride. Stay tuned...