Cool Bikes

Kermit

29 April 2012

I'm squeezing a blog entry in between too much else to do.  Fortunately, Jim has me covered with his summary of today's Tour de Franklin.   But first, here's a cook tri bike parked outside of yesterday's PFW Spring Fling.

It'll put the rest of these pictures in context.  This is the coolest bike we saw on today's Tour.  Read Jim's blog to find out more.

Springtime Miscellany

Woods and Sky over the Brierley House

 
8 April 2012

Winter Larry led a super ride today.  I didn't stop for any pictures, though, so instead I uploaded a bunch of photos that have been living on my cell phone.

This is Princeton University's cogeneration plant, as seen from the roof of the adjacent parking garage.  I wanted to see how well my cell phone's camera could shoot into the sun.  I couldn't see what I was doing when I took the picture.

Here, Burnaby got himself comfortable on the sofa and behind a curtain.  The pictures only work if you don't look at them from too close in.

Some mornings I bike into work with my own caffeine.

Heidi Mass, a Master Gardener (married to PFW ride leader Andy Chen) is giving our yard a serious makeover.  The back became too shaded for grass, so we're putting in ground cover and perennials.  Right now she's halfway through, so the space just looks like a bad hair day.  But one of the little rhododendrons that she planted last year is blooming like gangbusters. 

 In front, we kept the grass.  As a surprise to me and Jack, she planted crocuses, daffodils, and grape hyacinths all over the front yard.  They came up beautifully.

I like how Heidi planted the hyacinths around the daffodils.  In all the years I planted bulbs, I never thought of doing that.

I don't know if these tulips are holdouts from previous seasons or whether Heidi planted them.  Either way, they got passed the squirrels this year.

Chris and I planted andromeda against the house a few years ago.  This season it's taking off.

 On Princeton's campus, just outside the door to the building I work in, a dandelion had already gone to seed.  It was the first day of spring when I took this picture.

That evening, the lighting was perfect for a night shot of two cherry trees in the parking lot outside of the Robert Wood Johnson fitness center in Hamilton.

This afternoon, Jack and I went for a walk along the D&R canal.  We started at the Brierley House, where a trail passes through a large wetland before reaching the canal.

We walked north, almost to Province Line Road.  That's the white bridge in the background.

Speaking of Province Line, you've got to take a close look at this map of New Jersey from 1777. If you look on the right side, just over the N in "Burlington," you'll see "Keith's Line," one of two lines drawn to separate East from West Jersey. Keith's line survives, in part, as Province Line Road, pictures of which are in yesterday's blog post.

Chocolate Bunny Ride

Southbound on Province Line Road

7 April 2012

Dang! Here I thought I was being fast by getting a ride blogged on the same day it happened, with pictures and all. But nooooo. Good ol' Plain Jim beat me to it.

So, yeah, there were sixteen of us to start.  That's about ten more than I'm used to getting.  That we stuck together almost to the end is something short of a miracle.

Joe, Chris, and I rode to the ride start from my house.  We were aiming for 100 km.  Thinking that the bag of chocolate bunnies I was carrying might melt during the ride, I handed them off to Chris.  He was carrying a huge handlebar pack.  I told him he could have all the leftovers.

The traditional route is one that Cheryl and I came up with about a decade ago.  Back then neither of us had climbing gears.  We were still shy about hills.  We didn't have the climbing skills nor the lightweight bikes we have today.  So, the route goes into the Sourlands pretty gently and bypasses them on the way home.  The thing is, despite the route being relatively flat for a Hills Slugs ride, it's not easy.  The second half is slightly uphill almost all the way, and then I go and throw in a couple of real hills five miles from the end.  Today we had a stiff head- and crosswind for most of the trip back.  20-mph gusts didn't help the tired folks any.

The rest stop was at the Bagel Bistro in Hillsborough, on Amwell Road just west of 206.  The roads aren't ideal getting there nor away, but tradition is tradition, and, besides, we can trust a bagel place to be open when we do this ride on Easter Sunday.

The payback for dragging everyone through Hillsborough is that we get to ride on Canal Road from the top almost to the bottom.  Ever since a Spring Fling ride I led along the canal years ago, I've been keeping my eye out for turtles.  There were loads of them that day, sunning themselves on rocks and branches in the water by the edge.  Today I only saw two.  (Back then, we were calling out, "Turtle!" every time we saw one.  The little ones were "turtellini."  Credit goes to the original Jeff Lippincott for that one.)

The day started off chilly.  We had a couple of strip breaks.  One was at the Griggstown Causeway, over the Delaware and Raritan Canal.  I don't know why it's called a causeway.  It's just about two lanes wide, and one could throw a stone from one end to the other.

I wound up with most of my upper body's clothing in my pockets.  While other people stripped, I took a couple of pictures.

The two hills at the end are on Province Line Road.  One is a slow ascent that doesn't look like much.  The second looks worse than it is but it's still work, especially at the end of a long and windy ride.  I've never had much luck being able to capture the grade of a hill.  Today I did a little better.  In this picture, I'm at the top of the first hill, looking towards the second.

Tom took some pictures too. Check his blog to see if he posts any.

The bag of bunnies was perfectly preserved at the end of the ride.  The chocolates weren't even a little bit warm.  Chris showed us why:  Out of his bag, which also contained a sandwich, he pulled an ice pack.

Saturday, 7 April: Hill Slugs Chocolate Bunny Ride

5 April 2012

Join the Hill Slugs on Saturday for the traditional Chocolate Bunny Ride.  We'll climb into the Sourlands on the way out and avoid them on the way back.  The route is about 50 miles long.

Meet at the Hopewell YMCA parking lot on Main Street, across from Ingleside Road, in Pennington.  The ride starts at 9:00 a.m.  Extra-milers can meet at my house for an 8:30 a.m. departure.

If you ride ahead, you won't get your chocolate bunny reward at the end of the ride.

Frenchtown - Coffeetown - Easton

Delaware River looking North from Riegelsville, PA

One day last fall, as I was geeking out on road maps, I found myself looking at the ridge above the Delaware River, northwest of Riegelsville, on the Pennsylvania side.  There were road names up there that I needed to ride on.

I'd been wanting to see where the Lehigh and the Delaware Rivers meet, too.  If I were to start a ride in Frenchtown, I could get up to the ridge and see the rivers.

I didn't get around to coming up with a route until January, but even that was just a draft.  I'd probably have to drive up there first.  Then JeffX took a solo loop from Frenchtown to Easton.  He came back with pictures.

One thing led to another, and within a week the two of us had hatched the plan.

Four of us made the trip, which was the perfect number for an exploratory ramble like this.

Jim, always fast with the blogging fingers, posted his summary of the ride before his saddle got cold. Me, I got caught up in other stuff. So, instead of boring you with narrative, I'll bore you with pictures.

I put most of the hills in the first 20 miles.  The biggest one that I knew about was Bridgeton Hill in Upper Black Eddy, 4 miles into the ride.  The rest was unknown territory.

Bridgeton Hill Road is a beast, but it lets up in the middle.  This was the best time of year to climb it because, with no leaves on the trees, we could look down to the river far below us.

Lonely Cottage and Frogtown Roads were the only ones that approximated flat once we reached the ridge.

For the first time since the fall of 2010, I was in my granny gear.  'Nuff said.

This is the view from the top of Buckwampum Road:

When I got up here, JeffX asked if I was going to take any pictures.  Not having eaten or slept much or well over the preceding few days (combine tinnitus with TMJ and see for yourself), I didn't have much to pull from.  So I said, "Let me try to stop feeling like I'm gonna throw up first."

 
Just past where Joe is standing, the road dipped down again.

JeffX would ride ahead and stop, telling me where I needed to take pictures.

We turned onto Gallows Hill.  I had Led Zeppelin's Gallows Pole stuck in my head for the rest of the ride.

This view is probably from Gallows Hill, but it might be somewhere along Durham Road.  It was a this point, I think, that everyone realized we were on a poky sort of ride that was going to be stopping a lot for pictures.  We needed to catch our breath anyway.

This is the hill that made me use my granny gear.  Jim didn't get enough of a running start and had to turn around and try again.  I think we were on Durham Road at this point.

If I could dye my hair any color, I'd dye it the color of this Durham Road chicken.  Seriously. 

And, now, the reason I dragged everyone up into these hills:  Coffeetown Road.  It led from the ridge to the river.

We backtracked a little along the river in order to stop at a small market.  Then we headed north again.  Up here the canal was empty because of construction.  The towpath, more of a moonscape than a trail, had been washed out by spring storms a handful of years ago.  It was a scar between us and the Delaware River.

The road got busier, the woods giving way to industry.  We were in Easton.  JeffX pointed to a park on the right.  We pulled in and I grabbed my camera.  

Lehigh, Delaware.  Delaware, Lehigh:

We crossed the Lehigh into the city center, to another park along the water.  From here, we could see the Lehigh spill into the Delaware.

Jim and Joe amused themselves with a cannon.

We crossed the Delaware into Phillipsburg.  Jim was in awe of the old buildings.  I didn't stop for pictures, and I regret it.

A hairpin turn under a tall railroad bridge put us on a hill again.  We didn't see the river for a while.

When we did, Jim was in his favorite place, a stretch of road he'd only seen once, last summer, on the Anchor House ride.  He'd been pining for it ever since.  We were west of Bloomsbury, just north of where the Musconetcong River meets the Delaware on the New Jersey side.

We crossed the Delaware once more in Riegelsville so that we could ride a stretch of the Pennsylvania side that I'd never been on.

After that, we made a bee-line for Bridgeton, crossed the Delaware one last time in Milford, and headed back to Frenchtown.


This was one of those rides that I don't do much of anymore, one where we stop to look at everything and don't give a tinker's damn rat's patootie about the pace or what time we'll be home.  And it was fun, all of it.  We can't ride like this every weekend, and we shouldn't.  But when we do, it's worth it.

And nothing went wrong with Miss Piggy, either.