Your Rims are So Hot!

 A farm by a church on Emley's Hill Road last week.  

It has nothing to do with this post. 

Well, maybe something.  The corn is still blooming. 

23 July 2012

Tom dragged us up Schooley's Mountain again on Saturday.  Dragged me, anyway.  I was having one of those days where, if Moxie hadn't jumped on my stomach minutes after my alarm went off, I'd have fallen back asleep and missed the ride.  I was having one of those days that left me with just enough energy to get up the hills, but not so little that I was dreading every mile.  The spirit was willing but the legs were elsewhere.  That's better than the other way around, though.  Tired legs can be ignored.  A tired mind, not so much.

We started with seven:  Tom, Jack H., Ron, Ed, Lynne, me, and The Guy With Two Flats Who Turned Around.  At Hoffman's Crossing, the Guy With Two Flats Who Turned Around turned around.  Before the Guy With Two Flats Who Turned Around turned around, Tom and I waited for him at the top of the hill.  

Tom got out his camera.

"It won't work," I said.  "It comes out flat.  I keep trying."

"I know," he said, and tried anyway.  So did I. 

"I do better with this," I told him, turning to our right.

Tom turned back to find the Guy With Two Flats Who Turned Around.  I went ahead.  Everyone was waiting at the bottom by the river.  I rode up to the metal bridge.  We've never gone across.  There was plenty of time for pictures.

Tom coasted down the hill alone.  We passed through Califon without stopping and climbed the ridge to the west of the river.  He took us up Pleasant Grove, which, as far as we can tell, has the only view from the top of Schooley's Mountain.  I took a picture of it once.  I didn't bother this time; it's impossible to tell that we're at the top of much of anything.  Being out of breath doesn't translate to pixels very well.

At the rest stop, the Schooley's Mountain General Store, Tom told us that, after talking to me about possibly doing a hilly century, he'd come up with a diabolical route:  10,000 feet of climbing in 100 miles.  Yeah, uh, no.

We passed Our Lady of the Mountain church again.  Phyllis (where art thou?) got that title for being first up the hill the first time we were all here.

Our descent into the Raritan valley was via Middle Valley Road.  This is the one with the 5 mph speed limit on the hairpin turn at some obnoxious percent grade.  This is the hill that prompted Tom to respond, when Michael H. suggested we climb back up some day, "Not without a jet pack."  I was grabbing my brakes the whole way down.

I had to shake out my hands at the bottom.  "Feel my rims," I told Tom.

"I don't know you that well," he replied, nearly burning himself on my wheels.

What goes down must come up, and we did, to the ridge north of Califon, via Beacon Hill, a slog that put me in my granny gear.  Down Frog Hollow and a left on Beavers.  I knew what was coming; only he and I did.  "You are evil!"  I shouted up to him.  "Evil!"  Back into the granny.

We got a reward, though.  He gave us the Fox Hill descent.  I've taken pictures from here before, but never when the corn flowers were blooming.

My feet were sticking to the ground.  Even though it wasn't very hot out, the tar beneath us was melting.

Archaeologists are going to marvel at this strange, cleated animal.

Ah.  There's the corn.

OK, Jim.  You can stop hitting "refresh" now.