Oldwickedness

Fox Hill Road, Tewksbury

 29 October 2012

It's 6:20 p.m.  Hurricane Sandy is coming through at a steady  40 mph, gusting into the high 60s.  So far we've been lucky:  only a couple of power blinks, during which nothing shut off and our universal power supply kept the computer going without missing a beat.  Which is good, because I've spent the past couple of hours trying not to think about trees falling onto our power lines.  Instead I've been teaching myself how to edit videos with QuickTime Pro.  The result is amateurish, shaky, and bad, but we'll get to that in a few minutes.

I have to start from the beginning, when Tom emailed me on Friday evening, with a case of the snots, to ask me to lead his Califonication ride for him on Saturday morning.

I'd already looked over the route.  It was more Oldwickedness than Califonication.  After failing up Fiddler's Elbow, we decided to get our own back by throwing in a hill of dubious repute on an otherwise mellow autumn ride. I'd suggested climbing Parsonage Lot because it was there and we'd never been.  Tom liked it because it would send us to the top of Hell Hill, from what his maps said, and Hell Mountain from what the USGS map says.  He asked me to let him know what the climb was like.

The ride started in Hillsborough.  I strapped on my helmet camera and led six others towards Tewksbury.  Judging from the crowd -- Ed C, Alan, Plain Jim, the Other Jim, Cheryl, and Glenn -- I knew I'd be leading from the back again.  This time, though, the Hill Slugs stayed true to form.  Nobody got ahead and nobody fell behind.

When I have only my still camera, I stop for pictures a lot more than I do when I can record video.  I recorded lots of video.  Too much.  But I'll get to that in a minute.

Meanwhile, here are the few stills:

This is at the corner of Femley and 523, just south of Oldwick.   

(Oh, crap.  The lights just dimmed twice.)

I was ready to go on by, but the Slugs insisted that I take pictures.  They were right.

From 523 we turned onto Rockaway Road, one of my favorite places to be.  We stopped to collect everyone at Hill and Dale Road, where another cyclist that someone in our group knew was stopped.  I started to give people instructions:  "We're going to make a left turn up ahead.  I don't know the road, so I can't tell you where the hill stops."

The other cyclist looked at me and said, "You're going up Paronage?"

"Yep."

I swear, he threw his head back and laughed.  

(I think something just hit the house.)

He came along with us, though.  I switched my helmet camera on before we made the turn to that I could record the whole thing for Tom.  To the video camera, the hill looked flat.  To us, it looked like a real hill, under a canopy of orange leaves, in orange light, up and up, steep enough for my granny, for Ed to run out of gears, and for me to finish near last, but never steep enough that I bottomed out.  I kept my front wheel on the ground this time.

At the top, where five Slugs were waiting, I called out, "Say hi to Tom!"

"Hiiiiiiii, Tommmmm!"  and "You suck!"

We had a little more climbing to do, and then we had a sinuous, bumpy, orange descent to Sawmill Road.  "Say 'bye to Tom!"

"Byyyyyyyye, Tommmmm!"  and "You still suck!"   

(Something else just hit the house.)

We crossed over 517 to Wildwood Road in order to descend Fox Hill.  On the way we passed a rider on a white horse.

Fox Hill has two vistas.  Nobody stopped for them but me.  There was so much humidity that, in my pocket, my camera's lens had clouded over.  I wiped it clear with my bandana.  I had my doubts about whether or not the pictures would turn out well enough to post.  They did, and here they are, no edits:

The second vista:

Zooming in to the intersection, where everyone is waiting for me.  That's Ed on the left, and Glenn in the yellow jacket under the tree:

The Oldwick General Store was busy, but not as crowded as it usually is when we're there in the summer.  Outside by the bike racks there were enough wooden chairs free that I didn't have to sit on the ground.  I ate the top of a pumpkin muffin, sharing the rest around.  Jim tried to ask Ed if he wanted my bottom, but Ed just shook his head and smiled.  Tough, Ed, you're in the blog with a muffin stump again.

The ride home was mostly downhill, with a few rollers near the Neshanic and Raritan Rivers.  Here's a view from South Branch Road close to Hillsborough:

(It sounds like someone is hurling rocks at the side of my house.  Safe bet it's bits of my neighbor's dying oak tree...Was that lightning?)

Once again, I forgot to pass around the chocolate eyeballs.


(Now it sounds like somebody is skittering across our roof.  Why do I think I'm going to find shingles in my back yard?  Jack says, "Can't do anything about it now."  True that, but it's still unnerving.)

Sandy off the VA coast, courtesy of NOAA

OK, the video is finished uploading to YouTube, thanks to our universal power supply that's been keeping the computer going during the blinks and dimmings.

The video starts on Rockaway, then switches to Parsonage Lot, descends on Ridge, shows a bit of Wildwood, and ends with the descent and views from Fox Hill.  I can't seem to get the audio to work.  If you don't hear music when the video starts, turn the volume all the way down.  If you keep the volume where it is, it'll sound like it does outside of my house right now.

The original had Afro-Celts' "Ayub's Song/As You Were" as the soundtrack.  But YouTube wouldn't let me use that, so I had to settle for something pre-approved.  I chose some fake Brazilian thumpy-thumpy.  It'll have to do.




Sean just texted me:  So OLPH, getting ready to ride and cement your name? Ever after you can say, "You call THIS windy?!?! Shit."  I told him that 35 mph gusts are my limit.