Monday, December 31, 2012

Tell It to Strava

31 December 2012


Bike Commuting, Princeton University Campus, 11 October 2012
(The camera is too low, but any higher and it'd have been all sun glare.)

I have a confession to make:  For the past few years I've totaled my yearly distances on December 31.  This is the first time I've not discarded the number from the previous year; this is the first time I've compared distances between years.

"So what?" some of you might be asking.  "I do that every year.  I record each ride," some of you might add.  Well, I don't, because I deal with enough competition and insecurity in my day job that the last thing I need is more of it on the weekends. 

In true Hill Slug fashion, and aided by my lack of ability to remember numbers, I've already forgotten the second half of the digits in my yearly total.   Because I have three bikes and cycle computers that keep lifetime totals, it's a bit of work to figure out how far I've gone in a year.  This will keep me from bothering to do the math again until the end of 2013.

Meanwhile, for those keeping track, tell it to Strava (I'm not even gonna link to it), and let's just have fun out there. 


Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Grinding to a Halt

 Christmas Dinner


 26 December 2012

I rode over to Cheryl's house with my antlers on and her present in a bag smashing into my knee with every pedal stroke.  Jingle!  Smack!  Jingle!  Smack!

While Ron and Cheryl got ready, I fastened her antlers to her helmet.

We weren't planning to go far, just up to the Wawa on 518 in Rocky Hill.

At the Pole Farm, three groups of turkey vultures were enjoying three Christmas venisons.  My presence only disrupted them a little.




We went through the northwestern side of Princeton, up on the ridge, gawking at the too-big houses made visible not just by bare trees but downed ones.

As we turned onto Cherry Valley, I felt a pull on my wheel and heard a grinding screech, as if I'd pulled on my brakes at high speed.  Only I hadn't.  I stopped to check the pads.  Nothing was rubbing.  I spun the wheels.  Fine.  I squeezed the tires.  No flats.  "Weird," I said, and got back on.

There was so little traffic that we took 206 from Cherry Valley to 518.  As we were dismounting, a woman called to us from across the parking lot:  "You still have some kid in you!  That's great!"  I jangled my antlers in response.

We headed home by taking Cherry Hill to the top of the Princeton Ridge.  The grinding screech happened again.  Ron rode up to me.  "Next time that happens, start pedaling.  If it stops, it's your rear hub.  It happened to me last year."  Great.

Cheryl wanted to try something we'd never done:  Province Line south of Drake's Corner.  We knew from seeing it that the road was gravel.  I'd been told by someone who'd tried that "at the end there's just a buncha rocks."




Well, one man's buncha rocks is another Slug's adventure, so off we crunched, dismounted, cleat covers on, through gravel that got big enough to be rocks, and then mud, and then mud giving way to boulders.


We peered over the edge.  "There's the road, down there," Cheryl said.
She started to walk through the woods, heading for a slope that needed hiking boots and free hands.  All that was left of the road was the power line.  Between us and two dirt tracks leading to blacktop was a quarter mile of brambles.


"It'll take you twenty minutes to get down there.  Forget it.  I gotta get home."  I looked back up towards where we'd come from.  We'd already put ourselves into the woods.  We turned ourselves around. 



The air felt colder now.  It was already close to 1 p.m. and I needed to be on the road not much later than 2:15.  "Go ahead if you have to," Cheryl said.  But we stayed together because we didn't really have much farther to go. 

We got up a good head of steam back on Cherry Valley.  That's when I tried to coast again.  Once more my rear wheel pulled and I had to pedal to keep from grinding to a halt.  I pedaled all the way down the Carter Road hill and up past Rosedale and Cold Soil to 206.  I tried coasting again. Same thing, so I just kept pedaling all the way home.

Miss Piggy, Miss Piggy, you're such a pain in the ass.  

Back to Hart's she went today, where I left her for a few hours while I went to the lab and Jack puttered around Princeton.  I picked her up again in the afternoon.  "I cleaned the hub and put new paws in," Ross said.  He then had to translate for me.  (UPDATE:  Yes, I know, it's "pawls."  I didn't hear Ross correctly, and, apparently, he didn't hear me correctly either.)

stolen off the web, of course

Pawls grab springs inside the hub when we pedal.  When we coast they release and let the freewheel spin.  My pawls were getting stuck, or something.  I just did one of my half-assed online image searches, hoping to find a diagram of pawls in action, but I struck out.  I'm sure one of you gearheads will set me straight. (And so you did.  Several of you.)

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Hill Slugs Ad Hoc, SUNDAY, 23 December

19 December 2012

Now, you might be thinking, "Curious.  Saturday's winds are looking awfully strong, and Laura's pushing the ride to Sunday.  Is she getting soft?" 

Um, well, yeah, 'cause I've been eating junk, but the real reason is that, since the mid 90's, Jack and I get together with a few of my grad school buddies some time around Christmas.  They're free on Saturday, so that's that.

The Hill Slugs will ride on Sunday instead, starting at 9 a.m. from the Hopewell YMCA parking lot on Main Street, across from Ingleside, in Pennington.  Extra-milers can meet me at my house at 8:30 a.m.  We'll aim for something in the neighborhood of 40 miles with a rest stop. 

There will still be some wind on Sunday.  I get to keep my title.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Rutgers in the Rain

Where the D&R Canal Ends at the Raritan River

"Crap!  Crap!  Crap!  Crap!"

Ed is jumping up and down by the trunk of his car.

Poor Ed.  He tries so hard not to be in this blog, but he keeps doing things that I can write a story around.

"Crap!  Crap!  Crap!  Crap!"

It's my fault, really.  I called Winter Larry at just past 7 this morning to ask if his ride was on.  We were both looking at the radar.  We both thought we'd miss the rain.  So I emailed Ed to tell him.

Now it's just the three of us in the Sweetwater parking lot in Cranbury.

"What happened?"  Winter Larry and I ask.

Ed's car, a VW with a touch too much intelligence, had decided that, because Ed had closed the trunk and then the passenger door, he must have wanted the car to be locked, and therefore did so with a defiant click, trapping Ed's keys within Ed's jacket pocket on the back seat.

"I have three choices," he says.  He could call the Cranbury police, call AAA, or break into his own car by smashing the vent window.

"Don't break your window."

He's wearing hiking boots.  His bike is leaning against the car; his helmet is inside.  "I have a spare helmet," I offer.  "You can ride in those boots."

He hesitates.  He's looking around for something to smash glass with.

"Don't break your window."

"How far away do you live?"

"Half an hour."  He lives, more or less, in Highland Park.

Ed calls his wife, Cathy, who gives him the phone number for the Cranbury police.  After a dozen rings, Ed gives up on that idea and calls Cathy back.  He arranges to call her again when we're half an hour from the end of our ride.  She'll meet us here with a key.

We set off on the usual southerly route.  We've just turned off of Main Street when I make a suggestion.  "We could ride to your house."

"Wanna do it?"  Larry asks.

He and Ed slow down.  We all turn around.  "This is the kind of thing we can do when there are only three of us.  It'll be fun," I offer.

I ride behind while Larry and Ed quibble about how best to get over Route 1 and Route 130 and the Raritan River.  It's a foreign language to me.  My road knowledge peters out at the northern border of South Brunswick.

I recognize where we are all the way to Dayton.  After that, I have a faint recollection of a few winter rides back when Kermit was still green.  I remember Riva Road and passing people ice fishing on part of Farrington Lake.

Kermit is running smooth and quiet.  He's just been thoroughly cleaned.  He has new bar tape (purple) and new tires (Michelins again -- others just don't compare).  Once in a while we pass through a patch of faint drizzle.  As long as the rain doesn't get any stronger than this, we'll be fine.

We ride through Deans, North Brunswick, then Miltown, and into New Brunswick.  Ed pulls into a parking lot to call Cathy.  "Put on a strong pot of coffee," he says.  "We've got coffee fiends.  We're talking Laura and Larry here.  We'll be there in about ten minutes."

Now we're in real rain.  Larry takes us down Livingston Avenue, past the public library, across George Street, and down to the river.  Ed snakes us over Route 18 and down into Johnson Park.  We ride along the water, Larry pointing out the once-fabulous mansions on the hill a quarter mile away.  We stop at a series of small, colonial-era houses carried from all over the state to this site.

"We're really close to where I work," Larry says, so we leave the park and ride up the hill, into Rutgers' Piscataway campus.

"I should warn you, I had a bad time in grad school."

"Should I schedule you a session?"  Larry asks me.

No need.  I only vaguely recognize one building, Waxman.  Microbial ecology?  The fluorescent microscope I used a few times?  My car parked in front, but I can't remember why I was there.  What's the name of the building my classes were in?  I've forgotten.  Completely forgotten.  Nothing we pass stirs memory.  We're on a part of campus that I don't ever remember seeing.

Ed leads us down to the river again, Larry uneasy about his brakes in the rain.  "I've been caught so many times this year,"  I tell him.  "Kermit's going, 'What am I, an amphibian?'"

We turn off of River Road and climb the hill up to Ed's house.  Larry and I lean our bikes against the garage door, under the eaves.  Ed fusses with the bike rack on his wife's station wagon.  While Larry helps, I take a hard look at the hatchback trunk, lift Kermit up, front wheel off, swing him around, and fit him in.  I have plenty of time to clean the frame with my damp bandana.   Might as well get the rims too.  Not bad.  This wasn't a dirty ride, not like last Saturday.

Inside we shed our wet jackets and shoes.  My booties are soaked, but my winter shoes are dry.  My toe warmers are toasty as I pad across the floor wrapped in a towel, answering, "Black" when Ed asks me how I take my coffee.

But there's leftover steamed milk, so cappucino.  Cathy offers around a bar of dark chocolate.  I stir some in; mocha.  Cathy and Ed are emptying their pantry onto the kitchen table.  Larry is surrounded by scientists.

Ed should take Cathy to the Blue Rooster in Cranbury, we decide.  "Yeah," she agrees, as she pulls on her coat.  "I should get something out of this."

The rain has slowed.  We take Route 18 towards the Turnpike.  I haven't been up here since 1993, 1994?  Route 18 has changed, widened, fake rock walls.

The rain has stopped in time for us to unload and re-pack.  Ed and Cathy walk towards the Blue Rooster.  I turn on the engine and crank up the heat.

At home I piece together where we've been.  Ed sends corrections.

http://ridewithgps.com/routes/1993933

Nelson.  It was Nelson Hall.  We were one street away.

Larry says a tour of Princeton University is next.


Thursday, December 13, 2012

Hill Slugs Ad Hoc, Saturday, 15 December

13 December 2012

Sun!  There's gonna be sun on Saturday!

Meet at the Hopewell YMCA parking lot on Main Street, across from Ingleside, in Pennington for a 9:00 a.m. start.  We'll go 40-45 miles with a rest stop.  Extra-milers can meet at my house for an 8:30 a.m. start.

Sunday, December 2, 2012

December Fog



2 December 2012

The forecast said the fog would clear by 9:00.  As I made my way from home to the Hopewell YMCA I had my doubts.  I couldn't see more than maybe twenty yards in front of me.  It's at times like this that I'm glad Miss Piggy is fluorescent.

Nevertheless, there were three intrepid Slugs waiting for me:  Ron, Mighty Mike, and Ed.

His new compact gearing installed, Ed was having trouble with his chain. He'd removed six links when he'd put the compact in, but one link wouldn't sit straight.  Every third pedal stroke, pop!  From behind I could see the chain jump.  I hadn't given the route much thought, but I decided then and there not to put in anything too steep.  I need to learn how to fix a broken chain, but I didn't want Ed to have to teach me this morning.  We did get to hear him curse, though, running through four languages in fewer than twenty miles.

Maybe the fog was dissipating a little.  The ground was damp, even wet in places.  There were a few spots where I would have liked to stop for pictures, but we were chilly.  I knew I'd get some good shots at Mount Airy.  I've taken fog pictures there before.

My camera's battery, which was full when I checked before leaving the house, went dead before I could take one picture.   Damn rechargeables.  I used my cell phone instead.




The Mount Airy cows were elsewhere this morning.

I stopped again on Sandy Ridge Road. 


Ed, a shout away in front of me, stopped too, to watch a couple of deer in the meadow.  They split by the time I caught up to him.

We were the only bikers at the Sergeantsville General Store.  I can't remember the last time that happened.


 Sergeantsville General Store yard

Miss Piggy needs a bath.

I'd heard rumors that Sun was going to give up the place.  I asked him if he were planning to close it.  "Not close," he said.  "Sell.  I've been doing this for twenty years."  I thought about that, and about how long ago it was that I first stopped at this place.  I think it was in 2000, maybe 2001.  Geez.  No wonder Sun recognizes me.

We sat inside.  I put another pair of toe warmers on my feet, so that my frozen toes would be sandwiched by warmers.  We ate pastries, drank coffee, and dissed lima beans.

When we stepped outside again the air felt colder than it had twenty minutes before.  I chose the quickest route home, throwing in New Road because by then we'd warmed up again.

As Mike meticulously wiped down his bike in the parking lot, Ed explained to Ron the work he'd done on his chain.  This was a good one, he said, but not the highest-end, not the one with hollow pins.

"Sheesh," I said, thinking about the gram or two one might save with hollow pins.  "I carry water, y'know?"

Ed agreed about the supposed saved weight.  "That's a snot rocket!"

"Ha!"

"You're gonna put that in the blog."

"Yep."

A mile from home, the sun finally came out.  I wheeled my bike into the back yard, un-pinned Miss Piggy, stuffed her into one of my pockets, and hosed down the frame.  Miss Piggy got a soapy bath in the sink.