The Towpath from Princeton to Trenton

D&R Canal Towpath, Washington Road, Princeton

3 April 2016

When it comes to riding in extreme weather, I am a victim of peer pressure, especially if it's Tom and Ed who are making the plans. Tom doesn't call us his Insane Bike Posse for nothing. 

The 55 mph wind hadn't yet started when the email chain got going. Tom and Ed weren't concerned about the forecast. Neither of them live in a shady neighborhood. Neither has a sickly oak across a fence from their bedroom window. Neither has to put their car in the garage when the winds are over 20 mph for fear of having to replace another windshield.  Then, of course, there's Princeton itself, which has the reputation for toppling trees if one sneezes a bit too energetically.

All night, after the thunderstorms were over, I heard snaps and thumps as bits of my neighbor's oak hit the roof outside my bedroom window. Something hit the window in the wee hours. Needless to say, neither I nor the cats slept very well. When my alarm went off and there was no email from Tom nor Ed, I shuffled to the front windows to check the yard and the driveway. From where I stood, they were both clear.

The email chain sparked back to life, and by the time we'd settled on yes, I had barely an hour to get my act together.

Not until I approached the garage door did I see the two branches, either of which would have made a decent walking stick, on the ground where my car would have been. I assumed these were two of the things that woke me up last night. I kicked them aside and loaded Grover into the car.

Chris had suggested we go south. This would keep us away from the wide-open Carnegie Lake and Millstone River sections.  The wind was coming from the northwest, and the line of trees along the towpath were on the windward side for most of our trip.

That doesn't mean we didn't feel the wind. We did. Here, Tom and Chris look as if they're leaning into it:

We swerved around puddles. We ran through puddles. We got muddy. We pulverized hundreds of twigs. Chris hopped branches that rolled under his wheels. We passed runners. We passed walkers. We passed geese. Ed sped ahead. All the while, wind roared overhead, a constant drone that blended with traffic as we neared Trenton.

The farthest south I'd ever been on the Raritan side of the towpath was Mulberry Street in Trenton. That's as far as the path went back in 2009 when Chris and I attempted it.  This time, when we reached Mulberry, we found a D&R Canal State Park sign pointing across the street.

There, wide and clean, was an asphalt path that couldn't have been more than a few years old. It runs parallel to Route 1, adjacent to train tracks behind tall weeds and a wooden fence.

North of Perry Street, we could see the city center.

Then we were on North Broad, the Trenton War Memorial in the near distance.

This is where John and I had been. I'm sure it was the next street down where I took a picture of the same bend in the canal last week:

From last week:

Yep, definitely.

If the guys had wanted to go to the Trenton Coffee Roaster, I wouldn't have been able to get us there. They didn't. Instead, we turned around.

I stopped on the way back to look at the I-beams across the canal, built to support Route 1, and, as Ed suggested, a good agility test for kayakers who can barrel roll.

I was slowing at the Whitehead Road intersection when a gust of wind shoved me sideways. I didn't think that was possible on a mountain bike. The wind would prove me wrong a couple more times before we got back behind the trees.

When we reached Bakers Basin Road again, Chris and Ed started along the wrong side of the canal, along a grass path. Tom and I took the towpath. Ed turned around. I went to the top of the Route 1 overpass and looked down:

Chris (in the center, behind the trees) continued headstrong on the grass.

He must have followed the canal until it passed under Route 1. He disappeared, then re-emerged, lifting his bike over the barrier and riding the wrong way down the highway until he reached a path to the base of the overpass.

The overpass:

Tom and Ed had gone on and were far ahead of us when we got to the bottom. Chris and I hammered until we caught up near the Brearley House path.

I stopped one more time, on the south side of Washington Road, where cherry trees were in bloom.

In the end, the ride wasn't as tough nor as dangerous as I'd thought it would be. That having been said, I was sweating when the ride was over, and I felt as if I'd done something in those 21 miles.

When I got home, I wheeled Grover around to the back yard and hosed him down.