Mountain View Road, Warren County
30 May 2016
Synapse Voodoo
Tom didn't think he'd have any more takers for his "Hot and Hilly" ride into Warren County. He arrived at my house at little before 7:30 a.m. on Saturday, and I drove us up to Frenchtown.
Blake was in the lot when we arrived. He'd recently converted his front chain rings to a compact and was liking the spin.
We ducked into the Bridge Cafe first. I had my eyes on a fruit smoothie for after the trip.
"Today's the first day I haven't had to think about what to wear," Tom said.
"Today's my first hot ride on the new Miss Piggy," I said, sweating all over the ginormous top tube.
First, we climbed out of the Delaware River watershed. Next we coasted towards Spruce Run Reservoir. Then we turned left and the real hills started. I dropped into my granny gear and stayed there for a while. I do that when I'm above Route 78 and I don't know what's next.
We crossed what I thought was the Musconetcong (it was Spruce Run), and I went into full climbing mentality, which is the same mindset I have at mile 70 in a century, only in a much smaller gear: just pedal.
The air had gone from warm to hot. Hazy, hot, and humid. Welcome to July. Wasn't it October last week?
We began a descent on Dutch Hill. The blacktop was uneven, there was a steep grade, and the road had a few sharp turns. I feathered the brakes.
From our earliest days, we've heard stories about tires popping off of rims that have been overheated by brakes. We learn to feather the brakes -- grip gently, let go, grip gently, let go -- on steep descents, and, while our rims get hot, we keep our tires on.
Thhp. Thhp. Thhp.
Dang. Sounds like my front wheel is out of true.
Thhp. Thhp. Thhp. Pfft!
"Flat!"
Tom was already gone around the next bend. Blake was behind me, feathering his brakes. "What's wrong?"
"Flat, I think," I said. But both tires were rock solid. I checked the spokes. Solid. I gave the front wheel a spin and saw a bleb in the tire. I must have heard it pop out of the rim. I didn't want to risk shredding the tire if the tube were to explode. I also wasn't keen on losing control on a descent. I walked, maybe 50 meters, to the bottom of the hill.
"Let's let the rim cool down first," I suggested. We did that, let the air out (at which point the tire re-seated itself) and filled the tube.
I know at least one of you out there is yelling "disc brakes!" at your screen. I can't hear you.
Within a couple of miles, the front tire went flat. Lesson learned. Change the tube.
We turned onto Shoddy Mill, which would be the best road name of the day.
Ever notice that all the bridges in New Jersey look the same when I take pictures of them?
I was geographically confused. If we'd already crossed the Musky, what river was this? I asked a passer by. "The Musconetcong," she smiled. "Where are you coming from?"
"Frenchtown. I coulda sworn we crossed this already."
"You could have," she offered. I stayed confused, but, nevertheless, now we really were in Warren County.
More climbing, and then we hit the edge of Washington Township. Blake was with us, and then he wasn't. Tom and I doubled back. He was fussing with his chain.
"Something's wrong with the derailleur," he said. We were a short block from our rest stop, so he ground the gears until we got there.
"That's not right," I said. The front derailleur was hidden behind the big chain ring. "It should be up and parallel," I said. I'd been so anal about positioning mine on Rowlf that the image is burned into my mind. That, and the derailleur came with a little sticker attached to it that served as the outline for the chain ring.
When I went to loosen the screw holding the derailleur in, I found that it was already loose. The derailleur cable was slack, but there was still too much tension on for us to maneuver the derailleur into place. We let the cable out and tried again.
"It looks like the whole thing slipped down the tube," I said.
"No, they lowered it for the smaller ring," Tom replied. This led to the realization that, Blake's frame being titanium, we didn't have a torque wrench that we'd need if we were to move the clamp and tighten it again properly. Something about titanium and aluminum not playing well together.
Tom and Blake fiddled with it some more and then gave up.
We bought some snacks and found a shady patch at the back of the building, facing a side street and an abandoned bike shop. Blake made some calls. I took pictures.
We worked out the logistics: Tom would take Blake's car keys while Blake waited to find out if his wife could pick him up (she was in the middle of a graduation ceremony with her phone off). Tom and I would ride the 23 miles back to Frenchtown and call Blake when we got there. Depending on time (I had to be cleaned up and driving to Philly by 4:30), I'd either follow Tom back to Washington, where we'd hand over Blake's car then drive straight down Route 31, or, if there wasn't time for that, I'd take Tom's bike home with me and Blake would drive him back to my house, where he could get his bike and his car.
Tom plans routes like I do: We put the tough stuff before the rest stop, and we put the rest stop more than halfway into the ride. Our trip back to Frenchtown seemed to take fifteen minutes.
We rode along Mountain View Road, on the ridge north of Asbury. "I've been here before," I declared. "I took a picture somewhere along here."
I found a good spot, not the same spot as last time, and dismounted. "Sorry, Blake."
As we approached a turn, I recognized the spot where I took the picture the last time we were here.
I stopped one more time, on Butler Road:
Then came Tunnel Road. At 2.7 miles with a 5-ish percent grade, half in the shade, it's the easiest way out of Bloomsbury towards the Delaware River. "I'll text Blake when we get to the top," I said. "From there it's, like, what, twenty minutes?"
We were less than a mile into the hill, past the place we saw the bear last time, when Tom's phone rang. "Must be Blake," he said. "I'm gonna keep going," I told him.
I heard my phone ring. Figuring it was Blake and that Tom had called him back by now, I kept going.
My visual memory of Tunnel Road isn't very good. I'm always on it at the end of a ride, tired. This time, I tried to pay attention. I hadn't checked my odometer at the start, and I didn't look during the climb either. Each time the road turned, I thought I was near the top, and I wasn't. I wound up counting mailbox numbers instead. Now I know that you have to get into the 400s before you can see the stop sign.
A group of half a dozen riders pulled up to the intersection while I was waiting for Tom, who arrived having been unable to reach Blake. We used my phone instead. Blake's wife was on her way and was about half an hour out.
"You know we're a curse," I said. "We've got some kind of voodoo. When we ride together, something always happens to someone else. It's our bikes, two Synapses." I then went on to concoct a completely improbably scientific explanation, which was far more interesting than Tom's: "Random stuff happens."
We took our time cleaning up and packing the car, figuring Blake would show up any minute. Instead, the group we'd met pulled in, followed shortly thereafter by Michael H, and then by Doctor Lynn and Bill. So we had a good time catching up on each other's lives. Michael had found a new rest stop, The Asbury Coffee Mill, to replace the defunct Bloomsbury General Store. "We'll try it next time," Tom said.
Tom talked to Blake again. He was too far out still for us to wait, so we took his keys to the cafe and bought fruit smoothies for the ride home.
Blake's wife and daughter did show up, eventually, and the three of them drove back to Frenchtown and had ice cream.
Vintage Run
I wasn't into another metric century after yesterday's hilly ride, so rather than bike from home, I drove to Allentown to meet John K and his JDRF charity ride trainees. John knew that I was bringing Rowlf, so he had his vintage Serotta with him. The two weigh about the same.
John took this picture of our vintage machines:
Here's four of the five of us at Baird Park:
There was quite the talent spread among riders. John, who is a good coach, stayed with the slowest one while the rest of us would dart ahead to the next intersection, stop, sweat, and talk. When we got near to where the flagging rider lived, she cried uncle and pedaled home. The fastest of the bunch went off ahead shortly after that.
This intersection, where Yellow Meeting House meets Route 526, is one I've never really paid attention to before.
On 526, closer to Allentown:
At the end of the ride, the three of us stopped at Bruno's for fruit smoothies. I showed (what's his first name?) Bruno my Colnago, "my winter project." He showed me his winter project, a restored 1970s Raleigh with all the original parts.
At the start of the ride, John was walking around Rowlf, snapping pictures right and left. I didn't know they'd wind up on Facebook in the afternoon. I stole them and am posting them here:
He wrote, "How to spare a few ounces of metal without affecting strength of the structure, and look cool doing it!" (I'm just not gonna ride this bike in the rain.)
John posted, "In an old Little Rascals episode, Alfalfa told Miss Crabtree that she was 'prettier than a new haircut!' That goes for this bike too!"
John's comment for this one: "OK kids, do you see that shiny sparkly stuff? It’s called “chrome.” It’s a “metal.” It’s from a time when bikes didn’t strive to look like Stealth Fighters. (Like!)
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