Cocoluxe: The Curse is Broken

Larison Road, near the Black River Wildlife Management Area, Chester, NJ 

30 July 2016

Hey!  Tom led a ride today and I was on it and Blake was on it and Jack H was on it and nothing bad happened! We didn't even get rained on! The curse is broken!

We started in Peapack-Gladstone, up the road from Cocoluxe (I bought my pastries before the ride and placed them gently in a cooler).

Tom said he was running his regular route in reverse. I have maybe half a clue of my whereabouts up in the top end of Somerset County, no clue at all in Morris, and it's been a year since I'd been up this way. I recognized an old schoolhouse in Peapack and a road name here and there.

If I've ever been on Larison Road in Chester, I don't remember this view:

 Storms were in the forecast for the afternoon, but the sky looked like this for the first 30 miles:

When we crossed into Hunterdon County, I knew where we were again. Valley Brook Road, where we would soon be upon the Antler House:

I zoomed in on a horse, who didn't seem to mind posing one bit:

Farther along Valley Brook, before the 450-foot drop into Califon:

Tom, in his inimitable evilness, did not take us directly into Califon. No, he wanted to add more hills before our break at 30 miles.

He did promise that the worst hills were over with, but when we veered left instead of right out of Califon at Academy Street, I knew better than he what we were in for. There's a reason I've only ever veered left once.  He said something about "ripping off the Band-Aid," which is exactly what I say when I'm about to do something cruel.

He rewarded us with a 5-mile descent, down Guinea Hollow

and Rockaway (where I had to stop at the Gingerbread House, for sale, still, or again):

Notice how it's clouding up above us.

Tom didn't remember the climb from Rockaway to Oldwick on Potterstown Road either.

And then we had those two annoying humps on Vliettown on our way to the bottom half of Black River Road. Tom and I were expecting hay bales at the bottom, but it's all soybeans this year.

The trip back to Peapack was indeed easier than the trip out. Also, we only had 15 miles left.

To get back to Peapack, from Black River Road, we took the long slog on Pottersville Road. The last time I went this direction was when the trees were full of cicadas. I did find some hay bales along the way.

The air was so humid that, even after we'd cooled down and packed our bikes away, and were simply standing in the parking lot under clouds, I was still dripping sweat.

The drive home took an hour. First it got a little dark. Then there were a few drops of rain. By the time I was within a few miles from home, it was coming down so hard that the traveling speed on Route 1 was about 25 miles per hour.

This is what the driveway looked like two hours later, as the rain continued to pour down, when I went to fetch Jack from an eye exam.

Water was slowly flowing across our screened porch at the back of the house. My neighbor's yard was flooded. I hadn't seen this much water since tropical storms Irene and Bill swept through in 2011. There was so much water on Princeton Pike that it was starting to flood at the top of the hill. I had to reroute at the bottom because the Little Shabakunk Creek was overflowing into the road. I got to Jack eventually, and home again. At least all the sap and bird poop has now been washed off of the car.

Here's where I think we went today. I'm two miles off, but it's close enough.  (Thanks for the corrections, Tom!)