Uphill and Into the Wind

Senator Stout Road near Alexandria

3 December 2016

The route was based on an old one, tweaked last night to avoid steep climbs, because it's December so fuck it. 

I drag the Slugs up to Homestead General Store at least once per year. We stop by more than that, though, because Tom and Blake are fond of the place as well. I'm pretty sure that I've never hauled a group up there in December.

Eight of us made the trip. The wind, out of the northwest, in the double digits and gusting twice as hard, was a bonus that, somehow, nobody got around to blaming me for.  I suppose this is because there are two things that are certain on a Hill Slug ride: hills and wind. Nobody is going to fault me for the obvious. They know what they're getting into.

Our first stretch was on level ground, along Route 29 and Lower Creek Road.  Lower Creek is lined with anti-PennEast signs, and I happened to see someone coming out of one of those houses. I stopped for a minute to talk to him about battle plans.

We started climbing after going through the Green Sergeants covered bridge.

It was simple, dumb luck that the roads I chose for climbing were through dense tree cover. We barely felt the wind at all. Not until we got to the top of the ridge, as we headed west, south of Pittstown, did the wind hit us sideways. It was colder up there, too.

Rajesh looked at the sky to our west and said it looked foreboding. "Sky says, 'summer's over, bitches!'" I replied. I'm only now starting to admit that fall happened.  That I'd planned a 50-mile ride in the hills above Frenchtown in December is testament to my denial.

Somewhere up on the ridge, Andrew and I got to talking politics. He said we're witnessing the end of democracy. I wondered if it hasn't been eroding for a while now. "When," I asked "did we hit peak democracy? It's like peak oil: you don't know till you've gone past it." We're in kleptocratic oligarchy territory now.

The patchy cloud cover and the bare trees on the hills to the west made for a rare contrast. I stopped on Oak Summit Road for a picture.

Farther along, near where Senator Stout meets Hog Hollow, was a field of dead sunflowers. I had to stop again.

The Delaware River, on the Milford side of the bridge to Upper Black Eddy:

The Delaware Canal, more mud than water, behind the Homestead General Store:

Homestead General Store's trellis has been cleared of vines and the chairs have been put up on the tables for the winter.

Inside was crowded and toasty-warm. I bought coffee and a muffin, my usual fare, plus a chocolate chocolate chip cookie to take home and share with Jack.

The eight of us took up three tables.

"We're taking Route 29 back, aren't we?" somebody asked.

"Is that what you guys wanna do?"

"Yes," they all said.

Another true thing about Hill Slug rides: Just because there's a hill doesn't mean we have to climb it.

We agreed that we should get back into the hills at Stockton rather than deal with traffic on 29 between there and Lambertville. Tom suggested we go on Lower Creek again. An unspoken rule about ride routes is that one should never take the same road twice in a ride, especially not in the same direction. "We'll forgive you," he said.

So we hammered down along the river for 15 miles, pushed by a righteous tailwind.

Back on Lower Creek, I stopped to take pictures of the anti-PennEast signs. The bastards have altered the route, again, this time taking out even more of Lower Creek Road and a larger chunk of an organic farm (the owners of which have been vocal opponents of the pipeline -- hmm...).

Lower Creek is a one-lane road with no shoulder. On one side is the Wickecheoke, a stream that has the highest protection the state can give it. The bank is short and steep. It is surrounded on all sides by forests and farms. And this is where the pipe would cross:

Because of the route changes, FERC has opened up the comment period again. It closes on Monday. This time around, I'm collaborating on comments written by the NJ Sierra Club staff. The route might have changed a little, but our overall message is still the same: PennEast cannot prove that this pipeline is necessary; the environmental damage would be irreparable and insurmountable; and PennEast has yet to obtain data, necessary for permits, from the 70% of NJ properties whose owners have deemed off-limits to surveyors.

We had one more real hill to climb on Covered Bridge Road, and a couple of little rollers after that. Then it was all downhill on Brookville Hollow. We thought we'd lost Tom on the way, but it turned out that he'd merely stopped for a picture of the clouds over a farm field.

In the parking lot, we hung out and talked about next weekend. It's supposed to turn cold. I never make firm plans until a couple of days before the weekend, but it looks as if we might be taking shelter on the Lawrence-Hopewell Trail. Watch this space.

The chocolate chocolate-chip cookie never made it out of Lambertville. I guess I'll have to buy two next time. Or three.