The End of the Canal

The End of the D&R Canal, New Brunswick

15 January 2017

Some things you have to see because they're there.

I took Grover and my new bionic ears up to Blackwells Mills to meet Tom and Pete for a ride to the northern end of the Delaware and Raritan Canal towpath.

Pete looked at my tires and Tom's tires and said, "You know I'm not one to give bike advice, right?"

"Uh huh."

"You guys gotta get slicks." Especially me, since I'm never going to be bouncing around in the woods again.  [Done. Cheap, but the wire bead is gonna make my knuckles bleed.]

This is the first time I've taken my new ears on a bike ride, my audiologist having assured me that I won't destroy them with my sweat. Not that we were going to get sweaty this morning, with the temperature barely above freezing and a noticeable breeze coming at us from the northwest.

Yesterday's dusting of snow and freezing rain left a shallow, crunchy crust on the towpath.

And damn, that crust is loud under wide tires! How do you people stand it?  I could hear Tom and Pete nattering away about satellites, both of them being satellite programmers, but I couldn't catch the details over the crusty din. 

A few miles into the ride, my right hearing aid battery decided to quit, signalling with a cascade of tones every few seconds, which is impossible to ignore. I think Pete was impressed with how fast I can change a pair of batteries (if one goes, the other is about to) under freezing temperatures. I used the opportunity to snap a few pictures, since I had my lobster gloves off anyway.

At South Bound Brook, the Raritan curves north and I-287 curves south. The towpath goes under the highway twice. I stopped under the first bridge to gawk at this graffiti. That's one steady hand that must have painted this from a boat.

At Landing Lane in New Brunswick, the curated crushed shale gave way to single track for about a quarter mile.  And then, there it was, the end of the line:

Even Pete took a picture.

On the way back, we spotted some ducks in the river. We didn't know what they were, so I took a couple of pictures in order to figure them out later.

 

Buffleheads. They were moving fast along the river. A good close-up was impossible.

Where the Millstone meets the Raritan, we stopped for a quick rest.  The Millstone is left center; the Raritan is just off center above the spillway:

I walked back to try to see everything at once: the canal (left), the towpath with Tom and Pete (center), the Millstone (center right) and the Raritan (right):

By now the snow had melted and we were turning ourselves red-brown from Brunswick shale mud. We weren't plastered as badly as two weeks ago, but I still had to put Grover under the hose before I brought him inside.

So.  It took me seventeen years to ride the entire Delaware and Raritan Canal towpath. "For the amount of time I've been riding," Tom said yesterday, "there's still so much of New Jersey I haven't seen." 

This is as good a time as any to announce that the theme for the Hill Slugs and the Insane Bike Posse in 2017 will be Weird New Jersey. We've been brainstorming already. Come along!