Oomphless, Grumpy, Pinelands, Wind

Hawkin Road, Red Lion, NJ

15 May 2017

Sunday continued the trend of the core group of Slugs being unable to ride together. Plain Jim had to be somewhere in the early afternoon. Snakehead was who knows where. Pete and Ricky, the newest of the Slugs, weren't in the parking lot of the Mansfield Township park either.

Tom and Jack H were, though, when I pulled into the gravel drive with a good ten minutes to spare. They were talking to a cop.

"You guys in trouble already?" I asked.

"We're giving him bike advice."

That was an easy way to fill ten minutes.

The forecast was for partly cloudy skies, a stiff wind out of the west, and a decent chance of getting wet if we stayed out past 2:00.

Tom took us south, west of Fort Dix, and into the Pinelands. We stopped for water at the Ranger's station in Lebanon Brendan Byrne State Forest. There, we met a retiree who travels around the country in an RV. We talked about ticks, and about a camping trip where his dog got stoned on a hiker's discarded pot brownie.

From there we went to Chatsworth. The general store there, known as "Buzby's," has been around since 1865. Its owner is in bad health and has been trying to sell the place for years. It's closing for good in mid-June. It was closed when we got there, too, because we were there on a Sunday.

Across the street from the store is a cutesy totem pole.

Then we headed into the wind for ten miles. I hadn't been feeling particularly strong up to this point, and now grumpiness was setting in. I kept it to myself.

At Nixon's General Store in Pumpernickel Tabernacle, we ran into Mary and Tru, randonneurs out for "only" a century (slackers!).

Tru immediately checked me for pollen. I was clean.  They had about as many miles left to go as we did. They went north; we went northwest.

We'd been in the Pinleands for much of the ride, but I hadn't stopped for any pictures. We'd passed a lot of cinnamon ferns (the center, spore-bearing fronds do look like cinnamon), so when a small creek crossed Hawkin Road in Red Lion, I stopped for some pictures.

There's a bridge out on Smithville Road in the middle of Smithville. I was surprised that Tom didn't go plowing on through. "When I know there's a bridge out, I plan for it," he said, and we turned left onto Railroad.

I hadn't been on Railroad in years, not since the days when Chris led rides out of Bordentown. It's a quiet little road, covered in trees, with the Rancocas Creek down to the right. On the left, the woods give way to a landfill, and then we were in the center of Mount Holly.

Then we turned east again and caught some tailwind. We didn't have many of these stretches.

We turned back onto Smithville Road, where I had to stop for some cows.

I talked to them, and they turned toward me.

Maybe they wanted some grass from my side of the fence.

I didn't give them any; the guys were waiting down the road.

We stopped again at the Olde World Bakery in Smithville. There were only six miles to go after that, but even after the rest I didn't get my energy back.

I drove home in the sun on I-295. From Crosswicks I could see a thick, gray storm cell hanging over Mercer County, and my house was under it.