Near the Middle of Autumn

Near Etra Park, Hightstown, NJ

4 November 2017

After a handful of unseasonably warm days, this morning finally felt like fall. Not early November, though, but cold enough that our arms and legs were covered and stayed that way.

Tom had planned a ride from Etra and offered a few of us extra miles from his house. Jim and I took him up on it.  We waited around the park. We had plenty of time for pictures.

Nobody else showed up. We went in a counterclockwise circle, with a tailwind through Allentown,  then turned east on Burlington Path. I'd never stopped there for pictures before.

Our southernmost point was at the rest stop, a small deli called One Stop Shop at the corner of Stump Tavern and Route 539. I don't know if I've been down there before. My big wall map is temporarily packed away until our renovations are finished. Anyway, the coffee was pretty good for a Pinelands deli. The muffins, prepackaged, were stale though. The place gets points for having two picnic tables and for letting us use the bathroom.

We were directly into the wind when we passed the Butterfly Bogs Wildlife Management Area.

The Pinelands aren't known for fall color during a good year. This isn't a good year. We had a dry stretch at the end of the summer, and leaves had started to fall even then. By the time October ended a lot of trees were already bare.

A little oak by the shore looked pretty impressive, though, especially for an oak:

A Tom ride wouldn't be a Tom ride without a closed bridge and some dirt to get past. He didn't disappoint. We saw the road closure signs well before we arrived at the bridge. The machinery was too far away for us to tell if we could get across.

Tom and I stopped after we all went around the barrier. Jim went ahead, walking his bike through gravel and dry mud.

I think Tom and I saw the little footbridge at the same time.

"Um, no." I said. "How about no? Does no work for you?" Tom was halfway through agreeing with me when Jim began to walk across it, bouncing on it a little to see how well it would take his weight.

So we followed him. "At least it'll scuff up my new cleats," I said. New cleats (and new shoes, after 7 years) are great except for the stiffness in clipping out. A little mucking up usually does the trick.

I laughed when I got close enough to the ramp to see what was under it.

I walked Kermit over without even putting my cleat covers on.  I was the first to the other side.  "Watch yourselves," I said. "You don't want to be emasculated." There were loose steel wires sticking straight up. I pondered aloud a title for the blog: "In which I ride home with two eunuchs."

They both climbed down without impaling themselves.

Jim had leaned Tom's bike against a backhoe, getting a dollop of white grease on the front pack in the process.

I went along through the dirt and gravel while they rummaged around the site for something suitable to remove the goop.

What little climbing we had to do Tom had saved for the end, as we rode through Millstone. At least we had a tailwind some of the time.

The extra miles put us in metric century territory, which is just as well, because we might be rained out tomorrow. I have to get the house back in order anyway. I'm tired of shimmying sideways through stacks of furniture.