Winter Sky*
17 December 2017
Pete G, fresh off of knee surgery and serving as an impromptu scout, gave us the all-clear for a Sunday road ride. I put on my warmest everything, covered the lens of my new camera** with aluminum foil, and headed to Pennington on Gonzo with Jim.
There was enough salt on the road to turn our tires white within the first mile. Joe M had called in advance to warn us of black ice in the Twin Pines parking lot. When we arrived half an hour later it was mostly gone.
I didn't have a route in mind other than to stay off the always-icier mountain. I started with the old Friday night C+ route with Jim, Joe, Chris, Andrew, Dave H, Pete, and Ricky.
I stopped on Van Kirk to take pictures of the stream, the snow, and the distant herd of cattle. What I thought was my glasses fogging up turned out to be my gloved fumble-fingers having nudged the exposure dial to something like 1/8 of a second. The pictures, overexposed beyond repair, have a surreal quality to them, so here they are:
Fortunately, Jim posted to his blog within hours of the ride's end. I stole one of his photos:
Noticing the erroneous exposure time only when I stopped again on Titus Mill Road near Route 31. This is the Stony Brook, partially frozen.
By now I'd decided to go to Boro Bean in Hopewell. My picture stop put me far behind the group. Instead of waiting for me at the Route 31 light, every Slug but Jim turned left. I'd been considering a right turn, which would have put us on Route 654 a lot sooner. This was a rare situation in which I didn't Sprague anyone only because I wasn't sure how safe Route 31 would have been. I turned left with everyone else and yelled at them instead.
I could have taken revenge by turning from Woosamonsa onto Poor Farm. I'd promised no big hills, though, I was riding a tank of a bike, and I'm sure Pete would have murdered me on the spot. We stayed on Woosamonsa, where I got off a few good scenic shots.
The Slugs eventually had to suffer for their left turn. I led them all the way up Bear Tavern to Route 518, and from there we climbed the Woodsville double-humper. Jim complained about the Woosamonsa and Woodsville descents. He has to complain about something. It's how we know he's happy. (He's thinking, "Shut up. I hate you" right now.)
Pete, having spent as much time as his knee would allow, had peeled off at Burd Road. The rest of us piled into Boro Bean, where a server asked Andrew if he wanted room for milk in his cafe au lait and Dave melted into the corner easy chair.
From there we went directly back to Pennington; it was less than ten miles. Ricky stayed with me and Jim nearly all of the way back to my house.
On the way, Jim let it be known that I'd managed to pack 2000 feet of climbing into the group's 35 miles.
Maybe next time y'all will wait for the leader.
My new camera has a 40x optical zoom. I tried it out on the squirrel's nest in the oak tree in my front yard.
Wow.
If I don't scratch the lens and I keep an eye on the exposure time I might just be able to do something interesting.
(**I wound up sending the first new camera back; it had no manual shutter capability, which wasn't mentioned at all in the online description. Instead I have a newer version of the past two Canon PowerShots. It has a video record button where the power button used to be. You can bet I hit the wrong one at least four times during the ride.)
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