Stuck On a B Ride With You

Doonesbury, 6 February 1975

26 March 2018

Whenever Chris gets a captive audience he likes to go off-script. There are roads in Mercer County I've only ever been on when Chris has been dragging me around on a ride with no destination. Today was one of those days, and he took Plain Jim with us.

"There's a strong wind out of the northeast," I said.

"We should go that way first," Jim added.

"We'll head up to Jamesburg, to Mendoker's or something," Chris decided, and while I pondered whether or not I could fit an entire mini seven-layer cake in my cavernous jacket pocket, we started by going south.

We zigged and zagged, and if we were going to get all the way to Jamesburg it would take all day at this rate.

Jim asked, "How many times are we going to cross the Turnpike?"

I answered, "How many you got?" (This is the standard answer for how many Free Wheelers it takes to change a tube.)

The answer was the same for crossing Route 130. Jim busted out his Latin verse as we rode on the highway for a handful of feet in order to arrive at a brass plaque on a brick base on a cement slab at the edge of the highway in front of a torn-up field housing public works trucks.

This was a war memorial for some sort of parachute division. I had Jim pretend to read the explanatory text so that the photo would at least be a little bit interesting.

Now that we were on the non-Jameburg side of 130 again, Chris decided to take us up Woods Road.

At Chris' suggestion years ago, when the Perrineville Road bridge over the Turnpike was being enlarged, I'd taken a group down Woods Road and was met with a chorus of "never do that again."

Yet here we were. "The unpaved parts are better than the paved parts," Chris commented. He was right, but only just. Jim and I were both reminded of some road in Pennsylvania that Tom had taken us on that was so bad we had to walk. We didn't walk this one; in a few more years we'd need to.

When we came out of the worst of it I stopped to get a picture of a barn because I figured I'd never be back this way again.

Jim doubled back to document the road. I followed. This here is the better part. The dark stuff isn't wet; it's crater.

Pondering his post-ride blog, Jim mused, "I don't know whether to lead off with the war memorial or the potholes." 

"We're only 18 miles in," I reminded him. "There could be more."

By this point we had twenty into-the-wind miles on us, so instead of Mendoker's it was Wawa. We pulled in to see a tall, red-bearded, smooth-helmeted, sleeveless tank-topped, arm-warmered, sweat-pantsed and sweaty cyclist who was so focused on his sandwich that I couldn't tell if he was eating it or making out with it. We left him alone; clearly he didn't want to talk.

Standing outside got Chris' feet cold and mine too. We got ourselves back to Old York Road and surfed the tailwind all the way to Allentown.

While Jim will burst into song with little more provocation than a busy intersection, it takes a certain level of impending misery for us to start writing songs dedicated to our ride leaders. Tom earned one in 2012. Now it was, at long last, Chris' turn. He felt honored.

It took a few iterations and a discussion about scansion, and the first verse didn't really come together until we were halfway home. To the tune of "Stuck in the Middle with You" by Stealers Wheel, we give you this.

I don't know why I came here at all

My legs so tired I might even fall

I'm so scared that you'll drop me somewhere

At my GPS I'll just have to stare

Gravel to the left of me

Potholes to the right

Here I am

Stuck on a B ride with you

For the earworm, you're welcome.

Somewhere north of the Assunpink something started falling across the empty fields.  "This is not snow!" Jim declared.

I said, "I'm a reasonable man, MacArthur, so I know this isn't snow," and neither one of them had the faintest clue what I was talking about. Ingrates.

We warmed our toes in Bruno's, talking about bikes and cameras. I bought some chocolates because I'd been primed by the idea of Mendoker's, and who can resist a homemade Allfather's knockoff in a pretty little box and everything?

Inside the shop all is color.

Outside it was raining.

Riding Between the Snow

Imlaystown-Hightstown Road

24 March 2018

After the last snowstorm of winter, before the first snowstorm of spring, on a morning that was barely above freezing, Plain Jim gathered a passel of Hill Slugs at Six Mile Run along the D&R Canal for what he said would be a flat ride with one hill.

Treetops at Six Mile Run 

There were three little hills. There was the one on Homestead as we made our way west towards Route 206. There was the one at the northern end of Mountain View Road. There was the northern end of Mount Lucas as we headed back towards the canal. If I were to choose one as the advertised real hill it would have to be Mount Lucas because, first, you can't see it all at once, and second, it's always really annoying. The pavement always sucks too. Maybe that's why it's so annoying.

It was too cold to stop for pictures so I waited until the end, when we were a few hundred yards from the parking lot and I saw the downed tree in the canal.

There were buds on the branches. It must be spring!

At home the first front-yard crocuses were in bloom.

The next day I drove to Allentown to ride with Chris. I was the lowly B rider on this official B ride; the rest were B+ people with nowhere else to go. I hung in at the back until the fastboys got tired, after which I moved up to the middle.

Again it was cold, as Rebecca G demonstrated by snapping a normally supple stroopwafel in half. While she did this I snapped a picture of all the white pines that aren't on White Pine Road.

I squeezed a bike commute in on Monday. By Tuesday evening the next nor'easter had arrived, closing everything on Wednesday and leaving the roads wet on Thursday morning. Friday looked dry enough that Saturday would be a good day in the flatlands.

I wanted to ride the route we'd done two weeks ago to get the pictures I didn't stop for last time.

I was joined by five Slugs and a stiff wind out of the northwest.

There was still enough snow on the ground that I could get the pictures I wanted.

 Burlington Path Road, East of 539

Burlington Path Road, East of 539 

 Burlington Path Road, West of 539

Imlaystown-Hightstown Road, South of I-195 

Back home most of the snow is gone. The crocuses that had bloomed and been buried under snow have emerged unscathed. Out back the daffodils are getting ready to bloom.

On the road today we were making wisecracks about how many more snowstorms we'll get. I don't mind if there are more as long as the roads are clear by Saturday morning.

A Rough Crowd

 Mercer County Park East Picnic Area Bridge

11 March 2018

I don't mind losing an hour of sleep if it means we gain an hour of sunlight. In my mind, winter is over. On the ground, not so much.

Pete and I got all the way to Mercer County Park before there was any ice in our way, thin strips from snow on the opposite side of the road. Even that was melting. We went around it when we could, sloshed over it when we couldn't.

Ralph, who had also ridden in from home, said he'd encountered some, and potholes. I handed over the sign-in sheet and went to look at the Assunpink from the bridge in the woods. Prem had a flat anyway; there was time. I had to dismount and wobble in my cleats through frozen slush to get to the bridge.

Prem and Chris were still working on the flat. Pete griped to Rick W and Jeff about having to stand around in the cold. Andrew and The Jerry Foster, no strangers to Hill Slug banter, respectfully held back. When a second tube got pinched, Prem sent us on our way.

Nine were signed in but I'd lost one already.

We had a light tailwind as we moved counterclockwise along a route Tom had suggested in penance for bailing at the last minute. I'd had several versions of this route in my files anyway and dutifully copied one onto a hand-written cue sheet in case the GPS were to become confused. Tom uses different mapping software; it doesn't take much to mess up Son of the Piece of Shit.

Son Of did get a little kerfuffled on our way towards Robbinsville. He righted himself without my help. I mostly knew where I was going anyway, although I always get myself confused in that little neighborhood off of Richardson Road. It didn't help that we weren't following the old PFW Event arrows through there either.

At the far end of Hamilton I worried that the shade and depth of Iron Bridge would be a slushy nightmare. It was clear. The only casualty was a water bottle that bounced from its holder on the back of Ralph's fixie. While he retrieved it I took a picture of the fence along Ellisdale Road.

We turned east, through open farm fields and past a row of red maples that were starting to bud. I had to point them out, but I didn't stop for any pictures. None would have done justice to what we were riding through. All around us were rolling, snow-covered fields, last fall's cut corn stalks poking out in endless rows, interrupted by bare trees, silos, and barns poking into a clear blue sky, the blacktop road cutting through the middle of all of it.

When we finally stopped at Roy's, Jerry asked why I hadn't taken any pictures. "There were a few spots where I was thinking, 'picture' and I wondered why you didn't stop."

"I wanted to," I said, "but I don't think they would have worked. It was a panorama. I couldn't have gotten the whole thing." That, and I didn't want to interrupt the steady pace the guys were putting out. The Slug-to-Fastboy ratio* was too low for my constant photo stops.

So instead I took a picture at Roy's of icicles and water spilling past a gap in the gutter to a pool on the ground.

This was a tough crowd. There was a considerable amount of trash-talking other riders, none of whom are my regulars. You trash a regular Slug in absentia, you gotta go through me, and I will not be having any of it.

Jerry and Andrew decided that they wanted to take the second half a little more slowly and went off on their own, towards Old York Road.

The rest of us continued east, turning north into the Assunpink Wildlife Management Area. I was a little worried about ice and snow there. All the roads were clear, though, including the moonscaped descent out of the WMA. One benefit of leading a group of experienced riders who know the area is that I don't need to tell them to keep left down that hill, and I don't have to worry that anyone is going to do an endo either.

At Nurko Road two things happened. First, my cue sheet and the GPS diverged. The GPS told me to turn; my cue sheet had us going straight. I must have copied from the wrong version of this route. I turned, figuring I'd shave off a few miles and get the guys back to the park that much faster. The second thing was that Ralph got a flat.

We didn't think this would be a big deal. Ralph warned us that it would be: his rims are several inches deep and he'd have to muck around with valve extenders. He told us to leave. "We'll stay," I said. "Hill Slugs always wait." Nobody else objected.

Ralph didn't want any help as he emptied a water bottle-shaped tool container onto the grass. He needed a wrench to get the rear wheel off. "No quick-release," he said. But no derailleur fuss either. He dug around some more, with Jeff having seen where shiny things had fallen, and removed the top of the valve on the new tube. In its place he fastened an extender. The finished valve was something like six inches long.

"Don't let Trump see that," I said. He slid a protective patch of rubber over the stem and secured it by the valve. There were some suggestive murmurs about that, and Ralph said "come on, baby," as he wiggled the long stem down into the deep rim.

We got a little spread out on Windsor Road, with Chris, Rick, and Ralph in front and me, Pete, and Jeff in the back. We weren't that far behind really, but it was enough that we three didn't make the light at Route 130. The guys in front didn't wait.

Hill Slugs wait. Fastboys don't.

Pete and I didn't go back with Jeff to the East Picnic Area. We turned toward the park road instead, facing the usual park headwind, the ice melted now into stripes of water.

There was enough salt on Kermit that I gave the bike a gentle misting and toweled him dry.

It's now 6:00 p.m. and the sun is high in the sky. We have another hour til sunset. I'm ready to quit Spinning entirely and commit to bike commuting until November. But there's more snow in the forecast, because of course there is.



(*The ideal Hill Slug-to-Fastboy ratio is inexpressible because one can't divide by zero.)

It's Not the Hills, It's the Wind

Wertsville Road at Rileyville Road

7 March 2018

"I don't wanna say this too loudly," Pete murmured, having ridden in from the north, "but I think I had a tailwind." Louder, he said, "When you hock a loogie to the side and it stays with you, you know there's a problem."

Yeah, there was a headwind all right. I'd been in it with Linda, Ricky, and Jim for the ride from home to Twin Pines. Two days ago a nor'easter toppled trees and power lines. The wind stuck around for an extra day. Today was calmer, with gusts of only 25 mph.

Andrew, Jeff, Richard, Chris, and a visitor invited by Linda rounded the group out to ten. "We're going to Flemington," I told them. "We're going to have a headwind the whole way up and a tailwind on the way back."  Jim volunteered to sweep, although I didn't believe for a minute that I'd be ahead of him once we got into the hills.

I said that we'd have mostly rollers, and that the wind was going to be the bigger problem, and with that we were off into it.

Our warm-up hill was at the northern end of Pennington-Rocky Hill Road. We got ourselves well spread out. Jim kept to the back with Linda and the visitor. At the top of the road we waited.

"That guy is having a hard time," somebody said. Someone else added that the visitor said he could push 600 to 800 watts in spin class. I've only ever hit above 500 in ten second bursts, and never more than once in a class, if I even try to get that high. But a 45-minute spin class with a flywheel isn't a near-freezing road ride with a freewheel and a 25 mph headwind. So we waited.

We saw Jim's helmet bobbing up the crest of the hill. He appeared, by himself, grinning. "They didn't make it so I ate 'em," he chirped. When we were finished laughing we turned left for the descent into Hopewell.

For the first time my GPS didn't get itself lost as we went through town and up Greenwood. "All the way to the end," I said, and Jim groused about what my definition of rollers might encompass. "Never believe a ride leader," I said.

We passed houses running on generators, saw uprooted trees, and noticed a handful of power lines that were not where they should have been. At the top of the mountain we passed a house with half a dozen fire trucks in front of it.

The wind was pushing away the clouds on Wertsville Road.

I let the guys get ahead of me as I paused near Losey to take a picture of my favorite lone tree there.

More headwind, open fields, rollers, and then we were in Flemington at Factory Fuel. We were just about the only ones there. The factory space behind the coffee house, usually a farmers' market, was empty.

What took us forever to get to took us no time to return from. The tailwind pushed us to Manners Road, where I stopped for a picture, as I usually do. I didn't expect much this time, the sun being in the wrong spot and the Sourland Mountain an indistinct gray blob. One of them came out well enough to share.

Jeff hung back with me for both of my Manners stops, the second one being at the bottom of the hill, where the fields on either side look as if they should be posters for an Americana that we imagine flyover country to be.

We went sideways up the mountain: Rileyville to Saddle Shop to Runyon Mill to Orchard to Linvale. Chris complained about the crosswind, stronger now than it had been this morning, the whole way. Although we could have kept the tailwind if we'd stayed on Rileyville, there wasn't a one of us who wanted to climb that hill.

Andrew left us when we reached 518.

On Stony Brook there was a situation that the local electric company hadn't gotten to yet.

We rode right under it, of course.

I got a few shots of the stream while I was at it.

In the summer all of this is hidden.

Pete turned off for home in Pennington.

We finished the ride with six of the ten we'd started with. My reputation is intact.

When I got home, Moxie supervised as I photographed the sign-in sheet with my phone and sent it on to Ken W to be recorded.

Outside our first crocus was in bloom.

Three days later it's covered in six inches of wet, heavy snow. I ventured out three times during and after the storm to shake the snow off of four evergreens in the back yard, doing my best to keep the pitch pine from permanently pitching over and the three arbor vitae from being arbor mortis.

Spring officially begins in two weeks. We set our clocks ahead this weekend. If you're in New Jersey don't look out the window right now.