Happy to Be Finally Out of the House
19 June 2018
When I have big ideas I run it by the Hill Slug regulars first. If what I have in mind doesn't pass muster with them it doesn't turn into a route.
Ricky was up for a long ride. Jack H was too. Jim and Tom, not so much. The first route I came up with didn't last a day before I panned it. Tom rescued me with one he'd done last year. I meant to modify it only a little, keeping it down to 50 miles. When I was finished it was 62, and 80 from my house.
Ricky and Pete R registered for the ride. Jack H said he'd ride in from home and meet me at my house. Tom said he'd ride part of the way with me. Ricky said he'd ride to the park from home and cut out on the way back.
This is a very long way of explaining that, given enough advance notice, I'll try to accommodate people, especially if I've been riding with them for the better part of a decade. When I get a text at 6:30 a.m. the day of the ride however, I'm not so easy-going.
I woke to a message from someone I've never ridden with. A metric century didn't fit with this person's training regimen; a 40-mile ride was more to this person's liking. Would I be able to modify my route?
How about no? Does no work for you? Because it's 6:30 a.m., I just woke up, the ride starts at 8:30, and I'm leaving home at 7:50 to get there. Between now and then I need to get dressed, cover myself in sun-block, feed the cats, scoop their poop, hang from the inversion table, and eat breakfast. In that order.
I just about got all that done in time. Jack H, having planned for 10 miles between his house in New Hope and mine, got here in 7.
I was pleasantly surprised to see Jim at the park. I'd been nudging him to get past the 50-mile wall by riding 62 today. Not quite ready for that, he'd been rescued by Tom, who invited him to start from his house and do the 50-mile version.
Pete R, the only one who had driven over, seemed determined to ride over next time. He gets a pass because he's new to the area and hadn't yet heard of njbikemap.com .
We had about as perfect a day possible for mid-June as we headed south towards Jackson. There wasn't enough wind to bother us in any direction. We had long stretches without turns. We were moving at the top end of the pace I'd promised. Nobody seemed to mind.
Tom and Jim split of exactly where my comfort with the roads ended. As soon as they left I felt alone in the wilderness. We were on Stump Tavern Road, west of Plumsted, south of Cassville, east of Jackson, in the Pinelands. The rest stop was at the One Stop Shop, where Stump Tavern meets 571. Imagine the Clarksburg Deli, but with real food and a clean bathroom.
As I was wandering towards the cold drinks I noticed, hanging on a peg board, not one, but two, packs of telephone extension cords, the long, flat kind we used to use to connect a phone in one room to a jack in the next. From the looks of the price tags, these things had probably been hanging there since Poppy Bush was president.
Ricky asked if I was going on Jim's Sunday recovery ride. I admitted I hadn't even looked at the Sunday calendar. I mentioned that I usually take the Colnago on recovery rides. "I haven't seen that one yet," he said. Rowlf hasn't been out all year.
I hadn't planned a second rest stop, but it was hot enough that I'd need more water, and three of us would be putting in more than 70 miles. When we reached the intersection of Millstone and Baird we turned into the little strip mall there. I don't think I've ever been inside Vesuvio's. They were bike-friendly: they let me fill my water bottle with ice from the soda machine, even offering to fill it behind the counter. They let us sit outside even though none of us bought anything.
The topic was ice cream. Jack H apologized, knowing I'd been off the stuff for the winter.
"No problem," I said. "We started again in Maine." For Jack H there is no ice cream off-season.
"You know what's better than ice cream?" Pete R asked. "Take a banana and put it in the freezer. It's just like ice cream."
"No, it isn't," Jack and I both said.
Ricky said, "I just have ice cream."
That's one of the many things I like about the Slug regulars. They're not afraid to eat crap and they're not ashamed of it either. Hell, if this had been a Wawa and had Jim been with us, a large apple fritter would have been keeping him company.
It was then that I realized I hadn't taken any pictures yet.
And I didn't take any more for the rest of the trip back to the park. Ricky had left us for home after the Millstone break.
When we reached Route 130 I felt a cramp coming on. I rummaged around for a salt tablet. Pete R offered me a piece of banana instead.
"Thanks," I told him. "I've been doing 80 miles on a peanut butter sandwich."
Jack and I rode with Pete back to the parking lot so that Jack could fill his water bottles. I didn't bother because I only had 8 miles to go. I gobbled some Shot Bloks instead.
While we were standing there, someone approached who turned out to be Rajesh in civilian clothing. He went to hug me: "How are you?"
"Sweaty," I said. He hugged me anyway.
"How are your shorts?"
That got us into a conversation about saddles and, from there, Raj's life as a randonneur. He doesn't get out much, but when he does, he's on his bike for 250 miles.
Not me. I know how I feel after only 100: slightly smug and slightly off.
Speaking of 100, I was feeling pretty good when we got back to my house. I told Jack I'd ride back to Pennsylvania with him if he'd show me the Trenton Makes bridge on the way. I ran into the house to fill my water bottle and down a glass of orange juice.
We followed Princeton Pike all the way into Trenton. At Spruce Street Jack said, "When there's traffic I hop onto the sidewalk."
I followed him as we rode on and off the road, cutting into driveways, hopping curbs, and reaching a tree-lined street near the State House. The homes were brick and boarded up. "This used to be the nice part of town," Jack lamented. As we crossed over cobblestones he pointed out where the big movie theaters used to be.
We passed the War Memorial and the canal, and then there I was, riding my bike on the Trenton Makes bridge.
Jack, who doesn't like to stop, encouraged me to take more than one picture.
He pointed north. "That's called the Falls," he said. It's the dividing line between the upper and lower Delaware River.
"Get a picture of the State House," he suggested.
From the water line on the cement bank it looked like low tide.
Jack turned uphill on the Pennsylvania side. I stayed on Route 32, heading for the Calhoun Street bridge. I needed to find a few more miles before turning around, though, so I rode along the Delaware towards the Yardley Park and Ride. On my right the river was like glass, blue, and peaceful. I felt lucky to be able to have all of this as my weekend playground.
When I got to the Park and Ride I turned around, stopping for pictures of the Delaware Canal and the new I-95 bridge construction, and to snarf down half a Clif bar.
On the way back to the Calhoun Street bridge I took pictures of the railroad bridge that I'd wanted to take the last time I was here.
On the bridge is a sign for the East Coast Greenway:
I had 100.29 miles when I pulled into my driveway. I deliberately added that quarter mile to make up for walking across the Calhoun Street bridge.
I figured I'd take the next day off, as I usually do after a century. Still, I wrote to Jim to ask what his Sunday recovery route looked like, thinking that if I were stupid enough and the route flat enough I might give it a go.
Showing off Rowlf to Ricky was motivation enough for me to put air in the tires and change the computer battery on Sunday morning. Jim was promising 30 mostly flat miles. If my legs hurt too much I would turn around.
They didn't and I didn't, which is to say that my legs did hurt in the beginning, and I did fall behind more than once. The pace and weather were perfect, though.
The ride started from Six Mile Run, where, it seemed, every mountain biker from the tri-county area was suiting up. "Is there an event today?" I asked a pair of cyclists.
"No," they said.
"It's the first day that the trail isn't pure mud!" Jim explained. Ricky, Jim, Prem, and I were the only road bikers in the lot.
We went west through Hillsborough, then south on East Mountain. I stopped once for a shot I couldn't pass up: a dead tree behind a pair of hay bales in the middle of an otherwise empty field.
We stopped at that bagel place on 206 at 518. I never remember what it's called. I could look it up, I suppose, but, nah.
As we lounged outside a fellow started chatting with us about building a tandem with two free wheels. He and Jim got into a long conversation about it. I'm far from an expert, but it didn't take long for me to realize that Jim was providing information that anyone attempting to build a bike from scratch should have known.
When I asked what material he was going to use, he said, "Steel tubing." He figured he'd weld the tubes together.
"You could use lugs," Jim suggested.
"Lugs?"
"The Colnago," Jim and I said in unison, and we walked him over to Rowlf. (Jim took this picture, which I swiped shamelessly from his blog.)
(Here's a bad, poorly-lit, indoor flash, close-up that I took later of one of Rowlf's lugs:
)
"I'm amazed I made it the whole way," I told Jim as we approached the end of the ride. Granted, it was only 30 miles, and mostly flat, but I kept up, and at a faster pace than I expected.
I don't give Rowlf enough credit*. I only take him out when I'm tired. He did me well today. "Don't worry," it seemed as if he were saying. "I got this."
(*Props to Jeff A, my trainer at RWJ-Hamilton, too. He's the one who I paid to beat me up weekly for 24 sessions. It was money well spent.)
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