This is the House that Jack Built

Jack H's Pool, After the Insane Bike Posse Splashed Around

7 July 2018

The heat wave broke on Friday. We're back to early June weather: low humidity, clear skies, and open-window temperatures.

Jack H and Dorothy moved to Yardley last year. The idea to start a ride from his new house was Jack's idea. He enticed us with the promise of a cookout after the ride, and told us to bring our bathing suits. 

Tom came up with the route. "It's gonna suck," he said as Jack H, Jim, Bob and I gathered in Jack's driveway at 8:30 a.m.

"Why is it gonna suck?" I asked. I'd only had time to glance at the route the night before while I was loading it into my GPS. I knew Eagle Road, the hard way, was in there among the 3000 feet of elevation gain in 50 miles.

"We're going through a bunch of neighborhoods to get off the main roads," he said.

Bob wanted to test his theory that I have bad GPS juju. We'd both loaded the routes in, his as .tcx and mine as .fit. Jim had the .fit file in his older unit. Tom's was in whatever format they used back in the stone age on his stone age device.

Jim's crapped out in the first half mile. He got it back. Then my screen froze and I had to reboot. Bob gloated until Tom deliberately took us off course, through Tyler State Park, at which point all three of us rode with digital bricks until we reached the main road again.

The Neshaminy Creek at Tyler was muddy from yesterday's rain.

I zoomed in on the thing sticking out of the water in front of the spillway. I thought it might have been a bird but it's an algae-oozing stick.

We saw a little bit of Newtown and then continued north towards Eagle Road. My front tire conveniently went flat before we got there, which gave us all a break. It was the same slow leak as last week. I couldn't find the cause of it then, and we couldn't find it now either. I emptied a CO2 cartridge into the new tube and hoped for the best.

Two thirds of the way up Eagle Road I said to Tom, "This hill isn't worth the effort." He agreed. "There's no view at the top." The climb is only half a mile with a couple hundred feet of elevation gain. It's all under trees, and it's pretty enough. Other than for bragging rights, though, I can't see a reason to be there.

On the other hand, there's the descent.

Aside from Eagle, Jack had suggested we climb the ridge above New Hope so that he could show us the old house he used to live in. We passed my favorite Bucks County intersection of Pidcock Creek and Windy Bush and turned onto Old Windy Bush. I tried not to dwell on that last one much.

Jack's old house was at the top of the hill, in the woods, with no other houses around it. He'd put a lot of work into it, restoring the outside, knocking down walls inside, and building a free-standing garage (which required moving boulders).

"In the winter," he said, "with the leaves down I could see all the way to Bowman's Tower."

I asked, "Why did you leave?"

"Nobody would come up here and see me," he said. His job and his friends were in Trenton, so he moved to Ewing.

A few miles later, where Stoney Brook intersects with Sugan, Jim, Bob, and I stopped to take pictures of the remains of a towering stone building. I'd tried for pictures once before from up on Stoney Brook. They hadn't come out very well. Today's were better.

Through one window we could see another. Inside looked modern. The far side of the structure had been renovated, with modern wooden siding extending from the old stone. I didn't get any pictures of it. Jim figured that a complete renovation would happen piecemeal as the owners got money.

When we stopped at the Wawa on the ridge above New Hope I could have ended the ride there. If we're at at Wawa with Jim we will see him with an apple fritter. I asked to try a piece. It had that heavy taste of fried dough, surrounded by a coating of thick sugar. Not a fan of fried dough (the taste makes me a little nauseated), at first I couldn't imagine eating the whole thing. As junk food has a way of doing, though, my revulsion was replaced by a sugar craving. I wasn't dumb enough to oblige; had I been, I'd have been blowing chunks off the side of the road within five miles.

We still had 20 miles to go. I was tired. I began to question why I beat myself up so much. Surely I could stay fit without having to be in so much pain. Why was I doing this? To keep up with my friends. To lose fitness might mean to lose them as well.

Four miles later we found ourselves at the bottom of a hill on Street Road (dumbest. road. name. ever.), facing "road closed" signs, a cement truck, and two construction workers rather violently waving us back the way we came. "Make that 51 miles," Tom said as three GPS units razzed in confusion at the detour.

"We have to go back up Eagle Road," Jack said. "It's the only way."

"I don't believe you," I told him.

We were back on track in under two miles. The closest we got to Eagle was Thompson Mill, which climbs the same ridge. Coming from the north, though, it wasn't nearly as steep.

Somewhere on Highland Road, up on another ridge, I stopped for hay bales.

When we had ten miles left, Tom pulled over for a gel snack and I texted Jack (Moose) to tell him that we'd be back at Jack H's in an hour. Cheryl and Blake, out on their own ride, would meet us there too.

I'd packed a change of clothes and a couple of towels. I hadn't packed a bathing suit. The last time I wore one was 1997 or so. If I decided to jump into Jack H's pool, I'd go in with my cycling clothes on. I figured I'd ask Dorothy if I could use her shower instead.

When I saw the pool I changed my mind. I took out my hearing aids, took off my shoes, removed my socks, and stepped onto the first rung of the ladder to get a sense of the water temperature. It was warm. I dove in.

Jack H dived in. Jim dived in. Bob dived in. Tom dived in.

I don't remember the last time I was in a real pool. I let muscle memory take over. I took a few more dives and did a messy cannonball. I went to the shallow end, opened my eyes underwater, and did a handstand. I did an underwater forward flip and an underwater back flip. I got water stuck in my ears. I got water up my nose. In other words, I did all the pool things I used to do except actually swim. I did the crawl for a few strokes to check off that box too.

Without thinking about it I raised myself out of the pool by pushing myself up to the deck from the water. "There's a ladder," Dorothy said. Muscle memory. I hadn't even considered the ladder.

Tom's camera is waterproof. He was taking pictures. He got one of Jim diving:

And he got one of me diving too, in my full cycling gear:

Jack arrived as we were bobbing around in the water. One by one we got out.

Long-distance bike shorts don't dry very well. I grabbed my bag of clothes and went inside for a shower.

When I got out Blake was ringing the front doorbell and Cheryl was already out back. Jack H had burgers on the grill. We took our food to the patio at the far end of the pool and ate under the umbrellas in the shade.

Later Jack gave us a tour of the house, showing us the work he'd already done on it and what he planned to do next. When we emerged from the basement Dorothy and Moose were talking in the kitchen. We loaded our plates with dessert and went back outside to the shade.