A Quiet Ride

Lake Carnegie

14 October 2018

After the ride I was supposed to lead on Saturday got rained out I had no excuse not to start riding from home to Jim's Sunday ride at Six Mile Run. I was half a mile from my house when I figured out that I didn't give myself as much time as I usually do, I didn't dress quite warmly enough, and I forgot to put in my hearing aids. The route is normally quiet on Sunday mornings; now it would be more so.

Mist was rising from the surface of Lake Carnegie as I passed it on Route 27 north of Princeton. I had to stop, rest Miss Piggy at the entrance to the parking lot, and walk towards the shore. I lost a few minutes but it was worth it.

As I sped past the towpath parking lot on Kingston-Rocky Hill Road I saw a car that could only be Tom's. Yesterday he had plans to ride one way to Belmar. I assumed that had been scuttled and wondered if he'd driven instead and stayed there, in which case there are two people in central NJ with an aging, maroon Baja. Perhaps he'd decided to ride in the hills with Jack H. Or maybe he'd parked there to get in a few extra miles on Jim's ride and, if I were fast enough, I'd catch up to him on Canal Road.  I hammered, sort of, but I was the only person on a bike going north.

I got to Six Mile with a few minutes to spare. A large group clustered around Jim. Among them was Tom. Pete and Ricky were there too, both having ridden in. Andrew had, too. Six Mile is too far for Chris to ride to; he'd driven. There were three others whom I didn't know (one woman might have looked a little familiar; it was hard to tell because she was bundled up).

We set off on what is now Jim's standard route. Taking a page from Winter Larry, he gave orders for optional sprints on a few of the longer stretches. Some of us got ahead there, but not too far ahead and not for long. Slugs always wait for Slugs.

We were about halfway to the rest stop when it occurred to me that I hadn't spoken to any of the new riders. I usually try to get to know the new folks. This time I was huddled with my regular buddies, caught up in our usual banter. In an idle moment I remembered what it felt like when I first joined the club. I remembered the conversations between people who had been riding for years; they had their own language and their own cast of characters. That's what I must sound like to them now. No wonder they weren't saying anything to any of us.

I'm sure it didn't help that, without my hearing aids, I couldn't make out what anyone was saying unless they were next to me, and even then I had trouble. I couldn't hear cars until they were right up behind me. If I wasn't in a conversation I was in my own quiet little bubble.

Pete, under a time constraint, left us in Hillsborough.

We stopped at our usual stop, the Bagel Barn on Route 206 in Montgomery. In line with Tom, with Chris and Jim behind us, I asked if we were going into Princeton from here; I'd assumed we were. "We're not," Jim said. "You're gonna break off here."

"Where are you breaking off?" I asked Tom.

"Griggstown," he said. "I'm gonna go up Coppermine."

Chris suggested that if I followed Tom I could spin the ride out into a metric. I shook my head. From here to home would give me about 55 miles; it was all I had in mind. "Nope," I said.

He didn't believe me. Neither did Jim. Neither did Tom.

"I wasn't planning on it," I said. If I followed Tom down Canal Road, up Coppermine and down Old Georgetown back to Canal Road, lord knows how many miles I'd wind up with. From the southern end of Canal Road to home was already twelve miles. I turned toward the muffin case. They were out of pumpkin.

Chris and I opted for iced sugar cookies (my new go-to bike snack). The new guy busted on the one Chris got because it had a Mets logo on it, surrounded by an extra ring of orange icing. "More sugar," Chris explained. Mine was a smiley emoji with sunglasses. I think TJ's in Kingston sells the same ones.

As we were getting ready to leave Tom asked me, "Is the metric worming its way into your brain?" It was. A little. "I'll go with you and decide on Coppermine when we get there," I said.

I was shivering. We'd been sitting outside. The forecast had predicted highs in the upper 50s. Maybe we got there when the sun was out, but most of our ride had been under cloud cover, tomorrow's rain slowly moving in.

The two new women, whom I never did get around to talking to, peeled off for home as soon as we left the rest stop. Andrew had already gone. That made us six going back towards Six Mile. When we got to Canal Road at the Griggstown Causeway (I'd finally stopped shivering), Tom and I turned right. Ricky went with us. Jim, Chris, and the other guy turned left.

I'd be remiss at this point not to bust on Jim for shedding riders like a duck sheds water. He's needled me about it enough. Turnabout is fair play, and now that he's leading there will be ample opportunity to even the score.

When Tom signaled the turn onto Coppermine I followed. Ricky went straight. If I were going to climb this thing -- it had been years since I had -- I was going to stay at the top when I got there. "I'm gonna go down 27," I said. I'd never been on that stretch.

"You'll be fine," Tom said. "There's a big shoulder."

Coppermine is longer than I remembered. It's always longer than I remember it to be. From the top to Route 27 was flat and straight. The shoulder on Route 27 was wide. Unfortunately it was also under construction for more than half the distance between where I started (Route 518) and Kingston. Fortunately there wasn't much traffic and I was able to go around instead of over half the steel plates that interrupted the shoulder every few hundred feet.

There was traffic in Princeton. There's always traffic in Princeton mid-day on a Sunday. This being my commute home, I went into autopilot and didn't look at my odometer until I got home.

I texted Chris. "66.7. Damn you."