They Weren't Hills. It Wasn't Raining.

Smith's Bridge Picnic Area, Wilmington, DE 

6 October 2018

I: They Weren't Hills

The Insane Bike Posse will follow Tom anywhere, even if it means getting up before dawn in order to be in Bordentown by 8:00 a.m. for a 1.5-hour drive to the DE-PA border.

"You're driving," Tom said when I arrived. He would take three bikes and one more person. Jack H would take two bikes and one more person. I'd take my bike and Bob. I was under a little bit of time pressure. If we ran late Tom could take Bob and I could drive straight home. That's how Tom, Jim, Jack H, Ricky, Bob, and I wound up at the Smith's Bridge parking lot somewhere outside of sprawling Wilmington, DE.

Tom had sent us the route and the elevation profile, telling us that the route really wouldn't bee too hilly. In 49 miles we'd climb 3600 feet, he said, but told us not to worry about the elevation because his software always over-reports it. I imported his route to my ridewithgps page and used the elevation recalculation tool.

Tom was right. His elevation was off. We'd be climbing over 4000 feet in 49 miles. Having ridden in that area in 2015 I knew that I'd need Miss Piggy, no matter what Tom said.

True to form we started with a small hill. The roads were pretty but narrow. We were under trees a lot. I didn't want to slow everyone down by stopping for pictures.

I did snap one of a little flower on the side of the road at an intersection.

We rode through Kennett Square, the so-called mushroom capitol of the world, without seeing a single mushroom. We did pass a mushroom farm or two.

We came across two closed roads. I don't have pictures because we rode right past the barriers both times.

Then we turned down a road that looked to the rest of us to be a driveway. Tom assured us that it wasn't. At the end of it, though, we had to lift our bikes over a gate.

Suspended between the bars was an orb weaver. My camera wouldn't focus well enough on it in the short time I had. Taking pictures of spiders with an auto-focus camera is no easy thing when there is time. This is the best I could do:

It was one of these (this one hanging on the outside of my front door for one night):

Tom wasn't sure that his chosen rest stop, a deli at a busy intersection, would still be there. It wasn't, so we made do with a gas station across the street.

The hills mellowed out a little as we got closer to West Chester. I stopped twice for pictures on Wawaset Road.

I don't know where we were when I took this one:

Outside of West Chester we found a gas station mini mart. The station was out of regular gas and more than a few provisions inside were missing too. Still we managed to find plenty to eat and drink. At one point a woman asked us if she could put premium gas in her lawnmower. Sure. Why not?

There was another closed road on the way back. Once again we got around it.

Tom had promised that he'd added "something stupid" towards the end of the ride.  We were only a few miles from the end, so I asked him when the stupid thing was coming.

"Another couple of miles," he said. "It's really stupid. You're gonna love it."

We turned onto a residential street, still climbing.  "See that clump of bushes over there? And the tree?" Tom said, slowing down.  "And the bench?"

We stopped. Behind the bench was a sign proclaiming this to be the highest point in Delaware.

"The lowest highest point!"I exclaimed.

"Except it's not," Tom said. "It's in Florida."

"The Lowest Highest Point!" I said again, and explained the Moxy Fruvous song. Behind the bench was an athletic field and a tower.

It was all downhill from there. We rode past the parking lot to the covered bridge to get the pictures we hadn't taken in the morning.

I got another shot of the flooded park.

We piled back into our respective cars. Bob and I talked about music almost the entire drive back.

In Bordentown, after everyone had moved their bikes and bags around, we hung out in the parking lot. We were beat. 

"That was hilly," Jim said.

"They weren't hills," Tom replied. "Just a lot of up and down."

"Oh!" Jim said. "That clears it right up!"

I got home with plenty of time to clean off before the evening's dinner plans, which didn't run as late as I thought they would and I got to bed in time to get enough sleep for Winter Larry's C+ Cranbury ride.

II: They Weren't Expecting Me

Neither of us had expected me to show up. "I'm doing the route you hate," he said.  Damn it. Battleview Orchards. The rest stop comes far too early, only 15 miles into the 45-mile route, and there's never anything I want to eat on a ride. The coffee is terrible and the only bathroom is a porta-potty. 

When we go we're usually the only ones there. Not today. The parking lot was packed. Some of the spaces were taken over by stands of pumpkins and flowers. An outside cart had been set up to sell cider and donuts.

I went inside anyway and bought three iced sugar cookies to be eaten slowly throughout the coming week.

I stuffed half a protein bar into my face at mile 25, at the intersection of Pine Hill and Millstone, with a dead tree.

Winter Larry was letting us run free in places. I found myself off the front with Al L on my tail. It's not a true Cranbury ride if Al isn't on my tail or by himself off the front.

Larry cut the route short, for which I was grateful.


III: It Wasn't Raining

NOAA said there wouldn't be rain. My radar app showed nothing. Still, the mist started when Ricky and I were only two miles from home, on our way to Twin Pines. I hadn't led a ride since mid-August. My plan for the day was to follow a route I'd concocted in March of 2017, one that didn't follow my usual choice of roads.

Tom, Jim, Andrew, Jack H, and an extra Jim (not the Spare Jim; another one, easily half our age) stood in the Twin Pines parking lot with me and Ricky, slowly getting wet.

"This isn't rain," I said to Tom.

We headed out anyway because that's how we roll. Plus, the forecast wasn't calling for rain; surely things would clear up.

They didn't. We rode in and out of mist on Burd Road.

There was quite a collection of "road closed" barriers on Woosamonsa, but no road work anywhere. "Y'know how lost socks have to be somewhere?" I asked Jim. "I think this is where 'road closed' signs wind up." He agreed to the possibility.

There was more mist in the distance on Pleasant Valley Road.

We took Woodens Lane up to Hewitt and then 518. At Wheelfine I stopped because some of the group had never been inside before.

I stepped inside. Someone had been tidying up: I was able to walk to the middle room without sucking in my gut.  "Michael?" I called.

He eventually appeared. Jack H was behind me. "Hey, Michael," he said. "I have a complaint. The paint on my old Redcay is peeling." This was an inside joke that only the three of us got. Michael had started his career building frames for Jim Redcay back in the 1970s. I only knew this because of all the time I'd spent in Michael's shop.

Andrew bought a patch kit. Ricky dusted off his fantasy of owning a steel bike. I brought up Beaker's conversion to Campy, a plan I'd hatched a year ago. Somehow we all got out of there in five minutes. "If you hadn't come out after fifteen I'd have come in to get you," Tom said.

I took a picture of the Sourland Mountain to the south, and of the shop:

In the online ride description I'd promised cows and coffee. I found three lounging at the top of a hill in a pasture off of Gulick Road.

Finally at the Sergeantsville General Store, we dismounted in the rain and decided to take the shortest route home. First, though, we'd eat and Jim and I would take pictures of the caribou a fellow rider had lashed to his head tube:

To get back to Pennington I took as straight a route as possible, which meant climbing up Mount Airy-Harbourton, followed immediately by Dinosaur Hill and that annoying incline where Mount Airy-Harbourton meets Bear Tavern. After that we hammered all the way to Timberlane, where Jack, off the front and confusing us all, turned left instead of right.

I figured he was doubling back towards his house in Yardley and continued on. When I turned off of Timberlane, though, nobody followed me. They knew we'd lost Jack. I pulled into a driveway to wait. It seemed like a long time. Then I saw a rider coming from Route 31 towards me. It was Jack.  "They're all waiting for you back there," I said. He went on, collected them, and came back.

"See the trouble you cause by going ahead?" I said.  

Back in Pennington, Tom said, "If he hadn't fallen that time," referring back to the Federal Twist mishap. "He might have been in a ditch somewhere."

"I was being an asshole," I said to Jack. "And they didn't trust you. You get sympathy or trust but not both." He laughed and hung his head.

"We're riding on Wednesday," Tom said. He has the day off and so does Jim. Ricky and Jack are retired. "You should take the day off."

"I can't," I said. "I have class."

"We'll be back in time for that."

"I can't. I've got timed stuff." Damn it.

Tomorrow's forecast is much like today's, but with a promise of mist and rain this time. I think I'll be off the bike.

Speaking of damp, here's a damp spider and her damp egg sacs from a damp Wednesday morning last week. She's the only spider I've been able to get good pictures of. I'm not sure how much longer she'll be out there. I can't tell if any of the eggs hatched either. The deck needs cleaning but I won't do it until she's gone.