Woodens Lane, Lambertville, NJ
By March 8 we must have known it was coming. It was in the news enough. The number of sick people was already in the double digits on the west coast. It wasn't near us, though. Not yet.
Under pressure at work, I left mapping the route to the last minute. Only after I'd loaded the file onto the GPS and turned off the computer did I realize I'd be leading the group down a dirt road I hadn't been on since the summer of 2001.
I picked a handful of roads we hadn't been on in a while, and in the opposite direction from my usual routes. Ricky met me at my house, as usual. Pete G found us en route to the Pig, where Andrew, Jerry, and Sophie were getting ready.
We went west towards Goat Hill, but instead of going that far, we climbed up Woodens Lane. It's not my custom to stop mid-climb, but when there's a cat looking out of a window, I make an exception.
I'd have been the last one up the hill in any case.
I don't remember much about riding the unpaved miles of Rocktown Road. It was on a charity ride, the Tour de Cure, hosted by BMS. We went north up Losey to Rocktown, turning right to continue uphill. I didn't have climbing gears then. Kermit was still green. I remember crunching through gravel and Cheryl vowing to be on the route planning committee next year: "We are NOT doing this road again!" I must have been looking down the whole time because I had no recollection of the scenery.
This time, we were going in the opposite direction. The first bit after the intersection with Mountain Road was paved. Then we rounded a corner and the dirt began.
"Oh, wow," I said.
"Yeah," Jerrry agreed.
What we had was a descent in the woods, with few houses. Near the bottom of the steepest section the trees gave way to fields. We both stopped and took out our cameras.
Then we descended some more. At the bottom was all the deep gravel I remembered.
And a black-headed vulture. Unlike the usual turkey vultures we see, Jerry explained, these vultures don't wait until their food is dead to grab at it. We've been warned.
We stopped at the Carousel Deli in Ringoes. We talked about the virus a little. "I went shopping and there was no toilet paper. I was teaching yesterday," Sophie said. "Did something happen?" This was the first I'd heard of the run on all things white.
Two days later I was in what would become my last glassblowing class for a good, long while. Princeton, Rutgers, and now BCCC, were sending their students home for spring break and telling them to stay there.
By Friday, the rolling shutdowns had begun. The caseload in New Jersey was doubling every day. At work we were told to prepare for a shutdown. Already, people who could work from home were told to do so.
Jim led his Sunday ride on Saturday. I had to stop in the lab on my way to Six Mile. I was into the wind the whole way.
The parking lot chatter was all about working from home and Zoom meetings. At Thomas Sweet we maintained a healthy distance from each other and didn't share food. One of the baristas was wiping down the furniture after a group of customers left.
On my way home I stopped at the top of Carnegie Lake (or is it the Millstone again at this point?). Two people sitting on a rock in the parking lot eyed me warily, lest I be plagued and come too close.
The next day I led what I'd posted days before as the Social Distance ride. I thought I was being clever, but then both Tom and Jim used it for their blog titles before my ride even started.
I'd advertised it as a social ride. "Pace-pushers and snot-rockets not welcome." I guess people don't read too carefully. There were three pace-pushers on the ride, and they were getting on my nerves. I'd have Spragued them in a heartbeat had they not had the foresight to stop and circle in unlikely side streets. "If you'd let me lead," I grumbled after one stopped short in a less than safe spot. Seriously. Just slow down a little and stay with the rest of the group and you won't have to sprint and stop and sprint and stop and wonder where we're going next.
Where we were going next was Charleston House. I half expected it to be closed, or takeout only, or at least empty. It was none of these things. We sat inside, safely distant from each other. "Wash your hands," I reminded everyone before we sat down. I washed mine before and after.
We started to spread out once we got away from New Egypt. "This is my sixth ride," I told Pete. "When I get to ten and earn my jersey, I'm gonna start leading invite-only rides." Anyone who rides with me knows I'm usually in the back of the pack. But there's a difference between being a faster rider in a friendly group and having to be out front at all times. Today there were several who could not for one second bear to see the back of me. I suppose it is, for some, shameful to be behind the lumpen mess that is Our Lady of Perpetual Headwinds. Unless there are headwinds, of course. Then I'm a convenient brick wall.
Near Allentown a few of the riders began to fall back, behind me even. These are the ones who are my responsibility. (One of them, oddly, complained that our average was too slow.) While I waited for them to catch up, I told the others, "You pace-pushers know where we are. You can go on back if you want to."
"But we don't know where we aaaarrrrre!" Pete whined in falsetto.
They didn't go back on their own because we had turned into the wind. Three guesses who pulled everyone through Gordon Road.
We were crossing Route 130 when Marc's rear tire found a substantial nail. He's a randonneur; he doesn't do anything in small portions. I'd never witnessed a tubeless tire puncture before. He put a tube in, and when he inflated it, a snotty ooze seeped from the nail hole. "Sealant," he said, and we were off again.
I didn't know then that my sixth led ride would be my last for a while. Our umbrella organization, the League of American Bicyclists, recommended that all group rides be canceled. The Free Wheelers Board of Directors agreed.
Princeton University was shutting down all research. Our lab heads had to submit plans to the Dean of Research. No more than three of us would be permitted into the lab. We were told to finish current projects and not start anything else. Our animal colonies were to be reduced to subsistence breeding only.
At work I pushed myself to finish in four days a procedure I'd normally take two weeks to do. I rearranged my schedule so that I'd come in every day, including weekends, to hasten the end of another project. I killed half of my breeding colony.
The building became a ghost town. My hands were raw from washing. Our custodian worked overtime, disinfecting all door handles twice each day. The bathroom smelled like bleach. When I encountered other colleagues we stayed six feet apart. Even when we were on the same floor, we held conversations by phone or on Zoom. When I left the lab I carried packets of peroxide wipes everywhere I went. Every item coming into the house would be treated with peroxide wipes. New Jersey was on the exponential growth curve now.
Bars and gyms closed. I ordered kettle bells from Amazon. Restaurants became take-out only. There were no paper towels, napkins, toilet paper, boxes of pasta, or bags of flour to be had in our nearby grocery stores. I got a supply of prescription cat food from our vet and ordered 36 pounds of kitty litter from Chewy.
Jack and I were stressed and tired. I counted the days since I blew glass, surely the last place that I'd have been likely to catch Covid-19, and that Jack had been on a train. We got past five days, then a week, then ten days, without any symptoms. Jack wouldn't leave the house; he was content to stay inside with his books, wine, tea, and rowing machine.
Outside the roads were quiet and the sidewalks peppered with more people than I'd seen in my 20 years as a road cyclist. The parking spaces on the road by the Princeton Battlefield were full, the battleground dotted with people enjoying the weather six feet from everyone else.
The Pig closed.
Tom said he was going to lead an unsanctioned, invite-only, Saturday ride from Cranbury. I asked him for the route and rode in from home to meet the group at the intersection of Gordon and Sharon Roads. He had four people with him: Jim, Jack, Ricky, and Bob. Pete would have been within six feet of me if not for a scheduling glitch half an hour before I left the house. We were the intersection of the Hill Slugs, the Insane Bike Posse, and the Usual Suspects. We wondered if we'd even be able to travel in a group of six after today. More restrictions were coming, we'd been told.
We rode together apart. We stopped at Byron Johnson park in Allentown on the off-chance that the bathrooms would be open. They weren't, of course.
We're all going to become experts at finding half-hidden spots to pee.
On the basketball court was an abandoned bike. There was nobody but us in sight.
Roy's was open, sort of, for pick-up only.
Only Bob went inside. He came out with coffee and two bags of pastry. He offered "an untouched scone" to whoever wanted it.
Tom showed me the six-foot string he'd brought with him to demonstrate proper social distancing at the beginning of the ride. I'd missed that, of course. It was tangled now. I asked him to lay it out on the ground. He did, then stepped away.
We sat apart together.
I left the group when they turned onto South Lane at Windsor Road. At Mercer County Park I stopped for pictures of the entrance sign.
By now the Governor's executive order had been announced. It would take effect at 5:00 p.m. "Bring home any personal work items you'll need," my boss warned us all. After 5:00, only the three of us listed on our shutdown protocol would be permitted to roam the halls. I was told I should carry our paperwork with me into the lab in case I were to be stopped. When I went in, I made copies and posted our emergency information on our lab's doors. I did what lab work I had to do and got ready to leave. I didn't take anything work-related home. I took two pieces of glass, one from this semester and one from last. The afternoon sun lit up the glass cats on the window sill. I decided to leave them there. No window at home would light them up like that.
I had to go back to the lab on Sunday morning. I decided to turn the 14-mile round trip into a real ride. The wind was in my face again, stronger than yesterday, and it was colder. Nobody was outside this morning.
When I left the lab I continued on to Kingston, turning onto River Road. I snaked through Rocky Hill, taking Montgomery to Route 206 and turning onto Raritan River Road. On a normal Sunday this road is busy enough that we try to stay off of it.
Toady I had the road to myself. With the wind in my face and the rolling hills, I wasn't making anything like good time. I kept looking over to my right, where the river was, far below the road, beyond the trees. Somewhere north of the Griggstown Causeway, south of Staats Farm Road, I stopped at the top of a hill to get pictures I'd never be able to get on any other day.
The camera doesn't capture how steep the drop is from the road to the river.
Where the slope leveled off there was a patch of errant daffodils.
I continued on to the Amwell Road intersection. Across the road, River Road continued up a hill. I wondered what was up there and if, perhaps, I should explore it some other time. Hic draconis.
I turned east on Amwell and south at the East Millstone firehouse. At Blackwells Mills I stopped for half a protein bar and a couple of caffeine-laced Shot Bloks. Whoever it is who tends the little canal house grounds had done some spring cleaning.
The parking lot at Six Mile Run looked full. Across the canal, walkers dotted the towpath for the length of it all the way back to Rocky Hill.
Now that I was back on familiar roads with a tailwind, the trip home seemed to take no time at all.
Downtown Princeton, normally a slalom through parked cars and pedestrians, was empty. A temporary traffic sign at Palmer Square flashed between "stay home" and "stay healthy" faster than my camera's shutter could capture it.
The battlefield wasn't lined with cars this time. Princeton Pike was empty enough that I felt safe stopping to take pictures of my favorite tree at the eastern edge of the Cherry Grove farm property (which goes all the way to Route 206). The ground was still flooded from recent rain.
Our world has gone quiet. It's just the birds and the spring peepers now.
Wash your hands.
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