Hopewell's Uncanny Valley

 

The Awakening

9 September 2023

Last week I took a much-needed break from self-inflicted stress and joined Bobbi and Marty on their tour of the temporary Seward Johnson sculpture installations sponsored by the Hopewell Valley Arts Council.

I'm not a big fan of Seward Johnson's style. For me, it sits in the depths of the uncanny valley. I do like that he dedicated his wealth to the arts. He's the reason we have Grounds for Sculpture, after all.  

Bobbi likes to start early. At 8:00, 13 of us headed out of the parking lot across from Sourland Cycles. Our first stop was "Bake Sale," on Broad Street.

I got distracted by a large orb web against a planter nearby.

That's when I learned that Galina, whom I had just met, is fond of spider webs too.

At the Timberlane School was "Keep Life in Balance." It's Albert Einstein on a bike, because Princeton, or something.

The detail on the sweater, with its cables and wrinkles, is impressive. The trousers too. 

We turned out of Pennington towards the river on Pennington-Titusville Road. "Garmin says this is the only hill," Stacey said.

I'd seen the route. "Garmin is a liar."

As we coasted down Church Street, I made a mental note to revisit this climb. Come spring, it's all going to be about that damned trip to Nova Scotia.

As we went along River Drive, the sun was just right to see spider webs stretched against the wooden railings of the stairways leading from the road down towards the river.

In the grass by the Washington Crossing parking lot stood "Monet, Our Visiting Artist," doing some plein air work. I figured there would be a speckled likeness of the Washington Crossing bridge, which the statue was facing. But no, he was painting Washington crossing the Delaware. Which is just wrong. 

Taking pictures of our bikes lying in the grass was more fun.

On Bear Tavern Road was "Follow the Leader." Everyone rushed to pose among the figures.

I didn't even see what the sculpture really was until everyone was ready to leave.

We stopped for a break at the new Terra Momo on Delaware Avenue in Pennington. "Time's Up" is at the intersection of Delaware and Main.  (... da police.)

Heading south out of town, we visited "Captured."

Galina took off her shoes to pose. 

"My World" was a few doors down at the Tollgate school. Bobbie sat next to the child.

She'd inadvertently left one off the tour. Mike V knew where it was and guided us to it, "Can We Dance Here, Mommy?" at the Stony Brook elementary school.

Meh. Heteronormative.

I think this is Bobbi's bike:

I pass "The Awakening" every time I ride into Hopewell, but I've never gone in to look at it. This one is different. It's abstract. It leaves a lot to the imagination. I like it.

I stuck my head inside the mouth.

Bobbi took a picture, which I swiped from her Facebook post.

"There, Now You Can Grow" was at the elementary school. We had to walk down a grassy slope to find it.

In front of the Brick Market was "Wine, Food and Thou." It was way too deep in the uncanny valley.

I took a picture of Janice to round things out. 

Jim held his second "Run What You Brung" ride the following day. I hadn't had Kermit out since the day Janice's battery died the night of a Wednesday ride in mid-July. So I got up early and rode over to Canal Road, where I waited at Suydam for Jim's crew to come rolling down the hill.

This time, it seemed that nearly everyone had brought their regular bikes. Until April, Kermit was my regular bike too. Although my back was fine on this no-pace ride, I need to get the stem raised on Kermit too if I want to put him back into regular rotation on rides where I have to push to keep up.

We had a mid-week heat wave but I took Miss Piggy to work twice anyway. 

Tom had been planning a three-day bike trip in Gettysburg. We'd drive out on Sunday and come home Tuesday. He'd even worked it out so that I could get home in time for my evening glassblowing session. With three days of riding followed by four hours of glassblowing on the final day, I opted not to ride on Saturday.

Our Jeff and I were going to carpool. The plan was to make hotel reservations at the last minute, depending on the weather. As we got closer to the weekend, the forecast worsened. On Friday morning, Tom canceled the trip.

I immediately registered for Saturday's Sourland Spectacular. Jim and Our Jeff were already registered. Blob and Pete proposed riding the metric, starting at 7:30. I replied that riding in from home would give me a metric and that I'd be doing the 44-mile route with Our Jeff, Jim, and Elaine starting at 8:00.

I woke up at 5:30 a.m. Sunrise was an hour later. There was fog and mist when I left the house at 7:12. I took the most direct route to the Watershed Institute. On Titus Mill, I had a brain fart and couldn't remember if the entrance was on Titus Mill or Wargo. I stayed on Titus Mill and rolled into the gravel parking lot with about 7.5 mies. My glasses were completely misted over. I was already wet from the humidity and sweat.

Our group consisted of me, Our Jeff, Jim, Elaine, Marc, Mike V, and Fitz. We rolled off into the mist and we stayed close together most of the time. We got separated on Goat Hill. At the top, I managed to get a few pictures of the field across from the intersection with Hewitt.

The first rest stop was at South Hunterdon High School. With the small crowd milling about the food and water tables and the orange-shirted volunteers hustling, I thought of the time in early 2020, before we really knew what Covid was about, when we all left from our homes and rode by ourselves to the high school, where we sat and ate our bars, 15 feet apart from each other, in the otherwise deserted parking lot.

I had to stop at the top of Mount Airy to take pictures of where the cows usually are.

We went up to Sandy Ridge, down to the Green Sergeants covered bridge, up to Sergeantsville, across on Lambert and Dunkard Church, and then up a detour to go around a bridge that was out on Dunkard Church. It has to be said that the thought of trying to cross it anyway did flicker through my mind.

We wound our way to Ringoes on Boss Road, and nearly rode past the second rest stop on Old York. By now, I was so wet that water from my hair was dripping into my ears. I had to ask a volunteer for a paper towel to dry off my hearing aids; the bandana I carry was already soaked from cleaning the mist off my glasses and just the humidity in general.

Fitz said, "Imagine if the sun were out."

"Yeah, that would be so much worse."

The sun came out as we left the rest stop.

We turned down Dutch Lane, then took Wertsville to Losey and Rocktown. I had to stop partway down Rocktown for photos.

That's Jim on the left.

At the top of Linvale, we ran into Pete, Blob, Rickety, Luis, and Rocket, who were coming in from Mountain on their metric. I told Blob, "I didn't want to go with you because I didn't want you to have to wait for me."

"We'd wait," he said.  Then, when we all got started again, his group got ahead and that was the end of that. They were in my sight for the rest of the 8 miles back, but I never was able to close the gap. 

I didn't stay for lunch. I didn't want to stop that long or eat so much that biking home would be a chore. I had to find a couple of extra miles on the way home to make my ride a metric. I went the long way 'round and came in less than a mile short, with less elevation gain than the real metric folks had, but so what. Close enough.

In the end, the route was the Sourland's greatest hits: Woosamonsa, Pleasant Valley, Valley, Goat Hill, Rock, Dinosaur Hill, Harbourton-Mt Airy, Mt Airy-Sandy Ridge, Covered Bridge, Lower Creek, Lambert, Dunkard Church, Losey, Rocktown, Linvale, Rileyville, the Joe McBride Memorial Shortcut, Moores Mill-Mt Rose. And it was all for a good cause. The Sourland Conservancy protects the open spaces we spend so much time pedaling through.

The predicted bad weather is catching up with us. On Saturday evening, Jim canceled his Sunday ride.