Hill Slug Chronicles: Meanwhile

Assunpink Lake

10 November 2024

Okay, where were we?

Late August, I think. No. September.

I told anyone who'd listen that I was done. with. hills.

So, naturally, I joined Our Jeff, Heddy, and some others for the Sourland Spectacular. Every route, and I mean every route, went up Poor Farm first thing. Word had it that the planner said that anyone riding in the Sourlands should know what to expect.

Having also declared that I was out of fucks to give, I really didn't give a fuck. There were some choice comments from others at the first rest stop. And a large group of Free Wheelers looked at the map, said "nah," and took Woosamonsa to Route 579 instead. I get it, though. 579 used to be a decent place to ride a bike. Nowadays it's a constant stream of traffic.

For reasons neither Heddy nor I could figure out, this ride seemed more difficult than anything we did on Cape Breton. All we could guess at was that the guides had us stopped to rest every ten miles. That, and, well, New Jersey pavement.

I didn't take any pictures.

A week later, Tom led his annual Cocoluxe ride. Rickety and I were both wearing our F-bomb socks.

This being an Insane Bike Posse ride, I knew I would be able to take pictures.

I think this is Hill and Dale Road at Rockaway Road:

This is either Rockaway or Guniea Hollow:

The worst hills were after the break. There was a 13% grind. Jim had Things To Say about that.

This is a photo of the Delaware and Raritan Canal south of Amwell Road. That means I must have been on a Plain Jim ride.

The Free Wheelers' fall picnic happened. Thinking I might be able to squeeze a century in before things got cold, and knowing I'd had no distance training to speak of, I decided to ride to Tall Cedars from home. On my way over, the ankle strap on my right shoe went sproink. I didn't have time to figure out what was going on, so I wrapped some electrical tape (I carry electrical tape) around it and spent the day trying to keep the latch down. I got a 70 mile ride in that way, and, after ordering a $35 part from Italy (because the shoes are already apparently out-of-date) and paying more than that for shipping, I managed to fix the original strap because it wasn't as broken as I thought. So now I have a pair of extra ankle straps. Derp.

Somewhere in there, a Belmar century was on the ride calendar. It was listed without a leader. A bunch of fastboys had signed up for the B version. I wanted nothing to do with that. Instead, I contacted the C+ leader, who was planning a 66-mile version from Etra Park. I can turn that into 100 miles by riding in from home. That was the plan. I wasn't quite in shape for it. The week before, my back decided to be tweaky. It was mostly better as we got close to the day of the ride, but then there was rain in the forecast and the ride got canceled. I ended up blowing glass that day instead. That was the end of September. It hasn't rained here since.

Our Jeff had a couple more hilly rides planned. One was to Peddler's Village. He took out the steep climb that was on the route last year. I don't remember much about it except that I was tired because I'd ridden 70 flat miles the day before.

The other was a covered bridges ride before the official one. I said no to both of those.

While the Premeds were grinding away up there, I joined Tom for his annual visit to Sandy Hook. It was a Saturday. I was headed to Brooklyn for a Soul Coughing concert that night. Pete said he only knew one of their songs. "Something something circles," he said. "But I don't remember the words."

"I can help you with that." And for the rest of the ride, I was reciting random Soul Coughing lyrics at him. He eventually said I was creeping him out. Random Soul Coughing lyrics will do that.

We passed through Middletown, so of course I had to stop to photograph the drunken clown at Circus Wines.

"Want me to get a picture of you getting a picture of the clown?" I asked Martin.

"Sure!"

He was wearing the oldest of the available Bar Harbor Bicyle Shop jerseys.

From Highlands, we took the Henry Hudson Trail along the bay.

I took a picture of Janice on the bridge that crosses over the Shrewsbury River, connecting Sandy Hook with the mainland.

We had some photo stops on Sandy Hook.

"Art is happening!" Pete chided as I took some pictures through a railing.

We went about three quarters of the way up the hook before turning around. I got a few photos of a sand bar, Highlands and Twin Lights.

We finished with 60 miles.

A week later, I led a ride from Mercer County Park to New Egypt. I rode in from home to tack on an extra 15 miles.

On our way out, we took a quick detour to Assunpink Lake.

We were almost at peak leaf color.

In the second half of the ride, things fell apart. I told folks, as we approached Hill Road, to "wait at the end." That instruction, it turns out, was ambiguous. I meant the bridge by the Walnford Mill.

Everyone else thought I meant the end of Walnford Road. Tom, who did stop at the bridge, said that John K was still behind us. I was almost certain that he was ahead, and pushed off to catch the rest of the group. Rickety decided to go back to look for John. I called John and found out he'd made the left to continue on Hill Road, and was making his way back to the park on his own. We moved on, and only at the next intersection did I realize that we didn't have Rickety with us. So some of us waited while the rest decided to go on home.

It was down to me, Rickety, Heddy, and Pete. When we got to Allentown, there was a street fair completely blocking our way. The last time I encountered this, I fought my way through the crowd and tried to get everyone back together on the other side.

This time, I decided to hell with that and turned onto Route 539. My memory was somewhat hazy about how soon we could turn north again. The answer was "no time soon," and we ended up taking a five mile detour that got us back to the park long after everyone else had gone. Except John, who was just pulling out. He'd caught up with some of the others, who had fought their way through the crowd. I ended up with 67 miles that day.

Plain Jim led a no-pace ride the next day. I took Kermit out. The weather was perfect. The ride was relaxed. There were crysanthemums at the shopping center where we took a break.

There was dry corn in Plainsboro.

I got a photo of Brainerd Lake in Cranbury.

To get a few more miles, I rode with Jim to the entrance of his new neighborhood. On the way back, short of the 30 miles I was aiming for, I rode through Cranbury again. Opposite the lake, there was a great blue heron standing in Cranbury Brook.

After that, I toyed with riding my own century. I created a route from home that took some of Jim's no-pace roads and would land me in Allentown at 25 miles. There, I would pick up other riders and we would go south along flat roads. They'd get a metric and I'd get my hundred. I sent the route to Tom for review. He worked on it a bit, sending me two alternates.

But to do this route now would mean leaving the house before sunrise, which was inching towards 7:30 a.m. I shelved the plan.

There's a growing contingent of Free Wheelers who are going back to Italy in May. Dave S invited me. I said I was still getting over the Nova Scotia trauma and declined. I'm not ready to spend another six months panicking over a week of unknown hills among a crowd who actually enjoys climbing these things.

But I did sign up for his Sourlands ride. He left out of Rosedale Park, so I biked in from home.

There were only 8 of us, so when I stopped at the intersection of Ridge and Lindbergh to capture what turned out to be peak leaf color, I assumed that they'd wait the extra 30 seconds at the bottom of the hill.

I was wrong about that. I could see them ahead of me. They didn't wait at the corner. They didn't even notice I was missing when they made the next turn onto Welisewitz Road. I wondered if I should just keep my distance and do the route by myself, or whether I should sprint to catch up. I guess their pace was something less than my sprint would have been, because I passed them as the last person was turning.

"You fucking dropped me!"

I kept on going, finding myself well ahead of the group. Should I wait for them at the intersection or do this ride by myself? I decided to do what they didn't and hit the brakes.

One rider said, "You should get a Go Pro so you don't have to stop."

"Or you could wait ten seconds."

I found the whole thing curious, because there was one rider who was constantly behind on the hills that they had no trouble waiting for.

Anyway, I stopped being mad after that.

I took a few more pictures when we rolled back into Rosedale Park.

We were inching up on Halloween. It was time for my annual trek to Lambertville to see the decorations on Union Street.

There had been no rain since September. We had day after day of mild temperatures and sunny skies. The few clouds we saw were high and thin. The grass was brown. Landscapers were out mowing dust.

Rocktown Road between Linvale and Losey captured the weather we'd been having:

The main attraction on Union Street is the Dragan house. It's been so popular that it now has visiting hours, and the displays are sectioned off in their own tents. We used to be able to walk down the side of the house. Now we can't.

This is still my favorite ghoul:

This sign warned of a different sort of ghoul:

My camera battery died, but at least I got some of the spiders.

I went on a solo muffin run the next day. That meant leaving the camera at home because I needed the pockets. But when I turned onto Crusher Road from the Hopewell side, I had to dig out my cell phone and take some pictures.

Dave S had another hilly ride, this one from Skillman Park. Two nights before the ride, I had a dream in which he was leading and we had to wait half an hour for someone who was showing up late. We were at the top of an emankment with a scenic view. Dave called up to me, "Take a picture!" I called back, "I don't have my camera! I learned my lesson!"

I told him this when I arrived for the ride. I left my camera at home. We did the ride. I didn't get dropped.

*****

There was an election. It didn't go the way everyone in my circle of friends had hoped. I wasn't surprised. I was sad. I'm a burned-out environmental activist. I'm used to losing. I'm also very particular about what I do to take action. I'm not into performative gestures, like this blue bracelet thing, or like waving a sign at a march and making sure everyone sees a picture of me waving it. I don't sign petitions. If I do something, it has to help someone or something else. If all it does is make me feel good, then I haven't actually done anything constructive. That's all I'm going to say about what happened right now. It's early days. I don't know what my role is yet.

*****

I managed to hurt my back again, this time badly enough that it even hurt to walk. Since I first herniated L5/S1 in 2010, it's been worse than this only once, in 2016.

So I managed to climb hills more than I ever have before, spend two weeks away from the inversion table and do fine, and then I get hurt after the pressure is off? Good timing.

I did a lot of PT, swallowed some NSAIDs, slathered on some NSAIDs, and took a full week off from cardio and weightlifting. It's the first real break from exercise I've had since early June. I think my body needed it.

Yesterday, I led another ride. I listed it as B, but added "C+ friendly" to the description. I wanted to let B-curious riders to know that mine would be a safe place to try to go a little faster.

I rode into Mercer County Park from home, stopping at the little bridge over the Assunpink Creek, hoping for the last of the fall color to still be around.

The route was Tom's. I seem to be taking his routes a lot. I've been so busy at work and with glassblowing the past few months that I haven't had time to think of new routes. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to climb hills or go flat, so Tom suggested both. He gave me his "Trolley Line" route, which I adjusted.

It's different from our usual fare. It goes through West Windsor and Plainsboro, using a former trolley line turned bike path to get from one to the other. Then it gets into the rollers on either side of the canal, and stops in Rocky Hill before snaking back through Princeton.

I had two new riders. One contacted me the day before to say they were riding in from home in Plainsboro. Usually when someone does that, they're a seasoned rider looking for extra miles. When I saw this person, it was something different. There was a giant pannier. Okay. Some fastboys like to load up in the off-season to make the ride harder. This wasn't that, because fastboys don't show up wearing down jackets. The new rider kept up with us in the beginning, but when we got into the rollers, the rider began to fall farther behind.

I'm patient. I don't mind waiting for people. I promised at the start of the ride that nobody would be dropped. Unfortunately, a number of folks were feeling less and less charitable as the ride wore on. When, after the rest stop, the rider fell so far behind that I could no longer see them, I had to do a thing I don't think I've ever had to do before (although I've been on plenty of rides where it's been done): I had to tell the rider we were dropping them.

The rider didn't seem upset. They knew their way home and they had the route. "One of our rules is that you need to be able to ride the advertized pace," I explained. I had somewhere to be in the late afternoon; I didn't have the time to stick with this person.

After that, our pace picked up. Tom had left us while we waited that one last time for the slower rider. He took a different route, and we managed to get back to the park a few minutes before he did. I got home really late.

Today, Ken W had a towpath ride from Lambertville to Frenchtown. Our Jeff got himself a brand new gravel bike, the same model as the one he coveted in Acadia National Park. I hadn't been on the towpath north of Lambertville in years.

Ken got a big group. In Frenchtown, Heddy and I tested the cortado at the Perfect Day Cafe and found it worthy.

On the way back, I found myself leading the pack. I looked in my mirror and saw seven riders. Behind them was a cloud of dust.

Fozzie, who, when I had the stem replaced, had been cleaned so thoroughly that the tires were shiny black, was now coated in towpath.