The Gang's Not Here

Delaware Rivr at Scudders Falls

29 December 2025

A week after Black Friday, only Heddy braved the cold to join me for a towpath ride from Ewing to Lambertville, up the PA side and down the NJ side. Because it was only the two of us, we stopped for pictures. A lot.

We went over the pedestrian bridge at Scudders Falls.

We stopped to use the warm bathrooms next to the Yardley Park and Ride. I see the parking lot often these days. It's where I meet one of my glassblowing refugees for the long haul down to East Falls.

There had been rain the night before, but, aside from the shiny blacktop, the towpath from Ewing to here was surprisingly dry.

Ice had started to form in the canal and was half melted.

We saw a great blue heron.

And, closer to New Hope, another:

We walked across the bridge to Lambertville.

After cortados at the Lambertville Trading Company (note to self: it's two blocks east of the towpath, not one), we headed home on the NJ side. We stopped for a third great blue heron.

"What it it's been the same bird the whole time?" I asked.

The NJ side was mushier than the PA side. Still, I've seen a lot worse on my frame than this thin coat of clay:

Tom led a ride out of Mercer County Park the next day. I rode in from home and used the bike path to get to the East Picnic Area. I hadn't taken a picture from the bridge over the Assunpink in a while, so I stopped there.

The ride was relatively short because it was cold. We stopped at Woody's in Allentown, but we didn't stay long. 

I led a ride from Pennington the next Saturday but took no pictures, and therefore I do not remember much of the ride, except that I chose the slog up Woodsville Road. I'm glad Plain Jim blogged about it.

A week later it was colder, hovering a few degrees above freezing. When I arrived at Twin Pines to lead, I ditched the route I had planned. There were no objections.

Instead, I chose to start out on the old Friday night route, the one where I was a regular and met a bunch of Free Wheelers I'm still friends with. I had just learned that one of those friends, Terry S, had died a few weeks before. We'd last seen him in 2023. At the time, he no longer remembered my name. He spent his final years back in his hometown. Back in the day, he was the organizer of many a large outing to a local restaurant. The crowd size had thinned over the years, until it was down to five of us, then three. 

Nobody gathered in the Twin Pines Federal City parking lot had known him.

I deviated from the Friday night route to go up Crusher Road. We decided to stop at Terra Momo a few miles from the end of the ride. They don't make pretzel bread any more. Rats.

The next day, Jack and I woke up early to catch a train to New York City, where we met college friends at the Museum of Natural History.

Meanwhile, Tom was leading a winter solstice ride, set to depart at exactly 10:03. There was an exchange of emails about the timing and the fact that I would miss it. Well, we all know what happens when I miss a ride.

Fingers up at 10:03!

I missed Pete's Christmas Eve ride, too, because I had to work. It was hovering around freezing in the morning, with a stiff northwest wind. Out of guilt, FOMO, and stupidity, I spent 15 minutes getting myself and Miss Piggy ready for a 30-minute bike commute to the lab. That's a Shackleton Ratio of 0.5. I didn't bother to bring a change of clothes for the 4.5 hours I had to be there. I knew the lab would be deserted. Nobody would smell me. Pete, Martin, and Heddy were on the ride. They did not send me fingers.

Christmas day brought me a GoPro. I'm planning to use it in Maine. Rouvy is only allowing GoPro videos to be uploaded these days. I want a good recording of Park Loop Road and Cadillac Mountain.

I tested the camera on Glooskap.

I'd chosen the handlebar mount that GoPro makes. It was much larger and clunkier than I'd hoped for.

I was planning to ride with Pete, Martin, Blob, and Heddy the next day. But with this mount? This hideous mount?

What if I dropped it to underneath?

Nope. The shifter was in the shot. I searched Amazon for a small mount and ordered it right away.

I also bailed from the ride, as did Heddy. It was going to be too cold. Been there, done that, 8 years ago.

There was a storm coming through on Friday evening, followed by sub-freezing and windy days as far as the forecast could see. So much for end-of-the-year miles. I wanted to get out of the house, though, so I suggested to Heddy that we walk in the Pole Farm for a few hours.

We were mostly in the woods, but when we got to open fields, we could feel the cold and wind and were glad we weren't adding our bike speeds to the wind chill. 

Back at the entrance, we took pictures of our fingers to send to the riders. I kept my glove liners on. 

Heddy showed off her glittery nails.

On a lark, we dedided to drive up to Terra Momo, where they guys had started their ride. We finished our cortados and hung around for a while, figuring they'd be back soon. Heddy checked Strava and saw that only Martin had posted. That meant he was here.

We found him in his car, with no sign of Pete or Blob.

"Both of Bob's batteries died," Martin explained. They'd left him somewhere out there, stuck in too high a gear to climb, and now Pete was in Blob's car, fetching him. 

I don't remember the details, but I think Martin needed his spare too, or it was also dead. They both use Sram. Pete, who has Di2, noticed a drop in his battery power as well.

"It's gotta be the cold," I said, although this would not be the first time Blob has showed up at Terra Momo with dead batteries. 

Heddy had a nail appointment to get to (for which she received some amount of grief from the Slugs, hence the photo). I had a Zoom call at 2:00 with my grad school friends. It was lucky, in a way, that one of them was injured and couldn't make the drive to my house, because the forecast snow was now forecast ice.

By late evening, there was a coating on the deck.

The ground was a sheet of sleety ice the next morning. 

The roads were clear by mid-day, and my cheapo GoPro mount arrived. Still ginormous, but much better.

Later that afternoon, I spent an hour hacking away at the ice on the driveway with a metal shovel.

The weather has continued to be crappy. I've spent time on Rouvy, taking two sessions to conquer a Norwegian hors categorie ascent that I wish I'd known about when I was training for the Cabot Trail. 

Today brought rain and temperatures near 50 degrees. It hasn't been enough to melt all the ice, though. This morning was foggy. Using the need to re-caulk our stall shower as a reason to drive to the hardware store, I stopped at the Quaker Road entrance to the towpath to take some foggy photos.

I continued down Quaker Road to the turnout by the farm and the revolutionary war signpost.

There was a flock of Canada geese in the field.

Now the shower stall has been freshly re-caulked, a handful of glassblowing dates requested, and one of two very late blog posts completed. The sun is out and the wind is up. It's going to be too cold, windy, and icy to ride a bike anywhere tomorrow. Maybe I'll go for another walk.

The Gang's All Here

Prallsville Mills from the Towpath

30 November 2025

Tom invited the Insane Bike Posse for a Black Friday off-the-books ride on the Lawrence Hopewell Trail. In a rare event, the entire posse of regulars, minus one who was traveling, plus one visiting guest, made it to the start.

I rode in from home on Fozzie. I was in full winter gear as the temperature hovered around freezing. I stuck to the road past the Lenox Drive and Brearley House entrances to save time. I must have had a tailwind.

Martin and Pete had ridden in from Pete's house. The parking lot at Maidenhead Meadows was so full that Blob had to move his car over to give a truck the last possilbe space. Rickety and Our Jeff were there, as were Heddy and Ginger (who had never seen the LHT). Even Plain Jim made a rare appearance on his newish Motobecane gravel bike.

Tom had told us we'd be going counterclockwise, but when we started out, he said he'd changed his mind. Some folks in the group were riding over the Maidenhead Meadows boardwalk for the first time. It's more of a causeway; it's about a quarter mile long, hovering a few feet above the surrounding wooded wetlands. 

With lobster-claw gloves, there was no taking pictures with my phone. I didn't think to bring the years-old, semi-functioning, PowerShot stored on the top shelf of a closet. I could have managed that with no fingers. Next time.

There are still some places on the LHT were signs are lacking. The route through the Lawrenceville School campus is something less than clearly marked. There are no signs at all through the Pennington neighborhood between Wargo and Moores Mill-Mount Rose Roads. We've been doing the LHT long enough to wing it in those places.

By the time we got to the Province Line Road bridge over the Stony Brook, we were getting spread out. The road surface south of the bridge is deteriorating. It's a steeper climb that way, too, but at least it's easier to avoid the mess at low speed.

Tom still avoids the trail section on Old Mill Road. It's been improved, but he still takes the road. I think the section through Carson Road Woods is much worse. There's no way to avoid that easily, though. It comes toward the end when riding clockwise.

Crossing Province Line at Route 206 and again at Bannister Drive is annoying, but it's better than fighting with heavy traffic on the narrow road.

There were still a lot of cars in the Maidenhead Meadows lot when we trickled in. Next to us, the Christmas tree farm was blaring music. Their lot was full. 

I rode home in the woods, over the causeway again, to avoid the wind and traffic. 

My plan was to list a towpath ride for the next day. When I sent out feelers, some of the folks who'd been enthusiastic about the idea on the LHT ride bowed out. It was so late in the evening at this point that I decided it would be easier to keep the ride off the books than to hound everyone into signing in. There would only be five of us anyway.

Saturday was warmer than Friday by a few degrees, and less windy too. However, we wouldn't have as much protection from what wind there was.

Pete rode into Washington Crossing from home, as did Martin. They met me, Heddy, and Plain Jim (again!) there. 

We stayed on the New Jersey side all the way to Bulls Island. Jim had misread my description as 18 miles, not 28, and, in Stockton, asked "Where are we going?" 

"Lumberville!" I said. I was wearing my decades-old winter jacket with the giant back pocket. I'd promised Jack some cookies from the Lumberville General Store.

We did have a headwind. I could tell it was coming by looking at the surface of the canal. Sometimes it was glassy; sometimes it was rippled.

The canal, a feeder for the main one on the PA side, peters out to the north of Bulls Island, but near the south of Bulls Island, the grade is so steep that the feeder is hard to see.

One is supposed to walk one's bike over the Bulls Island bridge. I don't always. There were pedestrians this time, so we half rode, half one-legged it.

In Lumberville, we sat outside to keep ourselves from the shock of warming up too much indoors then stepping out. When we left, my figers were cold. It didn't take long for them to warm up again. I had a pocket full of cookie ballast, but we had a tailwind so it didn't matter.

Pete and Martin were lobbying for the western towpath detour around the center of Lambertville. They didn't want to have to dodge pedestrians like we did on the way up. I don't enjoy the detour route as much. It's not well maintained. It can get muddy and rocky, and then there's a lot of on-street riding through parking lots and behind the smelly sewage treatment plant. But we did it anyway because I wanted to get pictures of the old rail car. 

I've passed it many times this year without stopping for pictures. This time I did. The train is a palette for graffiti. The work looked relatively fresh.

Today is rainy. I'll be a good bike club leader next week and post something official, if Tom doesn't beat me to it.