2 February 2025
I was bogged down at work this week. Tom jumped in before I had a chance to think about it and suggested a trail ride for today. Temperatures would be slightly above freezing and falling, with 15 mph winds and gusts above 20 mph. That sounds like towpath weather, except that all the snow we had last weekend had melted mid-week, and then we had rain on and off all day Friday. The paths would be a mess. I suggested a road ride from Pennington instead. At least we could find some trees to block the wind.
Heddy, Rickety, Martin, Jack H, and Pete were stupid brave enough to join me.
The streets had just about dried when I left the house at 9:30 Saturday morning. I gave myself half and hour to ride 3.5 miles because I knew I'd be straight into the wind. It felt like a 3-mile hill.
Indoors, I've been trying to work on increasing my cadence. I've come to an agreement with Rouvy: I can give it power or I can give it high rpm, but not both. I'm a slow-twitch Slug. I got talking about that with Pete. He told me that he'd gone out on a ride with Martin during the week. His wife had passed them in her car. "It looked like you two were on separate rides," she told him. He said, "My legs are going like an eggbeater and Martin's are like a metronome." I'm somewhere in the middle, I guess. I'm not looking to race, just to be more efficient.
Pete had a flat halfway up the Carter Road hill (it's barely a hill, except in the winter, when it feels like a big one).
At the end of Wargo Road, Pete's tire went soft again. He turned around; he wasn't far from home.
At the end of Tyburn, I gave everyone a choice: We could ride up the lower part of Stony Brook and take the hill on 518 towards Hopewell, or we could go straight to Boro Bean from here. Jack H said, "I'll see you at the coffee shop," and there were no protestations.
Boro Bean's wooden door was shut when we rolled up. The outdoor chairs were tilted against the tables. One after another, we asked, "Are they closed?"
No, just keeping the heat in. The place was bustling as usual. Heddy and I ordered cortados. If she's there, that's what I get. Rickety decided to order one too. "See what you started?" I told her. The barista made the best cortado I've had on this side of the Atlantic.
Jack H has taken up spinning classes. Heddy still spins. I took classes from 1998 until the pandemic. We were trading stories and suggestions. Training on Rowlf (my 1986 Colnago Master) permanently fixed onto my Wahoo Kickr, and being fed workouts and real-life roads by Rouvy, is a different beast. Spin bikes have flywheels. Rowlf has a freewheel. Spin bikes require the user to adust the tension. Rouvy throws 14% grade hills at me and I have to deal with them. On the other hand, even in 53/11, I can get no traction on Rouvy's steep desecents. I try to avoid courses with a lot of downhills.
We climbed the low grade westward out of the Hopewell Valley, towards Route 31. When we passed the Stony Brook and the railroad bridge, I doubled back for photos. Everyone waited for me at the next intersection. "I couldn't resist the shadows of the trees on the ice," I said.
After we turned onto Woosamonsa from Route 31, Heddy laughed at the simultaneous clicking of all of us switching to our big rings. We'd finally found a flat road shielded from the wind. And we had a tailwind on Burd.
We didn't finish with many miles, but it was enough. We hung around the parking lot, chatting, as we usually do. Heddy and Martin said they want to flood me with updates from their biking trip to Italy in May. I was invited. I declined.
I said, "Don't make me regret it. I'm just about over the trauma from the Canada trip."
"Trauma?" Martin asked.
I've been calling it that, overstating the situation because I haven't found a better description for it.
During a brief period of downtime at work, I'd added the trip photos to my desktop slideshow. Each photo that shows up comes with how I felt when I was taking the picture. Maybe by next year I'll have processed the trip enough to go on another one.
Meanwhile, I had 3.5 miles of tailwind to send me home.
