Short Winter Hills

 

Stony Brook Road at Van Dyke Road

22 February 2025

I led a ride today. It was cold. Four brave souls showed up: Pete G, Our Jeff, John K, and Dave S. I kept it short but threw in enough little hills to get the elevation up to almost 50 feet per mile. 

The sun was out in a cloudless sky. We don't get many days like this. While there were still small patches of ice on the sides of shady roads, what we ended up dodging the most were vast salt flats left over from weeks of repeated brinings.

We climbed to the top of Stony Brook. On our way up, in the woods south of Mine Road, we heard the call of a pileated woodpecker. John K is obsessed with pileated woodpeckers. In a good way.

Pete was first up the hill, of course, and took his phone out for pictures of the ice in a second-order Stony Brook tributary near the intersection of Van Dyke Road. There's probably a name for the little creek. I checked a few maps but couldn't find it. 

A critter, perhaps a raccoon, had stepped out onto the ice, near where water remained unfrozen under the bridge.

We took a break at Boro Bean, my go-to winter rest stop. The conversation centered mostly on birds, woodpeckers in particular, because John K was there. Dave showed a picture of what a yellow-bellied sapsucker had done to a tree in his yard. This reminded me of something Mike B had called us winter riders years and years ago: "yellow-bellied snot-suckers." He wasn't wrong.

A sign at the end of Crusher Road told us that the road was closed. We figured a tree was down from the storm last week. John K left us here to take a more direct route back.

Halfway up the road, there was a sagging power line snagged on something that looked more metallic than wooden. It was off to the side.

We zig zagged our way back to Pennington, losing Pete when we got close to his house. John passed us in his car when we were a mile away from the end.

I'm not as tired nor as sore as I thought I'd be. This is because we took it easy and I had enough sleep last night. What hills we did climb were enough though. I'm looking forward to riding in shorts again.