Do Your Own Ride

 

Manners Road

20 April 2025

When someone asks me, "How are you," I answer, "I'm an NIH-funded scientist who works at a university."  If they don't know what I mean, I explain. In detail. About how our building is locked to keep ICE out. About the red cards set out for people so they know their rights. About how nobody knows if they'll have a job a year from now. About the three information sessions held in our department within one week. About how science is being destroyed because something something woke something vaccines something something. If you voted for this, fuck you very much, and how's your 401K?

So I make some phone calls, and then I blow glass and go out on my bike.

The aforementioned glassblowing is eating into my biking time. That'll be over in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, when I have been getting out, I've been leaving my camera behind. The group rides I've been on aren't camera-friendly.

There was an exception to that when I managed to wiggle out of work early enough to catch a Friday evening ride in March. I brought my camera because we'd be passing the site of a forest fire on Woosamonsa Road. We don't tend to get forest fires around here, but after last summer's drought (which we're technically still in), there's a lot of tinder lying around.

A lot of trees had already been cut down by the time we got there. Still, there were charred stumps and logs.

Our Jeff had started up his Wednesday evening rides again. At first I didn't go; with the construction detours between my house and my job, I could get as many miles in by riding my bike to and from work.

When his rides got longer, I showed up. The first one, a cloudy evening in the high 40s, ended with a 6-mile deluge. I didn't even put my cleat covers on when we got back to the parking lot. I put Janice away, laid a towel on the driver's seat, and drove home soaking wet. 

The second one had a lot of miles in it, and we got home at dusk, my GPS having switched to night view. I was beat before I even started that ride. I'd trained indoors on Saturday, blown glass on Sunday, blown glass on Monday, and, worried about losing fitness, commuted to work by bike in 30-mph wind gusts on Tuesday. Needless to say, out of 7 riders, I was 6th, far behind the front 5 on every hill. I used up whatever I had left on the downhill sprint at the end of the ride.

The third one, last week, was so windy that, had we continued at the 12-mph pace we were going on the flat River Road, we never would have made it home by sunset. He shortened the ride by five miles.

Back in March, still chilly, Tom led us from Bordentown to New Egypt. One of our riders got a flat that took nearly half an hour to fix. I didn't mind. My back needed a break anyway. On our way home, we encountered a bridge out on Meiers Road.

The surface was down to slats. Crossing it looked worse than it actually was. 

There were some rainy Saturdays. There were some rainy Sundays. There were some Sunday afternoons with good weather. On those days, I'd blow glass in the morning, come home, eat lunch, and suit up for a penance ride. I'd make up the route as I went along, mostly avoiding hills because my legs were already tired from stomping around on a cement floor for four hours. 

Meanwhile, Dave S was leading hella hilly rides to get the 30-some-odd FreeWheelers ready for their trip to Italy in early May. He led mostly on Sundays, so I missed them.

Last Sunday, Pete and Martin did Dave's ride out of Pennington, had lunch at a deli, then rode down to my house to meet me. They wound up with 67 miles and a zillion feet of elevation gain. I could feel myself falling farther and farther behind on my training.

Then, yesterday, I resucitated the dormant Chocolate Bunny Ride, 50 miles in the hills from Pennington to Flemington. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to finish without being in pain. 

There were ten of us in all. I rode in from home with a bag of chocolate bunnies to be handed out to everyone who finished and to anyone who cracked wise in a sufficiently bunny-worthy manner.

Martin led off: "I wore a jersey with white today," he said, "For the chocolate." 

"You get a bunny!"  We hadn't even left the parking lot.

Somewhere on the Sourland Mountain, as we regrouped after a climb, I saw this stop sign.

Now that I've posted it, I suppose I've made myself available to be disappeared.

Some bad puns earned some bunnies. Be grateful I don't remember what they were.

Tom and Jim left us on the other side of the mountain; they wanted fewer miles. 

We took Old York to Reaville, where, at the top of one of the many rolling hills, we stopped for a hay-bunny.

After Factory Fuel closed, we tried Bread and Culture. That was two years ago. What we remembered about the place were two things: there's nowhere to rest our bikes; and the pastries are gigantic. We went around to the back of the shop, to a small parking lot. Three loaves of bread rested next to a window. A baker waved.

"Where should we put the Italian bikes?" John asked. He had his Moser. Althea was on a silver Tommasini.

Martin, on his Orbea, said, "In the dumptster!"

I gave him a bunny for his sick burn.

We got lucky with the timing. It was 11:30 as we were in line. I chose the smallest pastry on display, a shortbread raspberry thumbprint that I ate while I was waiting for my cortado. Everyone else wound up with sugary, buttery things that were the size of a 53-cog chainring.

All that caffeine and sugar would come in handy for the ride back. We'd be facing a stiff wind coming out of the southwest.

I warned people ahead of time that I'd be stopping at the top of Manners Road. I take pictures from here every time.

Even after 25 years of road cycling, I have impostor syndrome. Within the groups of riders I find myself in, I'm by far the fattest. And by far not the fastest. I feel as if I'm holding other riders back if I can't keep up. 

Heddy and I were talking about this yesterday as I watched one rider zip ahead at every opportunity. This person has been training seriously for a year in order to get faster. I said I had no interest in that. "I'd just get dropped by a different set of people."

Heddy said she doesn't worry about anyone else. "I do my own ride," she said. 

And that's what I planned to do when I signed up for Dave S' Easter Sunday hillfest from Hopewell. This was my only Sunday off from glassblowing; I had to ride. 

I looked at the list of people who had signed up. I emailed Dave, "Well, I registered, and, as far as I can tell, I'm the only actual C+ rider listed. I'm not feeling confident. I expect to be riding by myself tomorrow." He assured me I'd have his company. With 57 miles of hills on my legs already, and with so little training, I doubted that.

His was the only ride listed. Of the registered members, enough of the fastboys were leaders that they cuold have posted something of their own and let more C+ folks sign up. They could have done their own ride instead of hijacking this one. I've been bitching about this for years. Other ride leaders are okay with this happening. I'm not; I make sure my listings tell them to stay away. Not for nothing, at the end of today's ride, one person said they'd avoided signing up for several rides already because so many fastboys had been registered. 

There was a stiff headwind out of the north that was already battering us in the parking lot. Three riders took off so early we didn't see them again until we got to the rest stop. Our first hill was Province Line north from 518. I stayed in the back, waiting for everyone to pass me. 

That didn't happen. Somehow, I wasn't last. I was, as usual, chugging along, mostly by myself, somewhere between the lead group and the handful behind me. What was interesting was that the members of these groups kept changing as the ride wore on, and that, for the most part, people were waiting at the tops of hills. 

I've missed so many weekend rides that I didn't know the Covered Bridge Cafe and Market had changed hands. I was confused by the "grand opening" banner. It's now the Covered Bridge Italian Market and Deli. It's pretty much the same as it was, down to the barista who made my cortado.

We caught some tailwind on the way home. Dave sent us up the top half of Runyon Mill. It's been a while since I've climbed that hill. I remembered the pavement being bad at the steepest part. It's worse than that now.

I made it back to Hopewell feeling pretty good. I guess glassblowing has helped maintain my endurance. What also helped was that I took Heddy's advice: I didn't worry about what anyone else was doing. I had the route. I knew where I was. My goal was to finish without being in pain. I dawdled when I needed to. I pushed when I felt like it. I did my own ride.