waterproof
20 July 2025
This is a long post. Settle in.
It's been a bad summer for bike rides. When the heat index hasn't been over 100 degrees, we've been hit with steady rain or severe thunderstorms.
The last time I checked into Facebook was June 19, which was when I created a link to the blog post I'd written that day. If you're reading this, two things: first, thanks for sticking with me, because I'm no longer engaging with Facebook; and second, I'm sorry it's taken so long to get this post up.
So, where were we?
All the way back to June 8, apparently. Tom led a flat ride south to Cassville from Mercer County Park (I think?). If it was from there, that was the day I rode in from home on Kermit. I wanted to test my theory that there's something about Janice's geometry that makes my back hurt when I ride in the flatlands in the big ring. Kermit had been my go-to bike for flat rides until Janice came along. I rode 52 pain-free miles that day. I also had sufficient sleep the night before. Not enough data for a conclusion.
Anyway, I took a couple of picturs of St Vladimir church in Cassville, because that's what I do when I'm there.
The planned rest stop was closed. There's not much to choose from in Cassville. I don't remember where we wound up.
We stopped to regroup at Walnford Mill on the way back. The trees have grown in; we used to be able to see more of the blue house.
Three days later, on Our Jeff's Wednesday night ride, we got back to Washington Crossing Park in time for a hazy sunset.
We always go to It's Nutts in Titusville after the ride. On this night, a furrow orb weaver (
Larinioides cornutus) was building her web between the head and tail of the giant chicken in the parking lot.
Three days after that, I led a ride from Raritan Valley College that was an adaptation of this year's Revolutionary Ramble.
I'd signed up for the Ramble, as had Heddy and Our Jeff. It was scheduled for the weekend after I got back from Maine. Two things kept me home that morning: the early departure hour (no way was I going to be up and ready to leave the house by 6:00 a.m.), and the forecast. The ride organizers sent us an email the night before the ride day. In this missive were instructions on how to shelter oneself during a thunderstorm. I texted Heddy and Our Jeff to say I was out. They didn't end up going either.
When I looked at the route I'd missed, I figured I could make it better by swapping in Rockaway Road (how could they not choose that over Oldwick Road?) and stopping for food at both the Oldwick General Store and Cocoluxe. Tom made some more edits because anything east of Peapack-Gladstone is terra incognita to me.
Heddy offered to drive me to the start, adding a second rack to her hitch. That ended up being unexpectedly useful (some foreshadowing here).
We followed the original route until turning onto Rockaway Road. After Rockaway, we went east on Sawmill. The wheel is getting harder to see as the greenery grows around it.
The Ramble route didn't descend Fox Hill. We did.
At the Oldwick General Store, I bought a smiley cookie to take home. It was already conveniently wrapped.
After the break, we worked our way northeast and looped back into Peapack-Gladstone. The roads up there are still a jumble to me. When I think of them I see tall trees and houses for the 1% behind iron fences.
We took our second break at Cocoluxe in Peapack. We'd done a lot of climbing, and we still had the Second Watchung Mountain to get over.
There wasn't much scenery between Far Hills and Liberty Corner. Then we reached the mountain. Somerville Road crosses the Second Watchung in a small valley. The steepest ascent of the day was here, toward the end of one of those climbs that gets worse and worse. The top of the hill is past a highway overpass. We collected ourselves in a driveway.
On the descent, we got separated. Tom was ahead of me. I heard Heddy yell something that sounded like "flat!" from behind me. I waited at the bottom with Tom. This flat seemed to be taking too long. Tom got to his phone before I did to find out that one of the others had fallen and ended up with two flat tires. We waited some more, and then got the message that the bike itself was unrideable. One person stayed with the banged-up rider and the other two came down the hill.
We only had 7 miles to go at this point, but it felt like a long 7 miles. Tom stayed with our bikes in the parking lot while Heddy and I navigated back to the crash to pick up the other two riders and their bikes.
Fortunately, the rider, who had scrapes all along their left side and their jersey shredded, was laughing when we arrived, and was okay to drive home. The bike, on the other hand, impossibly light, all of two weeks old, and bought for a price with too many digits in it, was out of commission.
The best any of us could figure is that the rider went into, or tried to avoid, a puddle, and wound up sideways.
Speaking of puddles, there was no rain in the forecast for Jim's ride the next day. Heddy offered to drive me. since she had the second rack on her 1Up anyway. Everybody who is anybody has a 1Up rack; I still stuff my bike into the back of my car. I got Kermit ready to go, since the route would be a flat one.
The route was from Hillsborough to Raritan with the Italian Bakery as the rest stop. We were almost there when the sky to the northeast, dark all morning, started to rumble. Somebody called out "flat!" and we stopped to wait. After a few minutes, word came down that the rest of us should go ahead. Not long after that, there was a flash of white light and it started to rain.
Huddled inside or under the table umbrellas, we checked the radar as we waited for the rest of the group to arrive. By now it was truly raining, and it didn't look like it was going to let up.
The way back to the park was almost direct; Mike V devised a shortcut. Not that it helped much. Kermit is good in the rain, rim brakes and all.
With a few miles to go, we turned onto a wide-open stretch. The wind kicked up. "This sucks," Rickety said. "Wind and rain," Heddy said. "What could be worse?"
I said, "It could be cold," and we soldiered on.
Back in the parking lot, Heddy removed her electronic devices and placed them in the back of her car.
I turned around to document a raindropped puddle.
"Kermit needs a bath," Rickety said.
I hand-washed the frog and cleaned up the bike when I got home.
Was it the following Wednesday that Heddy and I begged off on Our Jeff's Wednesday ride because of forecast thunderstorms? We were both watching the radar at ride time, seeing that the group would be in between two bands of rain. That was the day they got partway in, checked the radar, and high-tailed it for home.
This photo is from Heddy, from a flat ride Tom led on June 28. Across the street, the road was closed. We went through it anyway.
You can see from the pavement that there had been some rain. I think we got rained on a little on this ride. Tom said it wasn't raining as I watched the rain come down. Maybe this photo is from the day we went to Cassville?
I was debating whether or not to ride my bike to work on Monday, June 30, and decided to suit up at the last minute. The forecast called for a 40% chance of rain. In the late afternoon, I looked at the sky, checked the radar, and told my colleagues that I'd be leaving early and would finish my work day at home. I texted Jack that I was leaving to beat the rain.
"Too late," he wrote.
Well, it wasn't raining when I left the lab. I saw the storm off to the southeast. I was heading southwest, where the sky wasn't as menacing.
At the top of the Princeton Battlefield hill, it started to spit rain. The wind kicked up as I descended. By the time I reached the bottom, I was in a fierce downpour. I turned on my powerful front light and kept a close eye on the road.
This was worse than the
French Mountain descent because there was traffic and thunder. But the cars were moving slowly too, and my Fly6 tail light was on.
Traffic slowed near the Province Line Road intersection. A tree had come down, blocking most of the road. Cars were driving around it, their left tires in somebody's lawn. I one-footed Miss Piggy around the tree, and when I clipped in again, I realized how wet I was as my shorts sloshed around.
The rain lessened as I got closer to home, because of course it did. I went in through the back door and put everything in the washing machine. The contents of my backpack, protected from the top by a now-soaked towel, were dry only if they were in plastic bags. I hung my helmet and shoes up to dry above the dehumidifier.
It's either been so rainy or so hot that I haven't ridden my bike to work since. This week's forecast looks rain-free; I have some catching up to do!
I signed up for Our Jeff's July 4 ride. While the large B- group went to Emery's Blueberry Farm, Our Jeff chose Assunpink Lake instead. We were a small group. I sat by the lake, munched on my energy bar, and watched the dragonflies zip around.
There were 3 species of dragon- and damselflies scooting about. Only the widow skimmers ever stopped for a rest. It took many tries with my phone camera before I got one almost in focus.
The next day, Tom led a ride from Bulls Island. The goal was to climb hills, take a break in Frenchtown, then cross the bridge to ride some hills in Pennsylvania.
I decided to bring my dying camera this time. The lens cap doesn't fully close. It was humid. The first two pictures I took were through a wet lens.
I wiped it off with the bandana I always keep in my top tube pack, and tried again. Much better!
I don't remember where this was. We were up on the ridge somewhere, I guess.
When we got to Frenchtown, we were met with a massive blockade. Not only was the road closed to PA-bound traffic, but the walkway was blocked too.
photo by Heddy
There are some closed bridges that Hill Slugs and the Insane Bike Posse cannot cross. If we were to ride north to Milford, we'd be adding almost ten miles to our trip. The next bridge to the south would be Bulls Island, which was where we'd started. So we rerouted back into the hills on the NJ side. I lobbied for Warsaw, which is prettier than Fairview.
Now that the road maps I'd had tacked to the wall at home are down (thanks to the kitten), I can no longer stare at them while I'm brushing my teeth. I'm a visual thinker, but I haven't got the roads above Frenchtown memorized. I knew roughly where we were when we reached the ridge, but not enough to know the best way back. We ended up passing Federal Twist, then doubling back after half a mile or so to take Federal Twist all the way to the river. We could have kept going, turned onto Miltown, and wound up a little lower down on Federal Twist, but neither Tom nor I remembered that. Anyway, we made it back, and it didn't rain.
Somewhere in the next week, Mike V's ride got caught in the same sort of storm I'd ridden home in. The next day, Our Jeff cut our ride short out of an abundance of caution. It did rain later, as we were leaving It's Nutts.
Last weekend, Tom led his "Mansfield Almost Metric," which becomes a metric when some of us add a 3-mile loop to the end. I took Janice this time, to test the back pain theory thing. It wasn't my back so much as a calf cramp that dissipated as quickly as it came on that made me grateful I wasn't going for a century. It was another overly humid day, and I obviously came into it dehydrated.
We stopped for water at the Brendan Byrne State Forest ranger headquarters, where I always take a picture of my bike leaning against the wooden shed.
From there we went to Tabernacle (Pumpernickel!) for our second stop, at Nixon's.
My cramp happened as we stopped suddenly at an intersection as a light changed, and I pushed off again weirdly. On the other side of the road, I downed an electrolyte tablet and was fine for the rest of the ride.
I've been doing ad hoc Sunday recovery rides for the past month or so. I rarely have a planned route. Sometimes Heddy joins me and we do a Boro Bean muffin run. Christine led a recovery ride out of Village Park in Lawrence Township last Sunday. I went on it because it was so close to home. I'd set my alarm the night before, but I forgot to turn it on (I still use a clock, Luddite that I am). I woke up at 7:31 for an 8:30 ride. Breakfast was a glass of milk mixed with protein powder and a cup of cold brew downed over the kitchen sink, followed by a caffeine-laced Excedrin to knock back an impending headache. Somehow I managed to get to the ride, on Janice, at 8:25. Christine fed us watermelon at the end, and then Heddy and I went down to the Starbucks to discuss housing plans for our 2026 Bar Harbor trip. There, I downed a nitro cold brew, not remembering that Starbucks coffee (which I haven't had in more than a decade) has enough caffeine to keep a horse awake for a week. Well, suffice to say that, at midnight, I still wasn't tired.
Our Jeff didn't cancel Wednesday's ride when there was a 40% chance of rain in the forecast. He said a few drops wouldn't deter him, but a downpour would. As it happened, it didn't rain on us until the last mile or so. What got us thoroughly soaked was a combination of humidity and riding over roads that had just seen a downpour. We hammered down River Road at the end because there was thunder, and the leading edge of a storm cell, following us to the parking lot.
I'd packed shorts to go over my bike shorts, and a dry t-shirt to change into, but I hadn't packed socks. As the socks I had on were drenched, I chose to wear my sneakers sock-free to It's Nutts. I don't know how people wear shoes without socks. It feels icky.
As we were leaving, I noticed the cone descriptions at the ice cream counter. How long has that been there?
"wafer, sugar, waffle, pine"
Yesterday's forecast had looked good mid-week, so I listed a ride from Lambertville to Clinton, editing an old route to take out a hill that
broke my Slugs. I'd wanted to ride along the Raritan River out of Clinton, but with all the rain and flash flooding we've been having, I didn't trust that the dirt road segment would be passable. Instead, I chose a road out of the valley that I hadn't been on before.
By Friday, NOAA's forecast had gone from pleasant to a 40% chance of rain at ride time. AccuWeather and Weather Underground were more optimistic. I let those who had registered know that, if the forecast was still like this at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday, we'd meet at Twin Pines instead and do something local. When I woke up at 6:45 on Saturday morning, NOAA had backed off. The ride from Lambertville was on.
The first dozen miles were mostly uphill, with the steepest grade 7 miles in, on Ferry Road outside of Sergeantsville. For once, it wasn't hot, but it was still humid. At the end of Ferry Road, we stopped to check the radar, because we'd felt a little rain. There was a small blob on its way. We'd catch a bit of it if we kept going. We decided to keep going.
We were at 12 miles when it began to rain for real. I pulled the group over. "Turn around or keep going?" Keep going. We got to the other side of the rain blob without getting wet enough to notice beyond our sweat-soaked clothes.
I hadn't checked the route carefully, so when we went past the frontage road in Perryville, crossed over the highway, and turned onto Route 179, I wondered what I'd been up to in 2017. It wasn't bad, even though it looked to be. The shoulder was very wide, and the two lanes narrowed to one eventually. We turned left onto Ruppell, and then Union, and descended into Clinton.
Citispot Coffee, which boasted that they never closed, was permanently closed. In its place is a new shop. There's another coffee shop across the street. I decided to give that one a try.
But first, the obligatory pictures of the red mill house.
photo by Heddy
Riverside Coffee and Tea is very nearly a hole in the wall in a long building. There's a bathroom in this building which requires breadcrumbs and a sherpa to find. The brew is decent. Next time I'll try Jimmy's which is where Citispot used to be.
I took some pictures of the bridge over the Raritan.
It's difficult to see in this photo, but if you look under the flag on the left, you'll see how dark the sky is. That's where we were headed.
In the river below the dam, some Canada geese were drinking.
I'm glad I rerouted away from the river, because the turn we took to climb out of the valley was at the intersection of the road I would have taken, which was closed, with a bridge out. If we'd gone ahead and had to turn around, we'd have wound up where we were now headed anyway.
Lower Landsdown Road starts off almost flat, but we turned onto Sidney School, which gradually got worse. It had to. There was no easy way out of the valley in this direction. As an extra FU, I knew that we'd be dumped onto Sidney Road mid-climb, and that the pain would not ease for another mile.
And, of course, as soon as we got to the top, we ran into light rain.
We had a group GPS glitch on Route 579 above Flemington, right before the 13% descent to the Route 523 intersection. I thought we'd be turning off onto Dogwood, a side road that covers the same altitude in a slightly less steep and much less trafficky manner. Only several yards before the turn did my GPS wake up. Two riders were ahead of me, descending straight. I called out, but I knew there was no way they'd want to climb back up.
Pete waited at the top just in case. I told Jack H to wait at the bottom while I turned onto Route 523 to find Heddy and Rickety at the Route 579 intersection, staring worriedly at ther GPSs. I let them know what happened, and rode past them a bit to take a picture of the valley on the other side.
Then I turned around to gather them up, and we met the others at the bottom of Dogwood.
It wasn't all downhill from there, but mostly. Not that it mattered, because by the time we reached the outskirts of Sergeantsville, it was raining again, for real. That I left in the road that has a bit of dirt on it didn't help matters. I only remebered the dirt part after we'd made the turn. At least we were under the trees then, out of the rain.
The last few miles were out in the open, in something less than rain and more than a drizzle. It was coming down for real as we put our bikes away.
At least this time I had packed dry socks. I was too tired to put them on though. We'd gone 50 miles and climbed something on either side of 3000 feet, depending on whose device was counting.
I put a pair of dry shorts over my wet cycling shorts, changed into a dry t-shirt, and packed Janice into the car without wiping her down. We were headed to Hart's. Janice had seen one storm too many. It was time to bring her in for a full tuneup and thorough cleaning. Over the past month, I've been hearing noises in parts of the bike that should be silent.
At the bike shop, I removed the top tube pack, which was wet, and the saddle bag, which, I discovered, besides being wet, had a hole worn in it from where the top of the bag had been rubbing against the bottom of the bike's built-in tail light. I decided to spring for a waterproof tube bag and a new saddle bag, since I was already in for a new cassette (which had to be ordered), a new chain, new rotors, and new brake pads anyway.
It's not likely that Janice will be ready in time for Our Jeff's Wednesday ride. That's fine. I owe Miss Piggy a bunch of commutes to work. As of right now, the forecast looks clear through Thursday. As of right now, the sun is out again. It was pouring an hour ago.
One more thing: spiders. I've been stalking them at night since spring. Now that I'm no longer on Facebook, I'm sharing the photos only with one naturalist friend and the iNaturalist community. That hardly seems fair, so, for your viewing pleasure, here are some of the recent orb-weaving regulars:
Neoscona crucifera, the charismatic megafauna of the backyard spider world:
Apricot (she used to be more pinkish)
Middlebush (so I could remember where she lives)
Windy (because it was on the day I found her)
Neoscona arabesca, not as large, but facier:
Oooo (that's what my friend wrote when I showed her)
Dorito (with Cheeto, the emotional support mite, center left)
Araneus pegnia, the aptly named "butterfly orbweaver," a tiny, skittish creature:
Araneus thaddeus, still young; she'll turn orange by autumn:
Metepeira labyrinthea, the prettiest little spider of them all:
