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 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.
