Hill Slug Chronicles: A Month of Rides and Fewer Trees

Linvale Road Northbound

19 April 2026

"Is your blog post up yet?"

I was asked that question several weeks ago, after a long gap in blogging. That gap got even longer. This is a long post. Get comfy as I rewind to mid-March.

March 14

Tom led a ride from Allentown. There was a sign at the top of Iron Bridge Road that warned of a detour. Naturally, we pedaled right past it.

The bridge was out. Very out.

We turned around and added a few miles detouring to the other side. The wind was up, and several riders soon decided to turn back. The rest of us never made it to the planned rest stop in New Egypt. Tom cut the route short, but in the end we had almost the same number of miles we would have had if things had gone to plan.

March 15

Heddy invited me to join her, Our Jeff, and Dave S on a trip to the Philly Bike Expo. I'd never been. The plan was to drive to Cornwells Heights, a train station halfway between here and there, and take the train in to avoid the Saint Patrick's Day parade road closures. In all the years that I commuted to Philly on SEPTA, I never paid much attention to Cornwells Heights. I knew that the massive parking lot was always full, and that it was a stop that the express trains never skipped. What I hadn't noticed was that there's no there there. The station is a couple of shelters. On this Sunday morning, the lots were empty.

I didn't know what to expect at the show. I'd hoped to see some useful gadgets like camera mounts or tube bags or nifty lights or something. There was almost none of that. There were some retro-looking frames on display, so I took pictures of those, and of interesting (but not necessarily pretty) paint jobs.

One dealer had vintage steel on display. I hovered around this one, labeled "1960s Carlton International," for a few minutes.

Lookit those lugs!

More weirdness and retro frames:

Heddy almost bought a jersey with cats on it. Jeff got a few pairs of gloves. I found a pair of bottle cages to match Janice. The ones I have are side-loading, which are annoying even though I've gotten used to them.

Next we faced the crowds at the Reading Terminal Market, where I haven't been in years. I had to show them Mueller's chocolate-covered onions, so very much nope all the time.

March 16-20

The following night, I went to a raucous township Planning Board meeting. There was some rezoning for affordable housing on the agenda, north of the highway, where the landed gentry live, and the rich NIMBYs were having none of it.

The room was packed. The priveleged elites were speaking out of turn and not listening at all to the hard truth that the township manager and attorney were trying to tell them. Heddy was there. I sat on the floor near the front until a seat opened up. She and I were texting each other all night. She got a crash course in municipal land use law, affordable housing law, and NIMBYism. I got someone to send snark to.

Eventually enough people left that I snagged a seat next to Heddy. She fed me chocolate before I took my turn to comment.

I've been attending meetings like this for decades. This was one of the few times I sided with the Planning Board. I recognized some of the board members, and one journalist, from the Wal-Mart battle days. We're the same people, a lot grayer.

The hearing wrapped up around 11:00 p.m. I got home at 11:15. There was a straight-line wind storm in the forecast. I decided to put my car in the garage in case any stray branches came our way.

Jack was reading in bed. The cats were on the cat tree, chomping on their (very late) evening dental treats.

Thump!

The house shook. The cats bolted. That was some wind!

Ka-thump!

Jack and I both had the same thought: we'd better go look out back. I went downstairs and turned the back light on, the one that has a too-bright bulb shining over the deck.

The former deck.

I peered past the shattered railing and horizontal branches. Saint Polychromatous, the bottle tree I loaded with vases I made, was still standing. A "how's the bike?" moment.

Water was coming in through the top of the doorway, but there was no apparent leak in the ceiling. We grabbed some towels to dry things up, felt around, and found nothing wet. It must have been the drenching rain from when I had the door open.

I stayed remarkably calm considering. Things could have been a lot worse. For one, none of us was injured. Also, the branches missed our brand-new windows.

The tree was the maple growing on our next door neighbor's side of the fence. Sure, it had a few dead branches that landed on our deck over the winter, but the tree seemed very much alive last summer.

Heddy texted as we went back upstairs. I was too wired to attempt to sleep right away, and got into a conversation while I tried to calm down.

From the bathroom windows all we could see were branches. As we climbed into bed, I said, "It's gonna be a lot of phone calls."

It wasn't the best night's sleep I've ever had, but I've had far worse. When I got out of bed, Jack was wandering the back yard in his robe, taking pictures.

I took some from the bedroom and bathroom windows. The roof above our screened patio seemed intact.

Little birds were exploring the wreckage. Clementine was monitoring the birds.

I went out to check on the glass. Saint Polychromatous was, indeed, fine.

And, somehow, the branches avoided Saint Vitreous too.

I took some more pictures.

The poor tree just toppled over, root mass and all.

On the deck, I'd had a plant hanger with two glass ornaments and a solar-powered hot air balloon suspended from it.

One ornament, a reject that I'd sand-blasted spiders onto, then tried and failed to turn into a hummingbird feeder, was in pieces. I considered using the shards, but the ornament was far too thick for that, and the reason it was a reject was that the colors were all wrong.

The other ornament was one that kicked off this whole glassblowing thing. I'd "made" it with a friend in Boston, long before I had any clue how any of this glass stuff works.

The solar-powered balloon had lost its hook but appeared otherwise intact.

I went around to my next-door neighbors. "Did you guys happen to look out your back window yet this morning?"

"No," they answered. "Why?"

"Your little maple came down last night and hit our house."

We went out back to look.

They called their insurance company, who refused to pay. "Act of weather" was the explanation.

I took more pictures.

Our insurance company does claims online only now. Jack filled out the form while I looked over his shoulder. I called our tree guy.

"I know that maple," he said. "It was dead." Not quite dead, but dead enough, I guess.

I took a picture from the kitchen window.

Meanwhile, I had some important coffee to make. I'd been reading a coffee book Jack gave me ages ago. The author mentioned a particular type of porcelain drip coffee maker, one that, I learned, after going down a deep eBay rabbit hole, can no longer be had. I'd found what appeared to be a worthy equivalent.

This beast would prove to have a long learning curve: grind size and pour speed matter, as does warming the pot first and timing the finish to coincide with my being done eating breakfast. My first attempt was pretty good though.

The tree guys arrived early the next day, with a flatbed truck pulled into our front yard and a cherry-picker suspended over the top of our house to cart away the debris.

There was physics involved. Perhaps had I been taught about levers and fulcrums this way, some of it would have stuck.

One of the crew leaned backwards, pulling a rope with all his weight, to keep the swinging branch under control and away from the house. My neighbors across the street apparently got pictures of this from the front. Not having seen our back yard, they were unaware of the damage.

Everything was fed into a chipper.

Later, when the debris was cleared, I was able to survey the secondary damage, like road rash after a broken-bone bike crash.

A branch had torn a screen on the patio. Once again, none of the glass ornaments hanging there was damaged. I think they probably bounced.

One of the tree guys, who conveniently doubles as a roofer, found a couple of holes.

Our roof dates to 2003 or thereabouts. A new one was on my list for this year anyway. The roofer tree guy came back a few days later to put a tarp over the holes, just in time for rainy weather.

It was visible only if one stood all the way to the far edge of the back yard.

The insurance adjuster came by the next day to survey the damage. He noticed a ding in a window frame. What a near miss!

I had contaced our window guy, who sent one of his screen guys to fix the patio. I contacted him again about the frame. One of his guys fixed that too. He didn't charge us for any of it. Best I can figure is that our having replaced every single window, the two patio doors, one entry door, one storm door, and seven interior doors all at once put us in good stead with the company.

I called the deck guy who'd done our maple neighbor's deck and got no response. Our window guy recommended a different deck guy, and that deck guy came over right away.

Our deck, made of a recycled plastic called Trex, wasn't cheap the first time. It was built by fellow Free Wheeler John W. The wooden one that preceeded it had rotted. Now, this deck guy wanted to tear it all down and build it back better. The color we'd used was no longer available anyway. His price quote was far more than our insurance company was willing to spring for, but I said yes, and asked for it to be done as soon as possible. Spider season was nearly upon us, and the deck is important real estate.

The thing is, the little maple wasn't the tree I thought would ever hit our house. The tree I was worried about was a very big, very dead one on my rear neighbor's border with our back yard. I'd spoken to him about it last fall. It had already dropped two large branches into my yard, one of which crushed part of a forsythia, which I had to cut back in order to salvage. He said he'd take care of it, but he hadn't.

My tree guy told me to contact the towship and get this all on record so that, if it did crush our house, it would be on my neighbor's dime. So I ratted my neighbor out.

A bit more than a week later, on a Saturday morning, there was a crew out there tackling the dead tree. When I came back from leading a bike ride, they were still at it, giving his whole yard a crew cut.

March 28

The weather couldn't make up its mind. It was cold again. Booties go on. It was nearly hot. Booties come off. It was chilly again. Booties go on.

I led a ride I called "Small Local" on one of the chilly days. We didn't stray far from our Pennington start, and I kept the hills to a minimum. We stopped at the Bean, where Martin mentioned an AI picture he'd created for a Facebook site he runs. That got Heddy thinking, and she created a prompt for Google's graphic AI. The keywords included Hill Slugs and coffee.

Blob's booties had their tags flapping in the breeze, which annoyed Pete. He peeled off towards home near the end and was subject to a certain amount of ribbing in the parking lot. We decided that what Blob's booties needed were streamers.

When I got home, there was a text from Heddy. What the AI had returned was cracking her up.

"Nill Slugs Croga," the slug's jersey read. Click to embiggen.

She shared the image with a handful of us, one of whom pointed out that the riders were far too happy. She made an edit and sent it to me for the blog.

"Pace yushars not welcoms," the slug's jersey read.

The next iteration fixed it to "pace pushers not welcome."

She made another that featured Cadillac Mountain. The AI even put in some version of the Porcupine Islands!

Meanwhile, Blob was goofing around and created a pair of bespoke booties for Pete, who, having missed the parking lot conversation, had no idea what this was about. All the better!

It was pointed out that the coffee in the slug's hand ought to be a cortado. The final version took care of that.

April 2-3

While I was at work, the deck guy's dumpster guy deposited a large ~~Cybertruck~~ dumpster in our driveway, and the remnants of our old deck were piled up in the back yard and transported to the dumpster.

New lumber and Trex boards arrived.

April 4

It was spring again, and time to lead the annual Chocolate Bunny Ride. I had a bag full of chocolate peanut butter bunnies in my left jersey pocket. Our destination was Bread and Culture in Flemington, with bunnies to be awarded for worthy humor along the way.

I got pretty good at handing off chocolates at speed.

As we began our descent from the Sourland Mountain on Linvale, Tom stopped for pictures, and I did too. The pear (?) trees were in full bloom.

I stopped twice, actually.

I'm not one to take pictures of food, but my colleague needed to see what Bread and Culture is all about,

A cortado and a cookie set me back $10. I got the buckwheat molasses cherry chocolate cookie and saved half for later.

We went down Manners on the way back. I have a bunch of photos of that road already, so I didn't stop for more. That was a mistake. Always take pictures from the northern end of Manners Road. Here's one from April 19 of last year.

I put the Lindbergh climb in because I'm an asshole. At the top, everyone got a chocolate bunny, and the sweep got two.

I still had a few left in the bag when I rolled into my driveway. The deck crew was hard at work. I chatted with my next-door neighbor over the fence. I asked him what he was going to plant now that the tree was gone. "A little Japanese maple," I suggested. "No," he said. He was done with trees. He was planning to extend his paver patio instead.

"Want a chocolate bunny?" I asked.

"Sure," he said.

April 4-6

I tried to take construction pictures when the crew wasn't looking.

Ta-da!

April 8

I made it to one of Our Jeff's Wednesday evening rides. The temperature started out in the low 50s. I had my booties back on. As we rode, the temperature plummeted. Our Jeff decided to cut the ride short, first because we were running out of light, second because we were starting to get cold, and third because one of our number sounded as if he were about to pass out on the Thompson Mill climb.

The shortcut involved climbing Creamery, which I haven't done enough times to form an opinion about. It dumped us out on Wrightstown Road, halfway into what is normally my 7-mile "L Train" hammer back to Washington Crossing. This time, I was able to get a few photos while we regrouped.

I was last to remount, and as I caught up and passed Heddy, I made a train horn sound loud enough for only her to hear.

"Oh no," she said, and dropped into her big ring behind me.

We got back ten minutes before sunset. "Good call," I told Our Jeff, and then we went to It's Nutts for pizza.

April 10-15

With the deck finished and the ground cover completely trampled by the crew, I could see the deck frame underneath and said to myself, "What we need here is azaleas!" So off I went and came back with four shrubs: three azaleas and one rhododendron.

On a Friday afternoon, I got to work digging holes. They don't look like much now, but they'll be something someday. And the support beams will weather to be less conspicuous.

I'd loaded the displaced soil into a wheelbarrow. I carted it out front, where five Belgian blocks had sunk almost to sidewalk level where the sewer line had been replaced two summers ago.

Not having a clue about how much these suckers weigh, I struggled to free the first one, running inside to find a pry bar and a crow bar to help jiggle the thing loose. I don't have big hands and couldn't get a good grip on the top. Eventually, brute force brought the stone clunking to the surface, and the rest were much easier to pull out or move to the side as I loaded in the new soil.

They'll sink again, I'm sure.

All this landscaping was probably a dumb thing to do the day before a weekend of bike rides. I was tired and sweaty. This was supposed to be my day off from exercise. Fortunately, Tom's Saturday ride was flat, and I chose not to torture myself on whatever vertical nonsense Dave S had planned for Sunday. Instead, I took Kermit to Plain Jim's inaugural C+ out of Thompson Park in Jamesburg. I'm glad I did, because there were a bunch of people I hadn't seen in forever, like Winter Larry.

It got warm enough for the flowering ground cover in my yard to bloom. This is some sort of mint family thing called "yellow archangel," (Lamium galeobdolon) which I can never remember and have to look at my iNaturalist post every time.

There are two species of Vinca: lesser,

and greater:

And violets too.

The tulips, which usually open in waves over a week or two, popped all at once.

The daffodils were long finished, but the narcissus had waited.

I bought some tall plant hangers and populated them with glass and a giant Begonia I found at the supermarket.

When I went to rehang the hot air balloon, I found that the solar pannel was missing, carted away with the deck debris or buried in the mud underneath. This resulted in another rabbit hole, this time in a text exchange with my sister, who had given me the balloon a few years ago. As luck would have it, the solar battery on hers wasn't working either, and she was beginning a replacement search herself. After we both poked around a bit, she landed on the one place that sold the orginal battery-light combination we needed. It cost almost as much as a brand new balloon would. After wavering, I sprung for the replacement battery.

It arrived on Friday afternoon. I popped it in, hung the balloon up, and waited for darkness to tell me if I'd done it right.

Yesterday was the Free Wheeler's Spring Fling. The weather was perfect. Dave S gave me a supposedly waterproof Sourland Spectacular jacket that he never wore. I'll have to test it out on a dodgy bike commute day. We got our ride leader jerseys. I'd forgotten how many I led last year. 19. That's right; now I remember I was hoping for 20. Maybe I'll do better this year, what with all this free time coming my way in June.

In the late afternoon, I joined several other members of our township's open space and trails advisory commitee on a walk along a disused and very overgrown former road between the Amazon warehouse and the canal towpath. We want the township to help clean this up and turn it into another canal access point, but the township doesn't want to bother. The place is a mess of invasives, litter, and Route 1 traffic noise. Worst park ever right now, but it's there for the walking. What with all this free time coming my way in June, I told the folks I'd be glad to help hack away at the Russian olive and multiflora rose.

Sunday's forecast was for rain. Concerned that I haven't had enough hill training to tackle Cadillac Mountain at the end of May, I decided I'd have to pull up one of my lousy Cadillac videos on Rouvy, ones that get the inclines all wrong and jump ahead at weird moments. They're better than nothing.

Rouvy had added a handful of rides on Mount Desert Island over the winter. Some included Park Loop Road. None had the mountain. Surely, having been so close to it, they must have recorded the climb too. I'd been checking every so often with no luck.

In the evening, while I was charging the iPad I use for indoor workouts, I searched again.

OMG! OMG!

I wouldn't need to record the climb on my GoPro in May after all!

It's not "Mt Cadillac," though. It's "Cadillac Mountain." Whatever.

April 19

I slept in, ate breakfast, drank a slow coffee, and got ready for the workout.

I ought to know the roads by heart by now, having climbed the mountain 12 times in real life and probably as many virtually. Yet it took a bit for me to figure out where this route started. What tipped me off was the path from Park Loop road up to the carriage road bridge that crosses over to the Day Mountain section.

I didn't push because I wanted my back to survive the hour-plus journey. Usually it starts to get cranky after about 40 minutes on the trainer if I'm climbing. I was slower than Rouvy's ETA by 7 minutes, but whatever. It was a hilly 16 miles and I'm a Slug.

I took a bunch of screen shots. That black box is where my stats were. None of you needs to see my heart rate, watts, or cadence.

The little white goober on the profiles at the bottom is my location on the course. The center profile is the whole ride. The profile on the right is what's coming up.

This is Park Loop Road as it approaches the Bubbles. I've figured out that it's shortly after sunrise, probably late summer. There's almost no traffic.

Here's the sign announcing the entrance to the Cadillac Summit road. The climb is 3 miles long.

I'm seeing cars descending the mountain, but nobody has passed the car making this video (I can see the car's shadow). It must be the post-sunrise exodus.

This is 1.82 miles into the climb, where the only thing separating me from oblivion is Rockefeller's teeth. At least I'm on the mountain side here.

This is the final half mile, where, in real life, I learned to look nowhere but at the double yellow line. Anything else -- a sideways glance, or heaven forbid, a check in my rearview mirror -- spells certain vertigo. Also, I need James Brown's "Talking Loud and Saying Nothing" in my mental stereo.

Uh oh. Fog on the summit? Is that why the road is so empty?

Hold up. It's clear up here. Where is everybody? I've never seen the lot vacant like this. The Rouvy driver doesn't stop for a glimpse at the ocean. A biker takes a picture of his bike at the summit (click to emgiggen). I always do the same, only I face mine in the other direction.

Now for three miles of descent. This is harder on my back. In my highest gear, I'm pedaling madly with no power to show for it. There's no coasting in these workouts, and I'm on a 1986 Colnago Master, not a flywheel spin bike.

Nevertheless, wheeeeeeeee!

Here's the crowd, right where the descent gets scary.

Around the next curve is where my stomach lands in my mouth. In this video, a biker pops out from across the road, where he must have stopped for a photo or to put his stomach back where it belongs.