A Quiet Ride

Lake Carnegie

14 October 2018

After the ride I was supposed to lead on Saturday got rained out I had no excuse not to start riding from home to Jim's Sunday ride at Six Mile Run. I was half a mile from my house when I figured out that I didn't give myself as much time as I usually do, I didn't dress quite warmly enough, and I forgot to put in my hearing aids. The route is normally quiet on Sunday mornings; now it would be more so.

Mist was rising from the surface of Lake Carnegie as I passed it on Route 27 north of Princeton. I had to stop, rest Miss Piggy at the entrance to the parking lot, and walk towards the shore. I lost a few minutes but it was worth it.

As I sped past the towpath parking lot on Kingston-Rocky Hill Road I saw a car that could only be Tom's. Yesterday he had plans to ride one way to Belmar. I assumed that had been scuttled and wondered if he'd driven instead and stayed there, in which case there are two people in central NJ with an aging, maroon Baja. Perhaps he'd decided to ride in the hills with Jack H. Or maybe he'd parked there to get in a few extra miles on Jim's ride and, if I were fast enough, I'd catch up to him on Canal Road.  I hammered, sort of, but I was the only person on a bike going north.

I got to Six Mile with a few minutes to spare. A large group clustered around Jim. Among them was Tom. Pete and Ricky were there too, both having ridden in. Andrew had, too. Six Mile is too far for Chris to ride to; he'd driven. There were three others whom I didn't know (one woman might have looked a little familiar; it was hard to tell because she was bundled up).

We set off on what is now Jim's standard route. Taking a page from Winter Larry, he gave orders for optional sprints on a few of the longer stretches. Some of us got ahead there, but not too far ahead and not for long. Slugs always wait for Slugs.

We were about halfway to the rest stop when it occurred to me that I hadn't spoken to any of the new riders. I usually try to get to know the new folks. This time I was huddled with my regular buddies, caught up in our usual banter. In an idle moment I remembered what it felt like when I first joined the club. I remembered the conversations between people who had been riding for years; they had their own language and their own cast of characters. That's what I must sound like to them now. No wonder they weren't saying anything to any of us.

I'm sure it didn't help that, without my hearing aids, I couldn't make out what anyone was saying unless they were next to me, and even then I had trouble. I couldn't hear cars until they were right up behind me. If I wasn't in a conversation I was in my own quiet little bubble.

Pete, under a time constraint, left us in Hillsborough.

We stopped at our usual stop, the Bagel Barn on Route 206 in Montgomery. In line with Tom, with Chris and Jim behind us, I asked if we were going into Princeton from here; I'd assumed we were. "We're not," Jim said. "You're gonna break off here."

"Where are you breaking off?" I asked Tom.

"Griggstown," he said. "I'm gonna go up Coppermine."

Chris suggested that if I followed Tom I could spin the ride out into a metric. I shook my head. From here to home would give me about 55 miles; it was all I had in mind. "Nope," I said.

He didn't believe me. Neither did Jim. Neither did Tom.

"I wasn't planning on it," I said. If I followed Tom down Canal Road, up Coppermine and down Old Georgetown back to Canal Road, lord knows how many miles I'd wind up with. From the southern end of Canal Road to home was already twelve miles. I turned toward the muffin case. They were out of pumpkin.

Chris and I opted for iced sugar cookies (my new go-to bike snack). The new guy busted on the one Chris got because it had a Mets logo on it, surrounded by an extra ring of orange icing. "More sugar," Chris explained. Mine was a smiley emoji with sunglasses. I think TJ's in Kingston sells the same ones.

As we were getting ready to leave Tom asked me, "Is the metric worming its way into your brain?" It was. A little. "I'll go with you and decide on Coppermine when we get there," I said.

I was shivering. We'd been sitting outside. The forecast had predicted highs in the upper 50s. Maybe we got there when the sun was out, but most of our ride had been under cloud cover, tomorrow's rain slowly moving in.

The two new women, whom I never did get around to talking to, peeled off for home as soon as we left the rest stop. Andrew had already gone. That made us six going back towards Six Mile. When we got to Canal Road at the Griggstown Causeway (I'd finally stopped shivering), Tom and I turned right. Ricky went with us. Jim, Chris, and the other guy turned left.

I'd be remiss at this point not to bust on Jim for shedding riders like a duck sheds water. He's needled me about it enough. Turnabout is fair play, and now that he's leading there will be ample opportunity to even the score.

When Tom signaled the turn onto Coppermine I followed. Ricky went straight. If I were going to climb this thing -- it had been years since I had -- I was going to stay at the top when I got there. "I'm gonna go down 27," I said. I'd never been on that stretch.

"You'll be fine," Tom said. "There's a big shoulder."

Coppermine is longer than I remembered. It's always longer than I remember it to be. From the top to Route 27 was flat and straight. The shoulder on Route 27 was wide. Unfortunately it was also under construction for more than half the distance between where I started (Route 518) and Kingston. Fortunately there wasn't much traffic and I was able to go around instead of over half the steel plates that interrupted the shoulder every few hundred feet.

There was traffic in Princeton. There's always traffic in Princeton mid-day on a Sunday. This being my commute home, I went into autopilot and didn't look at my odometer until I got home.

I texted Chris. "66.7. Damn you."

They Weren't Hills. It Wasn't Raining.

Smith's Bridge Picnic Area, Wilmington, DE 

6 October 2018

I: They Weren't Hills

The Insane Bike Posse will follow Tom anywhere, even if it means getting up before dawn in order to be in Bordentown by 8:00 a.m. for a 1.5-hour drive to the DE-PA border.

"You're driving," Tom said when I arrived. He would take three bikes and one more person. Jack H would take two bikes and one more person. I'd take my bike and Bob. I was under a little bit of time pressure. If we ran late Tom could take Bob and I could drive straight home. That's how Tom, Jim, Jack H, Ricky, Bob, and I wound up at the Smith's Bridge parking lot somewhere outside of sprawling Wilmington, DE.

Tom had sent us the route and the elevation profile, telling us that the route really wouldn't bee too hilly. In 49 miles we'd climb 3600 feet, he said, but told us not to worry about the elevation because his software always over-reports it. I imported his route to my ridewithgps page and used the elevation recalculation tool.

Tom was right. His elevation was off. We'd be climbing over 4000 feet in 49 miles. Having ridden in that area in 2015 I knew that I'd need Miss Piggy, no matter what Tom said.

True to form we started with a small hill. The roads were pretty but narrow. We were under trees a lot. I didn't want to slow everyone down by stopping for pictures.

I did snap one of a little flower on the side of the road at an intersection.

We rode through Kennett Square, the so-called mushroom capitol of the world, without seeing a single mushroom. We did pass a mushroom farm or two.

We came across two closed roads. I don't have pictures because we rode right past the barriers both times.

Then we turned down a road that looked to the rest of us to be a driveway. Tom assured us that it wasn't. At the end of it, though, we had to lift our bikes over a gate.

Suspended between the bars was an orb weaver. My camera wouldn't focus well enough on it in the short time I had. Taking pictures of spiders with an auto-focus camera is no easy thing when there is time. This is the best I could do:

It was one of these (this one hanging on the outside of my front door for one night):

Tom wasn't sure that his chosen rest stop, a deli at a busy intersection, would still be there. It wasn't, so we made do with a gas station across the street.

The hills mellowed out a little as we got closer to West Chester. I stopped twice for pictures on Wawaset Road.

I don't know where we were when I took this one:

Outside of West Chester we found a gas station mini mart. The station was out of regular gas and more than a few provisions inside were missing too. Still we managed to find plenty to eat and drink. At one point a woman asked us if she could put premium gas in her lawnmower. Sure. Why not?

There was another closed road on the way back. Once again we got around it.

Tom had promised that he'd added "something stupid" towards the end of the ride.  We were only a few miles from the end, so I asked him when the stupid thing was coming.

"Another couple of miles," he said. "It's really stupid. You're gonna love it."

We turned onto a residential street, still climbing.  "See that clump of bushes over there? And the tree?" Tom said, slowing down.  "And the bench?"

We stopped. Behind the bench was a sign proclaiming this to be the highest point in Delaware.

"The lowest highest point!"I exclaimed.

"Except it's not," Tom said. "It's in Florida."

"The Lowest Highest Point!" I said again, and explained the Moxy Fruvous song. Behind the bench was an athletic field and a tower.

It was all downhill from there. We rode past the parking lot to the covered bridge to get the pictures we hadn't taken in the morning.

I got another shot of the flooded park.

We piled back into our respective cars. Bob and I talked about music almost the entire drive back.

In Bordentown, after everyone had moved their bikes and bags around, we hung out in the parking lot. We were beat. 

"That was hilly," Jim said.

"They weren't hills," Tom replied. "Just a lot of up and down."

"Oh!" Jim said. "That clears it right up!"

I got home with plenty of time to clean off before the evening's dinner plans, which didn't run as late as I thought they would and I got to bed in time to get enough sleep for Winter Larry's C+ Cranbury ride.

II: They Weren't Expecting Me

Neither of us had expected me to show up. "I'm doing the route you hate," he said.  Damn it. Battleview Orchards. The rest stop comes far too early, only 15 miles into the 45-mile route, and there's never anything I want to eat on a ride. The coffee is terrible and the only bathroom is a porta-potty. 

When we go we're usually the only ones there. Not today. The parking lot was packed. Some of the spaces were taken over by stands of pumpkins and flowers. An outside cart had been set up to sell cider and donuts.

I went inside anyway and bought three iced sugar cookies to be eaten slowly throughout the coming week.

I stuffed half a protein bar into my face at mile 25, at the intersection of Pine Hill and Millstone, with a dead tree.

Winter Larry was letting us run free in places. I found myself off the front with Al L on my tail. It's not a true Cranbury ride if Al isn't on my tail or by himself off the front.

Larry cut the route short, for which I was grateful.


III: It Wasn't Raining

NOAA said there wouldn't be rain. My radar app showed nothing. Still, the mist started when Ricky and I were only two miles from home, on our way to Twin Pines. I hadn't led a ride since mid-August. My plan for the day was to follow a route I'd concocted in March of 2017, one that didn't follow my usual choice of roads.

Tom, Jim, Andrew, Jack H, and an extra Jim (not the Spare Jim; another one, easily half our age) stood in the Twin Pines parking lot with me and Ricky, slowly getting wet.

"This isn't rain," I said to Tom.

We headed out anyway because that's how we roll. Plus, the forecast wasn't calling for rain; surely things would clear up.

They didn't. We rode in and out of mist on Burd Road.

There was quite a collection of "road closed" barriers on Woosamonsa, but no road work anywhere. "Y'know how lost socks have to be somewhere?" I asked Jim. "I think this is where 'road closed' signs wind up." He agreed to the possibility.

There was more mist in the distance on Pleasant Valley Road.

We took Woodens Lane up to Hewitt and then 518. At Wheelfine I stopped because some of the group had never been inside before.

I stepped inside. Someone had been tidying up: I was able to walk to the middle room without sucking in my gut.  "Michael?" I called.

He eventually appeared. Jack H was behind me. "Hey, Michael," he said. "I have a complaint. The paint on my old Redcay is peeling." This was an inside joke that only the three of us got. Michael had started his career building frames for Jim Redcay back in the 1970s. I only knew this because of all the time I'd spent in Michael's shop.

Andrew bought a patch kit. Ricky dusted off his fantasy of owning a steel bike. I brought up Beaker's conversion to Campy, a plan I'd hatched a year ago. Somehow we all got out of there in five minutes. "If you hadn't come out after fifteen I'd have come in to get you," Tom said.

I took a picture of the Sourland Mountain to the south, and of the shop:

In the online ride description I'd promised cows and coffee. I found three lounging at the top of a hill in a pasture off of Gulick Road.

Finally at the Sergeantsville General Store, we dismounted in the rain and decided to take the shortest route home. First, though, we'd eat and Jim and I would take pictures of the caribou a fellow rider had lashed to his head tube:

To get back to Pennington I took as straight a route as possible, which meant climbing up Mount Airy-Harbourton, followed immediately by Dinosaur Hill and that annoying incline where Mount Airy-Harbourton meets Bear Tavern. After that we hammered all the way to Timberlane, where Jack, off the front and confusing us all, turned left instead of right.

I figured he was doubling back towards his house in Yardley and continued on. When I turned off of Timberlane, though, nobody followed me. They knew we'd lost Jack. I pulled into a driveway to wait. It seemed like a long time. Then I saw a rider coming from Route 31 towards me. It was Jack.  "They're all waiting for you back there," I said. He went on, collected them, and came back.

"See the trouble you cause by going ahead?" I said.  

Back in Pennington, Tom said, "If he hadn't fallen that time," referring back to the Federal Twist mishap. "He might have been in a ditch somewhere."

"I was being an asshole," I said to Jack. "And they didn't trust you. You get sympathy or trust but not both." He laughed and hung his head.

"We're riding on Wednesday," Tom said. He has the day off and so does Jim. Ricky and Jack are retired. "You should take the day off."

"I can't," I said. "I have class."

"We'll be back in time for that."

"I can't. I've got timed stuff." Damn it.

Tomorrow's forecast is much like today's, but with a promise of mist and rain this time. I think I'll be off the bike.

Speaking of damp, here's a damp spider and her damp egg sacs from a damp Wednesday morning last week. She's the only spider I've been able to get good pictures of. I'm not sure how much longer she'll be out there. I can't tell if any of the eggs hatched either. The deck needs cleaning but I won't do it until she's gone.

A Hot Mess, Part Two

Left: Hamster Bowl; Right: People Cup

6 October 2018

I am Queen of Hamster Bowls.

I was looking forward to the third studio session, or, as the college calls it, "lab." I was looking forward to making pumpkins with my assigned lab partner. I was hopeful that I could improve upon my tiny, misshapen, hamster bowls.

A text message arrived while I was driving. I read it after I'd parked. My lab partner couldn't make it tonight. "Well, I'm already here," I thought. 

After I freaked out about flying solo and some back and forth between the advanced students and the studio manager on duty, we arranged for the advanced students to jump in and help me as needed. 

First things first though, I had to document the starting temperature. 

Only 97? The Devil's Asshole wasn't even trying today.

When he wasn't making his perfect vases, ones I can't show you but if you go to the Red Tulip Gallery's site you'll be able to figure it out, one of the advanced students worked with me, providing a constant running commentary.

"Shut me up if I'm getting on your nerves," he said.

"No! It's great!"

When he was working and I wasn't, I peppered him with questions. "Shut me up if I'm getting on your nerves," I said. He didn't mind.

The other student made a giant fish. He also helped me. I was dripping sweat at the bench and he said, "It's not always this hot in here."

I lost a vessel when it fell off the punty and landed in the block bucket, shattering and sinking to the bottom of the murky water. Here it is at the end of the night after I emptied the bucket:

Last week's vessels were out of the annealer. They were tiny. They seemed bigger when I was working on them. I put them next to my water bottle for scale.

With the evening's work in the annealer, I hoped they'd be bigger and more even:

The studio temperature had come down all of two degrees for Wednesday evening's class. Somehow we were in week 5 already.

My classmate and I practiced making vessels and punties. We messed up sometimes, and we got a few pieces into the annealer. One of mine had broken unevenly off the punty, leaving a blob on one side of the opening. I decided to try to make a spout by pulling on the extra glass. The glass was too hot for that and the entire top distorted unevenly. Oh well. It was fun pulling anyway.

I packed up the bowls from the third studio and third class and took them home. I lined them up on the kitchen counter, oldest on the left, newest on the right. Clearly I hadn't improved much at all. The most recent vessel was arguably the worst, and I liked the shape of my first one the best, even though it was more of a glass doorknob than a vessel. I put all of them in a box, out of sight.

When I arrived at the studio for the next lab I found out that my official lab partner had dropped the advanced class. One of the advanced students told me that someone else would be here to take her place tonight.

The temperature was a chilly 82 degrees.

My temporary partner's plan was to churn out pumpkins. I helped him where I could, giving him air when he asked for it, keeping the pumpkin hot while he got glass ready for the curly stem. The advanced students jumped in to help him with that. It was far more involved and difficult than I'd presumed it to be. In the end he finished three, each a different mix of colors, and I made three more vessels, none much bigger than before, but I was getting the hang of opening them up, and I felt more in control.

It was clearly pumpkin season in the studio. The tray of scrap glass was festooned with remnants of pumpkin stems.

I took a picture of the vessels I'd made during the last class. I might have improved a little. It was hard to tell. The spout was uneven on the experimental piece, but, if I posed it just right, it looked better.

I fell asleep thinking about molten glass and I wondered if, should time permit, my lab partner would help me try to make a pumpkin bowl next week.

Wednesday's class was going to be "critique night," where we were to bring in a sample of our best work. All of the pieces I had at home were uneven. I hoped that whatever I'd done in Monday's lab would be better. I took everything I had and lined them up from best to worst. I loaded a six-compartment box with five of them and left the rest jumbled in another box. I supposed I'd eventually bring the rejects back to the studio to be melted down.

Mid-day Wednesday the class assistant texted me: "Just in case you haven't heard, the Newtown campus of BCCC* is closed today and tonight because of a police investigation, so no class."  I hadn't heard. I stayed at work for a 10-hour day instead. At least I'd get another shot in Monday's lab to make better vessels for critique night.

Monday rolled around, October already.

The colored glass discard bucket was full of pumpkin rejects.

The lab partner I worked with last week was back to help me. I tried, and failed, to make bigger pieces. One was too thin for me to handle and I gave up on it. A second failed as well. The third glooped to the floor when I went in for a second gather while the core bubble was too hot. My partner scraped it off the cement. "Keep it!" I said. I liked the shape, and our instructor had told us to work too hot just for the experience. Well, now I had proof. He put the flattened blob in the annealer.

He and I took turns, although he did let me go twice after I messed up. He was making more pumpkins, experimenting with different colors. He used a lot of glass, and when it was my duty to keep the pumpkin hot while he got the glass ready for the stem, I had to work to keep the pipe turning and not to bump the piece against the walls of the glory hole. With a week's more practice his stems were turning out better too. I lent a hand for one of them, holding the metal rod while one of the advanced students held a torch to the ribbon of glass that my partner twisted around the rod.

I had given up on making larger pieces and stayed small, landing two in the annealer by the end of the evening. I was working hotter, too, which was a big help.

My partner was willing to help me make a pumpkin bowl. He guided me through every step. It required an extra gather of glass and blowing into a mold. The first mold I chose was small, which I figured would be better, given my inability to work big. I messed that one up, though, by heating it too much until the walls, too thin, collapsed in the glory hole. We tried again, using a bigger mold with deeper ridges, but I screwed up the punty and the piece fell off when we broke it free of the blowpipe. The third try, though, did work. 

Afraid to lose the shape, I didn't open it up very much. Here it is in the annealer with one of my other vessels to the right and one behind.

I brought last week's work home and rearranged the box, discarding more earlier pieces and adding all three new ones. Once again I hoped that what I made tonight would be better than anything in the box.

So here we are at week 7, critique night. I arrived early and went to the locker to retrieve and assess Monday's work.

All of it, even the gloop, was better than anything in the box.

There being only two of us, the critique was more of a discussion. It was over and done in a few minutes and we went into the studio to learn how to make real bowls.

I had a bad night. I messed everything up. I messed my work up. I messed my classmate's work up. I was grumpy and frustrated. Things I had done for weeks were somehow beyond my grasp.

"I usually save this lecture for later in the semester," our instructor said, and went on to assure me that there are always times like this. We'll slide back for a week, maybe two, and then come back better than before. He compared it to yoga. In my mind I converted it to bad weeks on the bike.

I did learn why my pieces are so small, though. In glassblowing, mistakes follow throughout the entire piece. I'd already learned the hard way that an off-center starter bubble would make for uneven wall thickness later on. After the starter bubble is the second gather and blocking it to shape the glass and push it off the pipe. Turns out I wasn't blocking correctly. I'd get the shape, but a third of the glass would still be on the pipe, leaving me far less to work with once the bubble was blown out and the jack line put in.

Speaking of jack lines, the advanced students had added to the instructional drawing we'd been given several weeks ago.

The advanced students are cheeky.

I, on the other hand, was murky. I just wasn't getting the blocking thing. (Only when I thought about it later, in bed, eyes closed, did what I was doing wrong and how to correct it sink in. D'oh!)

My first bowl was going fine until I tried to work the jack line after we'd blown the piece out. To make a sharper line I had to heat the whole piece, and the walls started to go wobbly on me. Figuring it would be irretrievable I knocked it off the pipe. My classmate said I could have saved it by putting a punty on anyway, knocking it off the pipe, and working it back into shape after opening it up. I didn't have that much confidence in myself.

I wasn't any help to my classmate either. The punty I brought him didn't have enough glass on the sides, and when we broke the piece from the pipe it fell off the punty too. The next one he did he brought his own punty too, but we took so long to cool the jack line that the piece cracked.

All I could do was apologize over and over and over again. My classmate seemed cool about it. He reminded me that he threw one of his own pieces away tonight too.

Angry at myself, I tried another. This time I managed to push a little more glass off the pipe and got a straight-sided bowl into the annealer, thanks to my classmate's good punty skills.  At the end of the night I attempted a bowl with angled sides. I opened it a little, reheated, opened it some more, and managed to get it to flare a little. It was off-center, though, and as I was trying to fix it our instructor said, "It's beautiful. Put it away."

I apologized to my classmate again. It seemed unfair that I ended the night with two pieces but ruined two of his. "I work in a field where we get yelled at for making mistakes," I said.

"Not here," our instructor said.

At home I put the pumpkin bowl in the cabinet with all the other pieces I'd made over the years.

The two cups wound up in the kitchen cabinet,

until I cut my finger on the sharp punty breakoff spot at the bottom of the glass. 

Among my beading tools is a small file that one of my beading companions had convinced me to buy years ago as a way to soften the ends of silver wire. I dug it out and filed down the sharp bits. While I was doing this I realized what our instructor had meant when he told us that we were making our punties too big.

For the next two weeks we'll be working on bowls. If I can get my hands to do what my head has finally figured out then I'll be able to make something my cats can drink out of. If not, I'll be watering a lot of thirsty hamsters.

(*Hi, Marketing Department! I know you're watching me.)