Round Valley in the Autumn

26 October

This, I figure, is our last chance to pedal up to the reservoir this year. My official ride got rained out yesterday, so Mike, Theresa, and I are biking from home and meeting Ben From the Lab in Pennington.

It's chilly; I wait in the sun for Ben to get here. He says he has to be back by 3 p.m. I figure we can make it back here by then.

We're going to Round Valley counterclockwise because I want Ben to experience the Best Downhill Ever (one of them, anyway) from the top of the reservoir towards Stanton. This is the usual route backwards. I'm not sure I've ever done it before. If the hills were nasty I'd have remembered it. Oh well. We'll find out soon enough.

I take Ben past the Hopewell campus of BMS, through Honey Brook Organic Farm, and up Stony Brook Road. I tell him that the stream is protected and that there's a great blue heron that hangs out there.

We cut over on Mountain Church and fly down Rileyville. I point to the mountains in the distance: "That's where we're going."

At the top of Cider Mill at Amwell Theresa spots a lump near the edge of the huge cow pasture. We're trying to figure out if it's a dying cow or a piece of trash. She sees an ear twitch and we feel bad.

At the end of Cider Mill I notice that my rear tire is going soft, so we have to stop to fix it. Mike is proud of the speck of glass he finds. I wield my CO2 cartridge. Ben is just happy he's not the one with the flat this time.

On Old York Road north of Three Bridges there's some kind of festival going on. A couple of hay bales are painted as pumpkins and there's a scary, inflatable pig thing at the entrance.





On Holland Brook Road near Whitehouse Station we ponder the commute from here to Manhattan. I ask Mike, "How long would it take to drive from here into the City?"

"About an hour. On a good day."

Ben says, "That's shorter than your commute."

Rub it in. "Not even. It's an hour just to Manhattan, never mind getting where you need to go once you get there."

I tell Ben about the Raritan Valley commuter rail line that runs along the northern base of the reservoir. "It's only one track here." We try to figure out how that could possibly work for commuters. "They want to expand it," I explain, "but I don't know how. There's a mountain on one side and a road on the other.

We turn onto the busy main street of Whitehouse Station and off onto Railroad Avenue. He soon sees what I mean. The rail bed is on a high berm as we pass beside it.

With some of the understory gone, we can look over to the tracks. "There's two!" Ben says. "They've already started." Now I'm confused. We certainly only crossed one in the center of town, and I know for sure we're only going to cross one later. "No, New Jersey Transit has no money. That must've always been there. We just couldn't see it." We're usually flying downhill in the opposite direction, no time to look sideways.

Now we're at the base of the reservoir mountain, where the track crosses our path. In all the time I've biked through here, in all the time I've followed these tracks, I've never once seen a train.



Now I know I've never climbed up this way. We're facing an asphalt wall. "Sorry!" I call out. But it's short.

With the leaves down we can see the Cokesbury Mountain ridge on our right as we climb. Mike and I try to catch a glimpse of the observatory, but I'm convinced we'll never see it. All around us the leaves are changing. This view is worth the work.

Now we're finally at the reservoir. We cross the road to the fence. And for once the sky is clear. I can try for a good picture, but the sun is in the wrong spot to catch the color of the leaves. The other side of the reservoir is east; we'd have to be here earlier in the morning to get the right light.

The reservoir through the fence:



The reservoir through the fence without the fence in the way of the lens (you'd think I'd have this figured out by now):



I'm trying for a shot of the Cokesbury ridge in the distance.



We move on to the boat launch for a bathroom break. I climb down the stairs for a few shots of the reservoir from the beach:







Ben asks how much longer he thinks we'll be. "It's six more miles to Stanton," I tell him, and this is when I find out that he needs to be home -- all the way home, an hour from Pennington -- by 3 p.m. It's almost noon. We're not quite half way through the ride yet. "It's not gonna happen," I tell him. "But the rest of the ride should be faster. We've been climbing all this time."

Mike is worried that Adele is going to give Ben hell. A familiar story for all long-distance bikers. "I'll apologize to her the next time she calls the lab. It's my fault. I thought you meant back to the car by three."

"We were meant to go horseback riding this afternoon," Ben explains, and they only have the one car. "But our neighbors are going too. They can drive." He thinks she'll forgive him if she gets to go riding. We all hope so. I tell him again it's my fault, I'll take the blame, and I'll apologize to her. Yep, the lab tech screws up again. Always blame the tech.

Meanwhile, Ben wants to know when the downhill, the big payoff I've been selling him on for months, is going to happen. "Soon," I tell him, and in a few minutes we're there. I tell everyone to keep going straight on into Stanton. "You'll see the general store at the top of the hill."

And down we go, swooping and zooming in the orange and yellow and green and sunlight and it's over too soon.

I've apparently screwed up on the number of hills before the general store. One more snuck itself in somehow. Whoops. "This hill is annoying," I tell Ben. Theresa and Mike are out of sight behind us. I hope they're not going to be pissed when they find out there's an extra bit of work here. We get over it, down it, and start on the next one.

Near the top I have to stop. I can't explain what I see, and I know, having passed this way many times, that I've never seen it before:



While we're all leaning our bikes against the Stanton General Store wall, I say, "You know, I always say you can't tell what century is it out here, but I'm only being figurative. That sign was from the 1996 presidential election."

What does this mean? Is McCain Dole and Palin Kemp? If that's the case, then the sign must belong to an Obama fan, but Obama fans have Obama signs, if they can get them, which a lot of people can't because the signs sold out long ago. Or are the McCain signs sold out too? Or is the sign's owner so fed up with the 2008 choices that he'd rather see candidates from twelve years ago? Or is this some sort of mind game with no meaning at all, just sheer goofiness? And who keeps a sign from a losing campaign for twelve years? I should talk; I've still got a Kerry-Edwards sign in my garage. Whatever. I'm going in for a muffin.

"Where have you been," the store owner asks. Ever since the incident of the 25-cent cup, he's been my surly pal, less surly since I dragged Jack up here for lunch about a month ago. "Don't be a stranger," he says as he rings me up for my banana chocolate chip monstrosity.

I share it with Mike, Ben, and Theresa on the back patio. The tables and chairs are gone, the summer season over.

Ben has squared things with Adele; she'll get a ride after all. That's good, because it's 12:30 and we still have twenty-five somewhat hilly miles to go. I check the map for the shortest distance between here and there.

But we have to see the buffalo first. I can't send a visitor home without seeing the buffalo. The farm, along Route 523, stretches what must be half a mile back to a dirt road behind it, and what feels like a mile along the main road.

At first we think we see some just off the driveway, but when we go in it turns out they're horses under a tree. Boy, do we feel stupid. We go back to the road and a little uphill. I spot some real buffalo in the middle distance and we all feel better having seen something. Then we see more, young ones, as we get to the corner of the pasture. One of them is rolling around in the dirt, feet in the air. Buffalo in the dirt and cats on the pavement (on the rare occasion of being let out under strict supervision, that is) have something in common.

We move on. Somehow I've misread the map and we wind up back on a road we came in on, but no matter, retracing our steps will get us home just as quickly.

The scary, inflatable pig has been deflated.

Coasting downhill on Old York Road just north of Three Bridges I hear a train whistle. I wonder who will get to the intersection first, us or the train.

The train.

I pull out the cell phone. Why not? What else is there to do? Let's see if I can get the engine crossing the tracks. Lord knows I had enough practice taking shots in motion on the train to Montreal. I should have the delay worked out by now. But I can't really see what I'm doing here, with my sunglasses on and the sun in my eyes.

Huh, whaddaya know? I got lucky, just barely:



Freight trains used to be much longer when I was a kid. And whatever happened to cabooses? (Cabeese?)




We're on our way in about two minutes.

The sick cow is still alone in the corner of its pasture. Theresa, a respiratory therapist, notices how fast the animal is breathing. I wonder, "The owner's gotta know about this, right? I mean, wouldn't he do a head count?" The field is almost as big as the buffalo pasture, the farm far in the distance. We move on.

At the end of Manners Road I converse with a pair of alpacas:





We go up the Sourland Mountain sideways, on the open roads north of the ridge, so we can look back to where we've been.

To save time we take Route 31 from 518. The shoulder is huge here, and we get to look down Mine Road into the Stony Brook valley as we pass. The view is always worth it, from a car or a bike, no matter what the season. But I'm not going to stop here for a picture. Maybe the next time I climb Mine Road, but not now.

We roll back into the parking lot at 3:30.

Mike wants to go to Marco's instead of Vito's for lunch. Whatever; I'm hungry!

"O Brother, Where Art Thou" is just starting on the small TV screen hanging from the ceiling in the corner of the pizzeria. It's dubbed into Spanish, but I'm mesmerized anyway. The music is still the same. Mike and Theresa have never seen it.

How Mike can eat a salad, a slice of thick-crust pizza, and half a meatball sandwich before riding five miles home is beyond me. I'm wondering how I'm going to handle a veggie wrap, but all I know now is that I need food. We're shoveling lunch into our faces and watching the movie at the same time. We get all the way to the frog scene before it's time to go.

Fortunately for our stomachs, the rest of the ride is almost all downhill and we make it back without leaving any lunch by the side of the road.

This is too many miles for post-Crazy Season riding. My legs hurt, century hurt. I need a soak in the new tub.

As I round the corner of my street, I notice something askew in my yard. Now, when I left this morning, I had two yard signs: one for Rush Holt and one for Barack Obama. Having one's signs stolen is no rare thing, but coming home to an extra one is something else entirely. I'm looking at a Frank Lautenberg sign that wasn't here when the sun came up today. I rack my brain for a list of suspects and go inside. Maybe Jack knows.

(Thanks, Robin, for completing the trio of NJ Sierra Club endorsees.)

Interlude: Fifteen Hours from Montreal

19 October

Track work north of Penn Station in New York forced our train from Montreal to wait in Albany for an hour, hook up with a train from Toronto, and detour to New Rochelle before going south again into Penn Station. What took us nine hours to do on Wednesday took us thirteen on Sunday, and that's not counting the train home from New York City.

It could have been worse, though: during the first hour of the ride we were told we'd be going into Grand Central Station instead and taking a shuttle to Penn Station, but that didn't happen.

Plus, there was an observation car on our train. I snooped around before people decided the terrain was scenic enough to warrant the stroll to the front:






The side windows were clean, but the front and back ones were filthy:




So that's what a diesel train engine looks like through a pair of grungy windows:



This is one of the zillion grade crossings our train made. What you see here probably counts as a traffic jam that far north:



U.S. Customs is a happenin' place:



On the move again, finally. I didn't even see the moon until I uploaded this picture to a big screen. Or maybe it's just dust. Whatever. It looks like a moon:



In the afternoon Jack and I wandered up to the dome car again. Sitting near the front was a group of trainspotters, from whom we learned more about rail travel than we ever knew was possible. I mean, these guys know every inch of track, every route, every schedule, and even remember fares they paid forty years ago.

Anyway, they told us that this dome car is the only surviving one in Amtrak's fleet. Sent to the east coast every fall for the run on this Adirondack line, it travels north on Thursdays, south on Fridays, north on Saturdays, and south again on Sundays during peak leaf-changing season in October.

A woman moved closer to us to join the conversation. She told us she's visiting every state capital in the U.S. by train or bus.

While the trainspotters all had digital SLR's, I had my cell phone to capture Lake Champlain:







The train stopped here. The stop wasn't called Moriah but signs hanging from streetlamps read, "Moriah."



We stopped in Schenectady. The trainspotters were thrilled because this is one of only three places in the country where locomotives were made. Me, I just leaped at the opportunity to write, "Schenectady."

Schenectady:




In Albany we switched engines (from diesel to diesel-electric, the trainspotters said, because you can't have diesel fumes in the New York City tunnels). And the dome car went away. In the fading light, this was my last picture:



The conductors gave us an hour to mill about on the platform or wander around inside the station. It was almost time for dinner, and given the meager "food" Amtrak was selling, I, like almost everyone else on the train, made for the one sandwich shop in the station. On my way I passed a distraught passenger talking to a station agent. All I heard was, "Didn't you hear the boarding announcement?" "No. I was in the bathroom." She'd missed the northbound Montreal train. There's only one per day. I thought to myself, "Don't ever let that happen to you."

I was in line when I heard a boarding announcement for our train, the first of several, I figured, since we still had half of our hour to go. There were others from our train behind and in front of me.

When I got back to the train five minutes later Jack was standing on the platform looking concerned. "Didn't you get my text message? They're boarding." It had only been thirty minutes, not the hour we'd been promised. I was almost that woman in the station. We'd found our seats and settled in well before the train moved off again. I asked Jack what he would have done if I'd missed the train. "Thrown our bags off and spent the night in Albany," he said. Then the train stopped for about ten minutes and reversed back into the station to hook up with the Toronto train. Had I missed the train the first time I'd have had a second chance after all. We left Albany at 7:05, exactly the time the conductors said we would.

Somewhere near Yonkers the conductor said we could see Shea Stadium (now being torn down) from the left side of the train. I just saw blackness and lights.

We pulled into Penn Station with just enough time to find the boarding Trenton train. By the time I started the car in the Trenton parking lot it was 12:30 a.m.

Interlude: Montreal

16 -18 October

More pictures from our trip to Montreal:

Rue Saint Denis at night on Thursday with Sean and Dale:



A stained glass studio on Rue Saint Denis:



On Friday Chris drove up from Boston via an overnight in Vermont. I told everyone I wanted to go up Mount Royal. They were good sports. Here's a statue in Jeanne-Mance Park at the foot of the mountain:



Mount Royal, in the middle of the city, is a park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. A nearly-paved road spirals up the mountain so gently you can't even tell you're climbing. Steep footpaths and stairways cut through but we stuck to the road. At the top is a chalet with a view of the city and the Saint Lawrence River, which surrounds Montreal.

Early on we came upon a woman who works at a local hospital and comes into the park daily to feed the birds. Here she is feeding shelled peanuts to chickadees. This series of pictures is of three different birds, or, at least, the same hungry bird three separate times:





Near the top we took pictures of this berry tree:



The view from the actual summit was about as good as the view from Bear Mountain a month ago:



But here's the view from the chalet:






We took the stairs back down:




We ended up somewhere different from where we'd started, finding ourselves on the outside of the McGill University campus. They do ivy here, but where we use English Ivy, this one likes Virginia Creeper:




We went to Old Montreal for lunch. Dale bought herself, me, and Chris light-up moose pens. I found a dreadlocked stuffed moose and a canvas tote bag (rather girly of me, but it has a moose on it).

Walking towards the river we had to cross some tracks:



Across the Saint Lawrence River is an amusement park (look under the bridge):



On Saturday we left Jack to do scholarly conference things. We had no specific plans except to walk up Rue Saint Denis and maybe see the contemporary art museum. As it happened we never got off Rue Saint Denis. Chris has furniture fantasies (there was art enough on sale), I'm lured in by anything handmade and shiny (too expensive to bring home, which is a good thing), and Dale bought a cloth bag embroidered with a rather frazzled looking penguin.

At lunch, an ode to Andy's bar tricks, with a charming package of peanut butter on the side:



Chris found another furniture store just off the main road. We found a cow:



Rue Saint Denis is filled with offbeat shops. Chris had to go into every furniture store. And she was determined to get her hair cut. Considering that we must've passed half a dozen hair salons in a mile, this was not a problem. While she was reinventing her look, the rest of us went to a coffee roaster and sat outside. For the record, it was not as good as Rojo's.

Here's the view from where I was sitting: Coffee, chocolate, and more coffee.



The sun started sinking behind the buildings and we started getting cold. We walked back to the hotel. Jack, Sean, and Dale went to the conference banquet. Chris and I stuffed ourselves with Ethiopian food at a restaurant on Rue Saint Denis.

So ended our last day in Montreal. The train ride home is another story.