How Not to See A Reservoir, Part V

28 May 2011

The Stanton General Store is open again! For real this time. I emailed Vito Marinelli, the owner, so I know it's true.

The store hours aren't posted on the web site, so I asked: Monday-Thursday, 11-9, Friday and Saturday, 11-10, and Sunday 9-7.

11 a.m. seems a bit late on a Saturday for summer bikers, but it is, essentially, a pizza place.

I've gathered, with Cheryl's help, a large handful of Hill Slugs to go with me to check the place out. What I thought would be an easy route around Round Valley Reservoir is turning into a headache, though. I've already been told I must provide a cue sheet for those who want to turn back after Stanton (the trip up to the reservoir adds a dozen miles). Another Slug is worried that we might be too fast (yeah, right). Someone else wants an early start because it's going to be hot.

I end up spending Thursday night in front of the computer, plotting a route from Pennington that will be easy for the shortcut people to jump to the end of, get them back in as close to 50 miles as I can manage, and that will get the rest of us back in less than 70. Good thing I looked. Left to my own devices, we'd have reached 30 miles before Stanton.

Saturday morning has Chris at my door, a pile of dead multiflora rose trunk in his arms. "I'll trade ya this for a tube," he says. I point him to the compost pile. That dead shrub in our yard has been bugging him all season.

We get to Pennington just in time. Seven people are waiting, five of whom have decided to take the short way out. It's tradition at this point: as I hand her the map she'll need, I have to accuse Cheryl of stealing my ride. "I knew it!" she says, but she's smiling. I'm disappointed that it'll only be me, Chris, and Jeff heading to the reservoir. Some of the others have plans; some don't have enough miles under them to attempt 70 in the hills; and Mike B is just feeling insecure after recovering from a hematoma the size of a small car on his thigh.

I think we're going to get to Stanton before the store opens. At the bottom of Rileyville I float the idea of adding a loop to Cider Mill.

"NO EXTRA MILES!" Cheryl orders, and that's that.

Mike B changes his mind. "Yaaaaaaay!" I knew he'd come around. There's no way he can go that far and not take a peek at the reservoir.

Now we're pretty close to Stanton and it's only just a little after 10:00. Tom and I conspire to take a slightly longer, but shadier and less steep, route from 523 to the store.  We get there at 10:40.  Nobody wants to wait.

I push on the door.  It's open.  At the far end of the room a young man is counting money.  He lets me in.  "Are you Vito?"

"I'm his business partner," he says. I introduce myself and ask if I can fill my water bottle.

"Sure," he says.  "We had a late night last night.  Pardon the mess," which is a handful of unwashed wine glasses by the sink.

I look around.  He's got coffee, drinks, bags of chips, candy, Power Bars, and Clif bars.  There's a deli counter, empty now, save for a lone pickle. 

In the back of my mind, I mourn the absence of the monstrous muffins that brought us here in the first place all those years ago.

The Stanton General Store closed more than two years ago.  It's been that long since I've climbed up to the reservoir from this direction.  I used to be able to get a peek at the water through the trees before reaching the top of the hill, but not anymore.  We stop at the boat launch for water and bathrooms.  The reservoir is busy with people boating and fishing.

The descent is in the shade of Old Mountain Road.  Since we're heading towards the diner at Whitehouse Station, we turn on the railroad bridge to get closer in.  Chris is ahead of me, followed closely by Jeff.  We ride around a bend.

That's when Jeff, looking at a house or something, taps Chris' rear wheel.  Nobody goes down, but Chris' rear derailleur is now firmly embedded in the spokes of his back wheel.  Chris, who can fix anything on the fly, can't do a thing about this one, especially because none of us -- not even a passing biker -- has brought a chain tool.

I pull out my phone and search for the nearest bike shop.  "Garden State Bicycles is a mile away."

Chris says, "I'll start walking."

Jeff is alternating between "Shit" and "I'm sorry."

I call the shop to make sure they're open.  They are, but there's nobody there who can come fetch Chris.  So I figure out how best to get out to Route 22.  By the time I put my phone away, Chris is a quarter mile down the road.

We catch up.  Mike stays with him while Jeff and I ride ahead to make sure we can find the right turns.  "This is longer than a mile," he says.  Much longer.  At the turn we wait.  Mike comes riding up.  "A cop came by.  He's taking Chris to Garden State Bicycle?"

"That's the place."

We pass a turtle in the road.  Mike and Jeff stop to carry it into the woods.

By the time we get to the bike shop, Chris is somewhere in the back with the wounded victim.  The store is loaded with customers.  We wait outside.  Jeff sits down on the edge of a planter.  I join him.

"This is a clusterfuck," he sighs.

"No, it's not.  Nobody got hurt."  With three Free Wheelers down this past month, I'm considering today to be a good day.  We go back in and share equipment failure stories with one of the guys behind the counter.

Chris comes out with his bike, which is now a single speed.  Without a derailleur to pick up the slack, he can't shift gears.  The chain is fixed at 32-16, and that's what he's going to have to use to get over every hill between here and home.  At least he can still coast.

Jeff pays for the repair.

We're already ribbing Jeff for his little mistake.  We pull out of the parking lot, heading down Route 22 again, towards Whitehouse Station.  We're not far off the cue sheet, maybe a mile or two.

But we don't get that far.  In my rear view mirror I see that Chris and Jeff have stopped.  Mike and I turn around.

Chris' chain, broken and tangled, dangles from his hand.

We're not waiting as long this time.  Chris, Mike, and I have more than 40 miles under us now.  It's time to eat.

It's noon and Jerry's Brooklyn Grill is crowded.  Chris pulls out his bike tools and eyes Jeff's rear wheel.  "I'm thinking sabotage," he cackles.  "Hey, Jeff, which screw should I turn on your derailleur?"  He pats Jeff on the back as they go inside.

"Take your time with that sandwich, Jeff."

"Hey, Jeff!  Maybe you should ride Chris' bike home."

"Hey, Jeff.  You realize you're gonna have to take this for months, right?"

"It's okay.  I have big shoulders.  Big shoulders, small brain."

We're taking a different route home, one with hills that Chris'll have a shot at getting over without walking.

Leaving Whitehouse Station and going through Readington is mostly flat and easy.  The hills begin again on Old York Road.  Stuck in a hard gear, Chris pulls ahead of us and tackles one little rise after another as if none was there.

"Amazing," Jeff says.

"Best quads in the club," I tell him.

Cider Mill is a downhill rest, but ahead looms the Sourland Mountain.  First, though, we have to get over the double-humper on (Bad)Manners Road between Welisewitz and Wertsville.  Chris walks the second half of the second hump, but somehow he still manages to get to the end of the road seconds after Jeff and I do, leaving Jeff and me barely enough time to decide behind Chris' back which way up the mountain would be easier for him.

"Lindbergh or sideways?"  I ask him.

"Whatever's faster."

"Lindbergh.  It's more direct and it's in the shade."

Jeff shoots me a look that tells me his life has just ended and that mine is in danger.  Up we go, Chris first.

About a third of the way up, Chris starts to tack, riding in a sine curve from one side of the road to the other.  I time my ascent past him so that we don't crash. 

At the top, Mike says,  "He walked his bike and still passed me."

"Best quads in the club."

We leave Jeff north of Pennington, just past his house.  He's beat.  "I'll get a ride to the Y and get my car later," he says.

Mike takes us down Federal City to shave off a few miles.  Chris and I get back to my house at 3:30.  I have an hour to inhale some food, shower, and do my PT before driving down to Philly for my dad's 80th birthday (Yeah, Dad, I just told the world.  Phhhhbbbbbttttt!).  But first I have to give Chris something to drink before he passes out.  He's looking at the bare spot along the neighbor's fence where the multiflora rose met its end this morning.

"You want your tube back?"

"Naah.  Keep it."

*****

30 May 2011

I found out from Tom today that the 55-milers didn't stick to my cue sheet either.  They pretty much went the same way we did from Old York Road.

Jeff emailed me the elevation he recorded from the trip.  It's the most we've climbed this season -- 4160 feet in the 67 miles he was with us.

Before we started off on today's ride, I told Jeff to pay attention to his front wheel.  "No," Chris said.  "Pay attention to my rear wheel."  We were at Mercer County Park to do our traditional Mutiny Ride, in which we meet everyone doing the All-Paces holiday rides and then go do our own thing to avoid the crowds.  Cheryl, Mike, and a few others didn't want to go as far as Tom had planned, so they split off and did their own thing.  "A recursive mutiny!"  Plain Jim said when I explained everything to him after all the rides were over. 

Lambertville to Clinton the Second Time

 5/21/11

I had more people this time.  I tweaked the route a little, too, because there were a few roads on the ridge that I needed to ride on because of their names.

The first was Stone Signpost.  The southern end of this road is in the woods, a tiny lane off of a tiny lane north of Sergeantsville.  There was no modern street sign, just a stone post in the grass.  The road makes a sharp right turn, still in the woods.  And there was another stone signpost, hiding next to a tree:

At the end of the road, where it met 579, was another stone signpost.

Next was Harmony School. We were going east, which ended up being the right choice. In the other direction we'd have been too busy griping about the never-ending incline to admire the wooded scenery.

Finally, we reached Bonetown. There's no reason to ride on Bonetown other than to say you've been there. It's close to Flemington, residential, and, if you're coming from the south, a bitch of a hill. Still, at least I can now say I've been there:

It was right around then that Jeff F. and I admitted to each other that our legs were still tired from last week's century.


We found our way out of the Flemington exurbs and headed down from the ridge towards Clinton.  I took the group down Spring Hill.  About a third of the way down there's a break in the trees and a great view of the valley.  I didn't stop for pictures this time.

At the bottom is the (surprise!) Raritan River.  Here's a farm on the corner:

We followed the river for a few miles.  I was too busy taking it all in to consider stopping for photos.  I don't think my camera would have captured it, though.  Next time, I guess.

I overshot a turn and doubled back onto a road that was closed to cars but open to bikes and pedestrians.  On a little bridge we stopped to watch two fisherman downstream of a water processing plant:

In Clinton, someone suggested I get a picture of our bikes lined up along the fence by the river:

At this point I should probably mention that there were two new riders in the group:  Daniel, a transplant from Tennessee by way of Oklahoma, and Holly, whose cycling experience involved Manhattan traffic.  They were hanging in pretty well, Daniel up front and Holly towards the back.

We hauled ourselves up Baptist Church, the biggest and longest climb of the day.  We went to Rick Road, where I instructed everyone to turn at Schoolhouse (we could coast all the way there).

It was on Schoolhouse that things fell apart.  I was at the front of the group, around a bend, with most of the riders, so I didn't witness Holly's slow-motion tip onto the grass as she ran out of gears to shift into.  Daniel rode back to find out what was going on.  She wasn't hurt, but her rear derailleur was.  Bent inwards, and not budging, it prevented her from using the two biggest gears, the ones she needed the most right now.

She called  a cab.  We at the front waited under a tree and directed the cab driver when, 20 minutes later, he slowed as he saw us.  I didn't get a good look at him, but, according to those back with Holly, he was pierced up the wazoo.  I was hoping for a picture, but, oh well.

While we waited, we watched two parachuters drop into a distant field as a small plane circled.  I stretched my back, scraped something that I hope was a stewed tomato off the undercarriage of Miss Piggy, and took a bunch of pictures.

Bob, Joe, and I pondered the maps and decided that the fastest way home would be to stay on 519 all the way to Stockton.  My planned zig-zag would have to wait for another day.

With 40 miles under us and almost 20 to go, someone at the front decided to drop the hammer, and we all followed.  We didn't let up until we reached Lambertville.  Joe later told me he thought that was the best part of the ride.

I never did hear from Holly, so, Holly, if you're reading this and you did get a picture of the Tattooed Hero, send it along. 

Lambertville to Clinton the First Time

5/29/11

Whoops! I loaded these pictures in weeks ago but I never wrote anything.

On May 1, Jeff Lippincott (the original Jeff Lippincott) led me, Cheryl, and Jack up Baldpate Mountain by a new trail from the back of the park.  It was an easy, mellow walk to the top, save for one thing.  Well, many things.  Many little, brown, clingy things.

Ticks.

Everywhere.

Jack flicked thirteen of the little buggers off himself before the hike was over.  We found a few more on our clothing before we got back into the car.  Jack and I found three more in the laundry basket when we got home.  Cheryl and Jeff found another one or two in the car on the way to dinner.  None of us got bit, though.

I snapped a few hazy shots from the top of the mountain.

May 8 was Mother's Day, one of a handful of Hallmark Holidays (Father's Day, Valentine's Day, and whatever others that require cards, flowers, dinners out, and manufactured mushiness) that I resolutely refuse to celebrate.  I led a ride instead.

Unfortunately, most of the regular Hill Slugs had been roped into family lunches, and I had one rider with me.

Ron and I had a good time, though.  The weather was perfect.

We stopped to look at some stone ruins on 523 north of Sergeantsville.

At the top of Joe Ent at Quakertown, I tried, and failed, once again, to capture the view from the ridge to the mountains to the north.

In Clinton we ran into another FreeWheeler group.  Apparently the faster riders aren't roped into family lunches as easily.  Jeff Lippincott (the other Jeff Lippincott) was there, along with a few fastboys I'd been dropped by in years past.

Citispot Coffee has moved across the street.  They have a lot of room inside, many tables outside, and, for the first time, a bathroom too.  Ron and I sat along the outside, facing the river, and talked about Princeton Univerity's architecture.

Then we headed west out of Clinton, north of Route 78.  We came a cross a biker laden with panniers and bags, looking more like a pack mule than a cyclist.  He was peering at his GPS in confusion.  I pulled out my maps.

"Where are you trying to go?"  I asked.

"Easton," he said.  That was far west of where we were, beyond Bloomsbury, past Phillipsburg, across the Delaware River.  I asked if he wanted to get there the fast way or the scenic way.

"Fast," he said.  He had a European accent.  He didn't seem bothered by the distance.  I showed him the way to 173 and wished him luck.

Ron had never seen the ruins of the Baptist Church on Baptist Church Road, so we parked our bikes and peeked around.

Baptist Church Road is a long, quadruple-humper climb.  One is rewarded, though, close to the end, by a reminder that people at the top of the ridge between the Delaware and Raritan watersheds could be quirkily creative in their road-naming:

Having never been on Rick Road either, Ron followed me in an attempt to coast the entire length, about three miles.  I didn't quite make it without pedaling this time.

From there we took 519 all the way back to Stockton.  Along the way we passed a couple of tandems on a three-day trek through the hills.  We'd pass them climbing, only to be caught on the descents.

I stopped for a dilapidated barn:

 And for a chair at the edge of a driveway.   The sign, scrawled on the inside of a pizza box, read, "Ah, c'mon, it's free."  I liked it better when all I'd seen was, "Ah, c'mon," because we were getting a little tired.  Whether the "c'mon" would have been to beg us to rest or to keep us moving, I didn't consider.

Hill Slugs Ac Hoc, Saturday, 21 May

19 May 2011

A good route is worth repeating, especially since so many of you missed it last time. We're going to Clinton again, using slightly different roads than we did two weeks ago. We'll have rolling hills, a few big ascents, and a couple of worthy downhill runs too. The scenery is as good as it gets this side of Route 78.

Meet at the CVS parking lot, on the corner of Route 29 and Cherry Street, in Lambertville, for an 8:30 a.m. start. We'll ride 55-ish 62 miles with one rest stop and we'll wait for all stragglers.

Pace pushers can fill in the blank.

#26: First Century of the Season, Giraffe Style

The 55-mile rest stop, as seen from the ground as I stretch

my back.  The three pairs of legs on the right belong

to Ron, Jeff, and Mighty Mike.

15 May 2011

The idea was Jeff's.  

Back in March he put forth the plan to ride the Rotary Club of Burlington's "Rotary 100" in mid-May.  I replied with a hesitant yes.  

We've had a rough spring.  So many of our weekends have been rained out that it hasn't been easy to rack up the miles.  Before I do a century I like to have at least one 80-mile ride under my belt.  This time I had two metrics and a handful of hilly fifty-somethings.


And Kermit, my century machine,  was hurting my back.  I wasn't sure at first.  All spring I'd been alternating between Kermit, with his old-school racing geometry, and Miss Piggy, with her fashionable down-sloping top tube.  When I did the hills with Miss Piggy, I felt fine.  When I took Kermit, I'd be sore, even in the flats of Burlington County.  

The last straw was a Monday evening ride in the Sourlands with Cheryl.  Pushing big gears to keep up with her and one other rider, I stayed with them on the climbs.  But the last nine miles, which were downhill or flat, when I was stretched out over the bars, hurt like hell.  I couldn't sit up straight to stretch and hold the bars at the same time, either.  The next day, in spin class at the gym, I did everything I could think of to reproduce the pain.  I pushed big gears.  I pedaled at a high cadence.  I stretched my hamstrings with my leg up on the handlebars.  I even touched my toes, my palms flat on the floor, my legs straight.  Nothing.  It was Kermit, plain and simple.  Damn it.  My perfect bike was no longer perfect.

I called my trusted mechanics at Hart's Cyclery.  Oscar suggested a handful of measurements, and I found the problem.  When I measured the height of the handlebars from the floor, Miss Piggy had Kermit beat by almost two inches.

Like a cyclists superhero, Ross swung into action.  Within two days Kermit had a new stem, matching Miss Piggy's geometry everywhere that counts.  But boy, does Kermit look weird.  Like a giraffe.

Meanwhile, Jeff and I were trying to sucker some other Hill Slugs into riding the century with us. I snagged Ron, a convert from Cranbury who joined the Slugs last fall. Mighty Mike, looking to jump-start his slow season, said yes a few days before the ride.

Friday evening, Ross called me to ask how the new stem was working out. Now that's a good mechanic! I told him I'd let him know after tomorrow's century.

Yesterday, as we gathered under cool and cloudy skies at 8 in the morning, none of the four of us was feeling particularly confident about making it through 100 miles.

For the first couple of minutes, Kermit felt weird. But that was only for a couple of minutes. The route wasn't entirely flat. We zigged and zagged through little hills and rollers on Hill Road, Province Line, and all that shady stuff north of New Egypt. I could feel the difference going up the hills; where before it took effort, now it felt the same as riding Miss Piggy. Well, not quite. Kermit is a good deal heavier.

At the 25 and 55 mile rest stops I stretched my back on the ground. I applied another dose of topical NSAIDs as my doctor suggested I do. Only twice did I ask the group to stop for a minute so I could relieve my seizing lower back muscles. It felt like writer's cramp. As soon as I stopped and stood, the pain went away and didn't return for another 40 miles. Keeping my disc in place wasn't the adventure, though.

We were all still worried that we'd bonk like the rider we passed after the second rest stop who was walking his bike and contemplating calling for a ride home.

But, instead of hitting the wall at 70 miles, we hit a Wawa at 65. 35 miles and caffeine: perfect together.

We were headed south towards the Pinelands. The sky was that foreboding metallic gray that's never good news. First there were just a few drops that were easily ignored. When Mike started in with "Singing in the Rain," though, I knew we were in for a typical Hill Slugs adventure. I chimed in with Clapton's "Let it Rain" and Traffic's "Rainmaker." Mike said his toes were full of water. Spreading out to keep things safe, our paceline was just about useless. By the time we pulled into the 80-mile rest stop, we were wet and filthy.

Standing under the tent as the rain slowed, I called Ross to tell him that he'd worked magic with Kermit's stem. I relayed a message to him from Jeff: "He's wearing your Hart's Cyclery jersey," I said.

Ross replied, "Tell him I love him."

"Ross loves you."

The rain stopped. Cold now, we started our paceline again. Ron found some energy somewhere and pulled us for a long time. Jeff and Mike were getting tired. I was fine from the waist up, making every effort to keep my posture perfect while my spine had other ideas.

We'd just about warmed up and dried off before the rain began again. This time, it was real rain. My cue sheet hung from its clip like a leftover piece of papier mache. The good news was that we only had a few miles to go. I took the lead as Jeff said, "Bring us in, Laura!"

"Why me?" I whined, for no particular reason.

There were half a dozen cars in the parking lot when we got there. Four of them were ours. Just as we were ready to leave, the last two century riders pulled in. Down in the athletic field, a tent with lunch was ready. I mopped my face with my wet bandanna, put Kermit in the car, changed into my Rotary 100 t-shirt, said my goodbyes, and drove home.

Next to the driveway, a white iris had bloomed for the first time in the many years since I'd planted it. Thanks, Heidi, for fixing our garden!

Hill Slugs Ad Hoc: SUNDAY, May 8 Update

5 May 2011

Anyone out there up for a trip to Clinton from Lambertville? It's 53 miles and mumblemumble feet of climbing. There are a couple of really good top-of-the-hill views and a few screaming descents, too. The rest stop is right by the Raritan River, near a spillway and a water wheel.

Meet at the CVS parking lot at the end of North Union Street in Lambertville at 9:00 a.m. Pace-pushers can ride ahead and be dropped, because I'm doing some new roads and will be prone to sudden turns.

R.S.V.P. in the comments section or email me at perpetualheadwinds at gmail dot com.

See yiz on Sunday!

Hill Slugs Ad Hoc: SUNDAY, May 8

1 May 2011

My bad. I goofed on the date. We'll ride on Sunday, weather permitting. Stay tuned.

If any of you out there are looking to do a flat century on May 14, let me know. There's one in Burlington County that a couple of us are considering.