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.
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