Scenes from the Last Rides of 2013

Grandview Road, 27 December 2013

28 December 2013

The ritual pre-ride excuse round, December 27, 31°F, wind chill 26°F, 8:55 a.m.:

Ed:  I haven't been on a bike in two weeks.
Ron:  I'm out of shape.
Me:  I haven't had any coffee.
Ed:  Oh NOOO!

Ten minutes in:

Ron:  I think I wore too much.
Me:  I think you have the same tights I do.
Ron:  I have long johns under my tights.
Me:  No wonder you can't bend your knees.

Woodfern Road at Leigh:

Me:  My toes are cold.
Ron:  Mine too.
Me: I could use a snack and some indoor plumbing.

At the Bagel Bistro, mile 27:

Ed:  The Hillsborough Bypass is open.  Let's ride on it.
Me:  No.

Climbing Grandview:

Ed:  "One hundred pedal strokes...fifteen...fifty-one...eighty."
Me:  How many was it?
Ed:  One hundred.
Me:  How did you do that?
Ed:  When I get tired I count.  On a big hill I break it into hundreds.
Me:  You didn't know it would be a hundred?
Ed:  Nope.
Me:  Well, you made it look like you knew.


En route from Village Park to Etra Park, December 27, 2013, 34-42°F, wind chill 29-36°F, 9:15-9:45 a.m.:

Me: Yesterday we were climbing Fairview.  Ron and Ed stopped at the bottom to use a tree.  I kept going.
Jim:  Wise choice.
Me:  So, at the top, I was taking a picture of the view, and there were these turkey vultures on the roof of a house, so I got their picture.

And while I was standing there I heard rustling in the tree behind me.  When I turned around, there were, like, twenty vultures just sitting there.  They didn't seem the least bit perturbed by my presence.

And they were stretching their wings to warm up.

Then I looked across the street and there were a few more in a tree there, and a couple more in a tree in the next yard.
Jim: What were they waiting for?
Me:  I dunno.  Tippi Hedren, maybe.
Jim: Tippi Hedren!

Etra Park, 9:00 a.m.:

Chris:  That'll do it.
Jim:  Is that a film camera?
Chris:  Yep.
Jim:  Better use up the film while you can still get it developed.
Chris:  Yep.
Me (hand warmers removed):  I didn't bring my camera. I'll need all my pockets for shed clothing.

Westbound into the wind:

Me:  Did you lead last Sunday?
Larry:  No.  I saw the forecast for rain.  Not like you guys.

Near Imlaystown:  balaclava removed

Eastbound with a tailwind:

Me:  So where's our September trip gonna be?
Tom:  I'm thinking about Mystic, Connecticut.
Me:  Cool!
Tom:  Yeah, and we can get to Rhode Island pretty easy.

Imlaystown-Hightstown Road at 526:

Me:  There's Tweety!
Jim:  Tweety!
Me:  He still looks awful.  I want to run up there and straighten him out.

New Egypt, around 11:30 a.m.:  off come the glove liners, arm warmers

Walnford, around 12:30 p.m.:  booties off

North of Allentown:

Cheryl:  Pace pusher!  Pace pusher!
Me:  Tailwind!
Jim:  [something about complaining]
Me:  Hey, she's allowed to complain.  See the keychain on her saddlebag?
Cheryl:  It says, "complain complain complain complain."
Me:  One for every fifteen miles.
Cheryl:  That's right.  As long as I never ride more than sixty miles.

Gordon Road, next to Amazon Warehouse:

Chris: Soon we're gonna have to give this road a new name.

Me:  Huh?

Chris:  Duck!

Me:  Huh?

Chris:  Amazon! Drones!

Etra Park, 1:00 p.m.:

Ron:  You were right about Al.
Me:  Yeah.  He made his move kinda late, though.  Hey, Al, you were kinda late today.  I figured you'd take off on Gordon Road.
Al:  I had a good draft.
Me:  I saw you moving up, one rider at a time.
Al:  The giveaway is when I get into the small gear.
Me: I can't see that when you're drafting me.  All I can see is your face in my mirror.

Village Park, Cranbury, 1:45 p.m., 55°F:

Me:  Damn!  I'm two miles away from [round number of miles] on Kermit for the year!
Jim:  You have to fix that.  You know you have to.
Me (looking for all the world as if I'm about to get back on the bike, then not looking that way):  I could.  But then it would become a thing.
Jim:  True.

2013 stats:

The difference in distance between this year and last can be explained by the greater number of miles commuted to and from work on Gonzo in 2013. Apart from Gonzo's miles, I rode farther last year than this year.  Miss Piggy traveled 70% as far as Kermit did.  I am not committing my yearly distance to memory, nor am I going to enter it here.  It's not the distance; it's the adventure that counts.

Bike tune of the year:

Robert Plant and Alison Kraus, "Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)"

Lump of Coal Ride

Van Kirk Road

22 December 2013

I think I finally did it:  I finally killed a PFW Ride Leader jersey.

But, first, pictures from yesterday's foggy ride.  

Jim and Ron met me for a far-too-early-for-December 8:00 a.m. start.  I'd missed four straight weekends of cycling, and, damn it, I was going to get out no matter what.  All I had to do was be cleaned up by the time my grad school buddies were to arrive at 11:30.

We had time enough to take the old Friday night route, a route that was the first I'd memorized, back in my early days, when Kermit was still green and so was I.

The roads were a little wet.  There was still snow on the ground everywhere we went.  This was the shortest day of the year; the sun had only been up for about an hour.

We stopped for pictures on Cold Soil Road, at the Pole Farm (now Mercer Meadows) and across the street from it.

We stopped again on Van Kirk.

I was feeling every inch of road.  Indoor training only does so much.  Ron had been off the bike for as long as I had.  Jim wondered aloud why he'd chosen to accompany such a sorry lot.  (I think it was to hear us complain.)

We had enough oomph in us to climb Woosamonsa.  At the top there's a house being renovated.  I think some trees were taken down, because in all the years I've been on this road, I've never before noticed this view.

We got home in time for me to hand out some Swiss chocolate.  I spent the rest of the day on my butt, catching up with my grad school friends (we do this every year).  Jeff, as always, commandeered the laser dot for the cats to chase.  Steve and Jack, as always, talked about teaching college students.  Shortly after sunset (4:33 p.m.), our Christmas tree lights switched on.  I idly took pictures of ornaments while I listened to Jack and Steve.

My legs weren't tired when I went to sleep.  I woke up at 6:30 a.m. on Sunday morning and looked out the window.  In the dim light I could barely make out that the street was wet, but never mind that, because I was going to ride again no matter what.  I pulled on my 2004 ride leader jersey, the fluorescent yellow one with the time-worn ripped pocket.

Today I'd have to be smelling pretty by 11:30 a.m., in time for Cheryl to pick me up for a brunch at the Peacock Inn in Princeton (the gang would be the cast of regulars from the long-ago Friday night rides, more or less).

The outside thermometer read 67 degrees at 7:22 a.m.  I hadn't heard from Ron nor Jim.  They'd probably go with Winter Larry today.  Why would they do another time-constrained ride with me?  I chomped away at breakfast, weighing my route options, looking at the trees bend in the wind, trading text snark with Dale about whether or not it was truly windy enough for me to ride.

I heard a car door slam outside and saw a red jersey.  Jim.  I texted Dale that there would be someone for me to draft behind.  A few minutes later, Ron drove in.  Who'd'a thunk it?

They were good sports when I suggested going east into the flatlands.  They were good sports when I cried, "Antlers!"  and ran inside.  They were good sports while I attached the antlers to my helmet.  They were good sports when I bitched about how the antlers were wrenching my head every time a gust of wind kicked up.

"You can take them off," Jim suggested.

"No," I replied, feeling duty-bound to my Christmas tradition.  "I will suffer for my performance art."

We swung past Dale and Sean's house. They were sitting by their living room window, looking out.  I could see the exact moment that she saw my antlers as we rode by.

By the time we got to Mercer County Park, we were all filthy.  But it wasn't raining.  At it was 67 degrees out.  In late December.

I kept an eye on the time as we headed east, then south on Imlaystown-Hightstown Road.  It was there that we encountered Tweety, dressed as Santa, doubled over and bobbing in the wind, looking for all the world like a drunk college freshman.

From there we headed west towards Allentown.  The sky over there was that color.  Never mind, I thought, we're going to go north on Old York, catch a righteous tailwind.

Which we did, and it was good.

"Left on Gordon," I said, and as we turned a wall of sideways rain met us at the corner.  

Meh.  It's only rain.

Now I know I've passed a threshold of cycling experience, addiction, insanity.  I have just thought to myself, "Meh.  It's only rain."  I looked down.  "It's cleaning off our bikes," I said.

Bridge out.  Forge ahead anyway; you know what I'm like.  Jim went out in front and was ten yards out into the mud before I could call him back.  We used the detour on Bresnhanan Road, adding miles and minutes in the rain.  I began to wonder if I'd be ready to go by 11:30.

The rain let up while we were waiting to cross Route 130.  We were filthy again when we pulled into my driveway, 40 miles without a break.  We all hosed off our bikes.

"I hate to lead and run," I said, "but I've gotta shower."  The time was 10:55.  I took my helmet, glasses, and Miss Piggy puppet into the shower with me.  Miss Piggy was black with grime.  I scrubbed her with shampoo until she turned pink again, then got around to ridding myself of the same black grime.  Somehow I managed to be ready to go five minutes before Cheryl arrived.  

My poor jersey. (Remember the jersey? We started off with the jersey.)  I've washed it twice.  The mud stains are permanent.

*****

I owe you pictures from my last two days in England.

Here's a magnificent dog in the cafe where Jack and I were having breakfast.  

Mid-day we took a bus to Oxford, where our friend Tiffany, an Oxford professor, put us up for the night in a guest room at her college.  It was Sunday; the Oxford shops closed at 5 p.m., and all of Oxford was out on the street:

The only reason I'm blogging about Oxford at all is so that I can show you this decoration:

Hill Slugs Ad Hoc, Not Saturday 21 December

21 December 2013

The rain looks as if it's going to hold off long enough to get a short ride in tomorrow morning.  Again I have to be home before 11:00 a.m. so the ride will start from my house at 8:00 a.m.

20 December 2013

At the last minute, I've decided to do a quick ride from my house, no rest stop, starting at 8:00 a.m and ending around 10:30.

If the weather allows, I'll repeat this on Sunday.  Let me know if you're interested.

17 December 2013

If I'm going to have a life outside of biking, this is the time of year to have it.

This month, the long lead time required by the editors of the Freewheel conflicted with shorter lead times of various social events that I don't want to miss.

So, no ride on Saturday.  I have to be home by 11:00 a.m. on Sunday, which means we can still get a short ride in if the weather cooperates. If not, I'm thinkng of leading on December 26 instead (or in addition, off-the-books).

I will update with details later in the week.

Hill Slugs Ad Hoc Not Saturday, Maybe Sunday

14 December 2013, 11:20 p.m.

No.

14 December 2013

The forecast is for rain in the wee hours of the morning.  It probably won't be enough to wash the snow away, and it's a good bet that roads will be wet Sunday morning.  Check in again around 7:00 Sunday morning.  I'm being optimistic.



12 December 2013

If the rain washes all of the snow away, and if it's not raining on Sunday morning, we'll have a ride.  Please check back on Saturday evening after 7:00 p.m.  If the ride is on, here's what we'll do:

Rojo's to Rojo's Redux:

Meet at my house (contact me at perpetualheadwinds at gmail dot com for the address) at 9:00 a.m.  We'll ride up to Princeton, about 7 miles, for our first cuppa.  Then we'll go to Lambertville for our second.  All told, the ride will be about 48 miles.

It's Officially Winter

7 December 2013

I know this because Gonzo has assumed the position:

London, Days Two and Three

30 November 2013

We spent the better part of eight hours on our feet yesterday.  This is what we do in London.  We pick a place to go and start walking.  If we see something interesting along the way, we stop to investigate. Eventually we get to where we were going, and after that we keep walking.

Below are snapshots of what we saw on our way:

Compared to what we saw in Switzerland, at a mere $880, this is a steal. Plus, it has Jack's name on it.  We didn't buy it.

The iconic Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus is covered in a snow globe.

Throughout the city, lights cross the streets high above our heads:

We spent Friday in a couple of museums (the National Gallery and the London Transport Museum) and out on the streets of Marylebone, Covent Garden, and whatever was in between.

Anyone who's been to our house will recognize this London Underground poster:

Here's the original, from which the poster picture was taken:

The poster was created in 1986.  We picked up our copy in 1991.  It was then, and is still, according to the museum, "the most popular modern Underground poster."  Another placard explains, "The original mock-ups for this design were created in toothpaste before finally being moulded in plastic for the poster artwork."

Late in the evening, as a wine shop was closing, we went in.  Jack was instantly in heaven:  the place was dominated by geeky (his word) French wines.  As Jack enthused out loud, one of the two French clerks grabbed two glasses and reappeared with wine for Jack to taste.  "This is a red wine," he said.  It was white.

Jack sipped, paused, and said, "Rhone?"

Mederic held out his hand.  "What is your name?"

Jack has a new friend.  We've been back there three times.  The store is called Nicolas, and it's on the Marylebone High Street, if you're ever in the neighborhood.

At 9:30 on Friday night we went up to the Islington section of London to meet a friend of Jack's from grad school who teaches at Kings College in London.

London is expensive.  Living in London is nigh on impossible if one isn't working for a large corporation or a bank.  Islington isn't a shabby neighborhood either.  Lawrence explained how he, his wife, and his two kids get by on non-banker salaries:  "If we spend about four hundred pounds more than we bring in, it's been a good month."

Today we visited a friend from college who is over here for a three-year stint.  He's in the financial business, which goes some of the way towards explaining how he landed a flat in the heart of Bloomsbury (what Islington aspires to be).  "They don't cover my rent," he said. "They boosted my salary a little instead."  Even he couldn't afford to buy property here.  He showed us around his basement flat, two rooms joined by a long hallway that doubles as a kitchen.  "On the market this place would go for 800,000 pounds."

We took a walk north of King's Cross/Saint Pancras to an area that's being redeveloped at a breakneck pace.  One of the offices going up will house Google.  There goes any chance of affordable rent.

PDaniel (a nickname we gave him in college that we refuse to stop using) took us to the Grant Museum, a large, one-room hall stacked floor to ceiling with anatomical specimens in jars and cases.

First things first, though:  Jack poses with prehsitoric mule deer antlers.  Mooseasaurus.  There's a full skeleton at the Natural History Museum, but it looks as if we're not going to get there on this trip.

Skeletons watch us from the upper level:

Brains!  Because I had to:

Back at Nicolas in the evening, Mederic tends to a packed house,

while Helena describes a complex red wine to Jack:

Even though it gets dark here well before 5:00 p.m., late November is a good time to be in London.  It's relatively free of tourist crowds, and I can get a lot of Christmas shopping done.  It was only after we got back from our long day yesterday that I realized I'd been Christmas shopping on Black Friday.  I get a pass, though, because it's not Black Friday over here.  It's just Friday.

Anyway, my suitcase is full of chocolate and presents and chocolate presents.  And a kilo of coffee beans. Those are mine.

As things happened this time around, we didn't get to very many of our usual places, which is totally okay. There is always something new to do in London.  PDaniel said that, in his not quite three years working here, he's visited over 350 different places, and he's not finished yet.

Tomorrow we're taking an afternoon bus to Oxford, where we'll meet a professor friend who is putting us up for the night at the university.  It's a safe bet we won't have wifi in our room; unless we do, I won't be blogging.

Thanks for following along with us on this trip. I'll see you all on the road next weekend.

P.S.  This marshmallow-topped brownie is, apparently, a food thing in London:

I'll stick with Ribena, thanks.

London, Day One

Oxford Street near Marble Arch

28 November 2013

Good Ol' Blighty.  An hour in the passport control line at Heathrow is de rigeur.  As we sat in the taxi after the train ride to Paddington station, I looked out upon the late afternoon chaos:  storefronts spilling their wares out onto crowded sidewalks; shop signs in English, Arabic; clothing, food, hardware, holiday ware, mobile phones, mobile phones unlocked; holiday lights strewn overhead across the streets; cars, buses, taxis, pedestrians.

What a lovely mess London is!

The first order of business was getting our mobile phones sorted.  Rather than discard our old iPhones, we turned them into UK phones last year.  We both upgraded this year, so we wanted to take the most recent old phones and make them our UK phones.  This involved each of us carrying three iPhones (our US phones, should the switcheroo go wrong; our recently unlocked iPhones; and our old, slow, can't-hold-a-charge UK iPhones).  We got things worked out rather quickly, and each added 10 pounds on our UK phone accounts.  Half an hour later, back in the hotel room, Jack discovered that his entire balance was gone.  While we'd been walking home, his now-UK phone updated all of its apps, using cell data to do so, down to the last pence.  He'd forgotten to turn the auto-update feature off when he'd turned on the phone.  We figured we'd find a place to top up his account after dinner.

On Oxford Street is Selfridges, the poor man's Harrod's.  They do up their windows to rival Harrod's and Macy's.  People gathered in semicircles to take pictures.  There was only one that really caught my eye:

Play-Doh.

Jack said he'd have to come back to this wine shop (read the name out loud a few times):

After dinner (a tasty curry, because there is no bad Indian food in London) we went to the nearest cornershop so that Jack could top up.  While he did that I wandered the isles looking for dessert.

One thing about the British:  they're serious about their sweets and their biscuits.  They don't mess around.  At least half of the store was dedicated to chocolates, candies, and cookies.  Jack figured that a third of the place was given over to liquor.

It was with some restraint that I chose a representative sample from the shelves.  I do like blackcurrant, which you can't get in the States.  We'll be nursing the Digestives until they're stale.  The Eclairs are too chewy to wolf down, so they should last a while too.  The Ribena's gone.

So here we are, back in the hotel, catching up with the doings of all y'all back home, on Thanksgiving over there and Thursday over here.  If what's going on at Sean and Dale's house is any indication (I'd post the pictures, but...) you guys are having a good time.

P.S.  Geneva was a dud in the nightmare-scary-tacky Christmas ornament department, but London is looking promising.

Geneva, Day Two

27 November 2013

Today consisted of more walking and museuming.

We figured we'd head through the sculpture garden first.  We figured we'd see sculptures in the sculpture garden.  We did not.  We saw a couple of heads on pedestals, a bas-relief wall of Protestants, an underwhelming tribute to the Red Cross, and that's it.

My impression of Geneva is that it's overpriced and oversold.  That, and this city is buttoned down. No array of lights in the shopping district at night.  No holiday markets.  Very little in the way of anything would even suggest that we're a month away from Christmas.

So, if you wind up visiting Switzerland, spend more time in Zurich than in Geneva.

Anyway, here are some last pictures of the city.  Below is a bit of medieval city wall in the non-sculpture garden:

At the top of the non-sculpture garden, looking towards Old Town:

View of the city from the top of the wall that you can see in the picture at the top of this post:

This is how people get up the hills in Old Town:  battery-powered bikes:

Our first museum was Maison Tavel, the oldest residential property in the city, restored and devoted to Geneva's history, and free.  Here's a model of the city as it looked in the mid-1800s:

Our hotel is a bit above the center of this picture:

View from inside the museum:

Jack liked this door because it led nowhere and had no explanation:

Outside again, we were drawn into a home decor shop because they keep their moose under glass...

...and in piles:

We did not buy a moose.  (!)

This driver was backing up, very, very slowly, carrying a plane of metal that was swinging just enough not to crash through the plate glass windows on either side of this narrow medieval street.

We found a small museum devoted to the art of a small section of West Africa, so we did that for half an hour or so.

I tried to capture the steepness of the grade as we walked back down the hill.  It's steeper than it looks.

Last up was the Musee Patek Phillipe, run by the Swiss watchmakers Patek Philipe.  I might not have mentioned that a plurality of storefronts in Zurich and Geneva are plastered with watches whose prices are an order of magnitude more than one would reasonably consider spending for a watch.  Anyway, this museum had thousands of watches dating back to the 1600s, two hundred years before Patek Philipe was founded.  Three stories of these things held our attention, all the way up to the invention of the wristwatch around 1910.  Then it got boring, save for a handful from the 1960s. We breezed through the last hundred years.  Sorry, no pictures.

Here's a motorized bike in a storefront near our hotel.  There's a lot going on in the rear hub. The bike looked so heavy that it was hard to imagine not needing the engine for anything even slightly uphill.

This is either the battery or a trunk designed to keep one's belongings dry:

The bike has a license plate. Around the corner we saw another battery-powered bike with a license plate.

So that's it for Geneva.  Tomorrow we fly to London.

I don't figure I'll be blogging much from London because I've been there so many times (snob alert).  I'll keep the camera in my pocket just in case.