Not an Espresso Egg Ride

D&R Canal at Trenton Country Club

27 March 2016

I was lying on my bedroom floor, still in my bike clothes, stretching my back, when John K sent me a Facebook post.

"Hell yeah," I replied.  "But slow. 68 in the hills today doesn't leave me with Sunday legs."

I stripped Gonzo of his lights (he's my wet road commuting bike now), dug out my cable lock from 1983, and met John at his house at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday morning.

This was the first time I'd taken a road bike onto the towpath. I was sure I'd skid or get a flat or both. I didn't; the stretch from Ewing into Trenton is mostly hard-packed dirt and fine gravel.

When we got to Parkside Avenue, I stopped to get a better picture of the canal over the road, and of the railing on the bridge.

If you zoom in here, above the bridge you can see three old mansions.

We took the same route as last time, leaving the towpath near the courthouses. Being Easter Sunday, there streets were mostly deserted.

At the arena, we rode up onto the plaza to get a closer look at the Roebling wire rope machine.

John is almost a regular at the Trenton Coffee House. A heavily tattooed twenty-something greeted us outside, welcoming us back.

"We're here for the espresso chocolates!" John said.

"He doesn't have any," the fellow said. "He couldn't get his hands on the shells."

"Aw, man!" I said.

As we locked up, we mused about Easter. "It's the day some creature rises out of the ground and delivers jelly beans to all the first world kids, isn't it?" I asked. John added that, like Christmas, it's another appropriated pagan holiday. For atheists like me, Easter means nothing at all but the symbolic start of spring and an excuse to eat egg-shaped candy.

Inside, upstairs, Abdul was apologetic.  "I overpromised," he said. "I went to Princeton, to Thomas Sweet and Lindt. They didn't have any shells."

"Next year," John said.

"Hey," I offered. "We don't need a fake holiday for chocolate espresso eggs. You can make them any time."

As Abdul prepared our coffee, I wondered aloud how one would eat an espresso egg without making a complete mess. "It's like eating a soup dumpling, I guess," I said. Nobody else had an answer. I suppose we'll never know.

While we were drinking, the space began to fill with tattooed and pierced twenty-somethings. We felt old, but we didn't feel uncool.

Abdul came by and placed a dish in front of us.  "Apology nuts," he explained.

They were good.

On our way out, I bought a pound of beans. It took some creative shoving, but we got the bag into one of my pockets.

Rather than retrace our path, we decided to continue up South Broad Street to the Trenton War Memorial. I've never seen it close up before.

Next, we went looking for the canal. The trick is, we discovered, to look for painted cement bridges and Belgian block crosswalks.

The path weaves back and forth across roads and bridges. On one, I could see down to the canal beneath my feet:

Sometimes the path is little more than a few feet wide, snaking between buildings. We followed signs when we could find them.

This yard, adjacent to the path, was, well, interesting:

Curious about the Greenway, we followed it.

But not for long. Under a bridge, a massive tree trunk was set across the path to prevent anyone from going any further. On the other side was another D&R Canal State Park sign, and then the path turned to grass.

I spent a lot of time looking ten feet in front of me, wary of puncturing my tires. So when John said, "There's a cool yard back there. I'm gonna go check it out," I had no idea what he was talking about. I took a few pictures while I waited.

This is what he was looking at (he posted it online later and I swiped it):

While he was looking at that, I was looking at this:

As I stood looking at the abandoned house, the scent of coffee wafted up. It took me more than a few seconds to realize that the smell was coming from the bag in my pocket. The beans were roasted this morning.

Straddling the Ewing-Trenton border is the Trenton Country Club:

The last thing we had to do was climb the mile-long hill on Scenic Drive from Route 29 to John's house. It doesn't look like much at first, but it's a real hill. John figures that one could do ten intervals up and down this hill during the week and be in great shape. "Ten?"  I said. "I was thinking more like three."

Before I went home, I spent some time in John's garage, looking at his collection of Campy-outfitted Serottas.

I'm moving very slowly with Rowlf's construction. My most recent quandary was brake cable routing. It's less than obvious to a newbie like me, and the instructions that come with the components have drawings that are less than helpful. By looking at John's collection, though, all of which have down tube shifters, I was able to feel where the cable comes out of the grip and confirm my suspicion that the tiny hole on the grip somehow meets up with the cable end insert on the brake lever. I was going to have to blindly poke the cable around until it found the exit.  When I got home, that's what I did, and now I feel slightly less derpy, except that I forgot to grease the screws for the brakes and derailleurs, so now I'm going to have to back all of those out, lube them, and put them back in. It's a good thing I'm not doing this for a living.