Van Horne Park, Rocky Hill
6 August 2017
Before I start, I need to tell y'all that yesterday's Event century was one of the most enjoyable centuries I've done. It was cloudy, but not rainy. It was sunny, but not hot. It was windy, but not gusting. There were hills, but only little ones. I rode with friends I haven't seen since early spring. I saw people at rest stops I haven't seen since last summer. And I got a new pair of tires 30 miles in. Read on.
At 5:30 a.m. the rain was moving out. When I left the house on Kermit at 6:55, front and rear lights blinking, I was going around puddles. The roads, like my shorts, were damp when I pulled into MCCC.
I checked in with Ira. "That storm at 4:30 gave me palpitations," he said.
"I counted about 20 riders on my way over here," I assured him. My path to the college was on the routes that crossed over Route 1. I would pass that way three times today.
I set Kermit up where the rest of my group would see him.
We'd agreed on a 7:30 start, and we were close to on time. There were six of us: Neil and Mark, Gordon, Ricky, Brian, and me. Jud had emailed in that he would be half an hour late and wished us luck.
As we were about to push off, Neil said, "My bagels! I forgot my bagels!"
"There are some over there," I said, gesturing towards a towering pile on a table under a tent.
"No. I want mine," he said. So we passed by his car on our way out. He grabbed a small, white, plastic bag and proceeded to tie it to the front of his Camelbak straps.
"Don't you want to put them inside?
"I want to eat them!"
I turned to Mark. "Neil has a feed bag!"
It's always good to start a long ride in the right mood, and the mood had been set.
I waited until our first red light to snap a picture.
"A little underexposed, but I'll fix it," I said to Gordon, who gave an approving nod. (With a minor tweak in gamma correction Neil came out of the shadows.)
On Bakers Basin Road we picked up a few riders who Neil knew. We got talking about the diminishing returns of ten thousand dollar bikes, and then moved on to praise heavy steel vintage. Two of the extras were on the hilly route and turned off at Fackler Road. We kept on Princeton Pike to Province Line.
Nearly half of the century route would be on this side of Route 1. Mark and Neil had it in their heads that we'd be climbing into the Sourlands. I assured them that there would be no big hills. To them, though, as flatlanders, an overpass is a hill.
The terrain wasn't hilly, but it wasn't flat either. There were enough small descents to send Mark and Neil bombing past the rest of us.
"Better watch yourself on the turns with that feed bag," I told Neil.
"Nah. The Camelbak balances it out."
"Now you know what it's like to run around without a bra."
Our meandering, westward loop took us through Ewing, Hopewell, and, eventually, to Hart's.
"Kermit thinks he's here for a check-up," I said as we pulled into the lot behind the store. Ross was standing by the rear entrance.
"Whaddaya think about this tire?" I asked him. "Do I have another 80 miles?" He took a look, put his hand on it, and said, "Stop by after the ride and we'll get you a new one."
"How fast could you do it now?"
"Five minutes," he said. I leaned Kermit towards him. He took the bike inside while I snapped a few more pictures of Neil in better light. Cheryl got a kick out of his feed bag too, and snapped some pictures from her vantage point behind the food table where she was volunteering with Dave H, Gary, and Donna.
Inside, I caught up with Ross as he was being pulled a million ways at once. I asked him to replace the front tire too. Whenever I see him I stick around to chat. We once spent ten minutes under the front eave in the rain after the store had closed. If he weren't tending wrench, he'd have a good career tending bar. This time around I learned that he's done two triathalons so far this year and is raring to go for more.
Less than a mile after leaving the shop, I heard "thhhpp! thhppp!" in the front wheel and stopped. The tire was becoming unseated. I've done this myself a few times. I stopped before the inevitable "bang!" had a chance to happen. I apologized profusely for holding the group up again; nobody was upset about it. The delay gave Mark and Neil more time to clown around as they helped me put in a new tube.
New tires, like new sneakers, always feel worlds different and leave me wondering why I waited so long to make the change. (Note to self: I need new sneakers.)
Coming out of Hopewell we came upon Mary's group. She was with Tru, Jud, and a handful of others. Jud joined us for a while.
All morning we'd had one eye on the road and the other on the sky. As we moved along Route 518 (we skipped the rest stop at Sourland Cycles) towards Hillsborough, I whimpered to Gordon about how much I wanted to stop and take pictures of the clouds. Every half mile I whimpered but I did not stop.
The sky over Van Horne Park in Rocky Hill was only slightly less dramatic.
My iPhone 6 beats my Canon SX280 HS. Nothing beats what it looked like through my polarized sunglasses. ("There's an app for that!" Gordon said.)
Dave C had provided a floor pump for the rest stop. I took the opportunity to deflate the CO2 from my front tire and fill it with ambient air to my usual 110 psi. I did the back too.
Two things happened as we crossed over Route 1 into the flatlands: the sun came out and the wind picked up.
"This is where the route gets stupid," I warned the team as we turned onto Scudders Mill Road in Plainsboro. I'm never a fan of the Anywhere, USA sprawl of West Windsor. I knew that, given the route and its rest stop constraints, this was the best way through. But it still was something less than fun. There were too many cars and too many traffic lights.
We bunched up with Mary's group again, then spread out. Mark and Neil got ahead of us at a pace I didn't want to match; it was too early (we were only halfway) for me to burn it up. On the other hand, I could see why they'd want to get well out of this place.
Things got better on the other side of Route 130. We regrouped and had a good pace going as long as we didn't have the wind in our faces.
Our next stop was at a community park on West Manor Way in Robbinsville. This is the rest stop where all the cool kids hang out. It used to be run by the late Don Sprague; Plain Jim has taken over managerial duties. TEW was there, and Carol, and Rajesh (who is looking forward to his next 600 km brevet, for reasons sane people will never understand). Chris, manning the SAG wagon as usual, put in an appearance. Some bonehead leaned his bike against the women's bathroom door while I was in there, so of course I inadvertently knocked it over when I stepped out. Serves him right.
The route would have us passing through here twice. The gps route provided to us showed a spaghetti mess that I hadn't bothered to edit out when I downloaded the file to Son Of. I fully expected Son Of to blow a gasket here, and it did. Leaving the park, I no longer had turn-by-turn directions, but the route was there.
What I had edited out, upon Neil's advice, was the trip to the next rest stop at Walnford. Between the mill on Hill Road and Holmes Mill Road is an unrideable stretch of sand that none of us wanted to ride or walk around, especially after last night's rain. Instead, we turned onto Extonville and Polhemustown to join the route again at Route 539. This shaved a mile off our distance, but we all agreed it was well worth it.
Somewhere in here I learned from Ricky that this was Brian's very first century. I wish I'd known earlier and had made him eat more. He'd hit the 70-mile wall.
Back at the community park again, my GPS didn't find its navigational beeps. Brian sat down to rest. I had flashbacks of Bob N crashing out here last year on his first century, and of Rajesh the year before. Neil, Mark, and I gave him some sage advice. In the end, though, he'll figure out what works best for him.
It was getting late. Jud took off for home. I was already much later than I'd hoped to be; I had plans with Jack that required me to be cleaned off and in the car by 5:30. Mark and Neil told us to go ahead; they'd stay with Brian. They were feeling the distance a little too, having pushed the pace through West Windsor.
Gordon and Ricky, neither of whom appeared to be the least bit tired after 102 miles, damn them, turned into MCCC and I headed straight for home. It's been years since I've stayed for the after-ride festivities. I really ought to one of these days, but I think I'd have to drive there. Once I get this close to finished, I don't want to stop.
From my house to MCCC is about 5 miles; I finished with 112, which is as close to randonneur as I'm going to get.
My post-century ritual has me stumbling around the house, unpacking, washing my helmet, washing my sticky water bottles (they're always sticky), stumbling around some more, and eventually showering. I had enough time to do all of this and grab a quick snack of cottage cheese and pickles before driving almost an hour to meet a friend for dinner.
The place he'd picked we'd been to together once before. It's called Helm and its menu is colorful, annoying, pretentious, and deliberately vague. The poor server has no choice but to explain the entire thing to each table.
I figured I'd be either ravenous or nauseated (my post-century body flits from one to the other on a whim). Fortunately I was the former before the latter and got through half of what I'd ordered before I gave up. I skipped dessert, knowing full well I'd be ravenous again when we got home. I was, and helped myself to a big bowl of ice cream.
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