Sue's Birthday Rowlf Metric

Bruno's One Sweet Ride, Allentown, NJ 

24 September 2017

I wasn't sure what my legs would feel like on Sunday morning. I wrote to Plain Jim to find out if his ride was still on, and what the route would be. He'd advertised an honest B with some hills. I could pull that off if the hills weren't too big and if my legs were fresh, which they wouldn't be. Jim wrote back that I shouldn't come on his ride.

I went to our new ride calendar and signed up for Sue M's Bruno's Sunday Spin.  I'd ride from home at whatever pace I felt like doing, tag along with her group for as far as she was going, then ride home again at something slower than the speed I came in on.

Only after that did Jim send me the route, which I could not only have done, but I also would have been able to peel off and head for home had I chosen to ride over. He was planning to start 17 miles from home at 8:30 a.m., though. I could sleep a little longer, leave home a bit before 8:00, and get to Allentown without worrying that I'd hold up whatever crew of fastboys decided to go on his ride.

Then John K texted me. He was on his way home from Boston and wanted to know what good things would be happening tomorrow. I sent him my plans. He said he'd be there if he got back at a reasonable hour.

Rowlf said he wanted to be my Sunday bike. He's always the one I choose when I'm on a recovery ride. When I set out we had just under 500 miles together. It took about ten more miles for me to realize that all of my bikes need Campagnolo. People tell me, "Campy doesn't wear out. It wears in." 500 miles must be that magic wearing-in point.

On my way over I pondered Jim's ride some more. I bet some of the Slug regulars would show up. They'd probably ask where I was. "Tired" would be the diplomatic answer. "Too slow" would be between the lines. They'd probably all be relieved that they wouldn't have to wait for me at the top of every hill.

I arrived at Bruno's with glops of sweat on my arms. I think I alarmed Mindy and Sue M a little when I pulled in.

Then Sue R, the newest convert to Hill Sluggishness, arrived, and the four of us set out.

We were going to Columbus and would be on the Kinkora Trail. She wanted to get some pictures. I stopped to get a few on the eastern end, before the path goes under the trees.

The goldenrods were out in force.

At the deli in Columbus we sat on a porch next to the store. A chicken wandered up, followed by two kids and two more chickens. The birds followed the kids around like a dog would. I didn't get any of them tagging along, but I did manage to snap a few that weren't blurry.

The dark one was pretty, but she ducked under the porch before I could get a good picture of her.

It was here that Sue let slip that today was her birthday. As we approached Allentown I suggested to Mindy that I'd duck into Bruno's and snag something for her. I couldn't remember if there were cupcakes in there. There weren't, but Sue is a regular there, and Jim Bruno's daughter (who runs the candy section and whose name I can't recall) knew what she'd like. I came out with two dark chocolate-coated pretzels, neatly wrapped with a ribbon. Sue R disappeared and came back with neatly-wrapped almond bark. Both of the Brunos came out to wish Sue a happy birthday.

We all agreed that today's ride was a lot of fun. "Come back when you want to relax," Sue said. I didn't check the pace (I hadn't zeroed out my computer from the ride in), but it had felt like a mellow B.

On my way out of Allentown I stopped for pictures of Indian Lake at the Allentown-Robbinsville border.

I was feeling a little tired, but the smoothness of the Campy Athena shifting was making me happy. Definitely Beaker -- Michael Johnson and I had already talked about that -- but probably Kermit too. Piggy, forget it. Her setup is too weird to be replicated.

I had 63.5 miles when I got home. It was Rowlf's first metric. My pace was smack-dab in the middle of B. I wondered what Jim and the Slugs had done.

When I stepped into the kitchen, there was a present from John K waiting for me. He'd been on the JDRF ride in Saratoga Springs a week ago. I'd told him to get his caffeine fix at Saratoga Coffee Traders. He did one better than that. He brought me home a bag of Death Wish, and a water bottle from the ride, too.

"YOU DA MAN!!!" I texted him.

He'd arrived in Allentown minutes after we'd left. Dang.

In Which I Bite Off About as Much as I Can Chew

Assunpink Creek at MCP East Picnic Area

23 September 2017

We're back to having summer days on weekends. I left the house at 8:20 a.m. on Kermit. We were going to the Freewheeler's Fall Picnic. Ira would be there, a PC linked to his phone's hotspot, to demonstrate the club's new online presence. 

The ride calendar went live a week ago. We braced for mass confusion and got mass adulation instead. Our biggest problem was that we didn't include all the ride leaders in the first round of credential-granting, and those left out wanted in right away. Two days after launch, I submitted the October Freewheel and did a virtual happy dance as I watched monthly hours of needless labor disappear into the ether for good.

I entered my October rides into the calendar, "Hill Slugs Ad Hoc," as always. Ira, our club President and web conversion ringleader, emailed me to say that I needn't write "Ad Hoc" anymore, now that we can list a ride an hour before it begins if we want to. I went back in and changed it to "Hill Slugs" for now. I need something snappier though.

Anyway, Ira had his computer set up in the trunk of his car as riders arrived for the all-paces chaos. I knew there were two B rides going out. I found the fast group, to be led by Dave H, but I didn't see the sane group, to be led by Ron M. Ricky, Jim, and Andrew had signed up with Dave, so I did too, nervously, because I didn't recognize most of the faces attached to the beanpole legs that started where my neck ends and ended on lightweight carbon. Fastboys, and a few fastgirls too.

We went north, towards Cranbury, which didn't make much sense to me given that all the scenery worth seeing is south of the park. "We're starting into the wind," the guy I was talking to suggested. He knew my name. I'd forgotten his. 

I did manage to catch up with some guys I hadn't seen since the spring, now that I no longer make the Sunday drive to Cranbury or Etra (Allentown is closer) as we hustled along at a pace I could handle but I didn't know for how long. 

I stayed toward the back of the mob, keeping Dave in sight. It's been so long since I've been through the intersection of Butcher and Route 33 that I didn't know a Wawa had been built there. That was our rest stop. 

I perked up a little during the second half, but I was putting out more effort than I wanted to. I get a second wind at 40 miles. That would have been about 33 miles into the route. We were on the home stretch, and I started to inch my way towards the front of the middle pack. I ended up pulling the middle group across Herbert Road.

My average, when we pulled back into the park, as displayed on my little cyclocomputer, was a few tenths shy of breaking the rules. Son Of said we had gone over.

I rested Kermit against a tree, peeled off my gloves, removed my helmet and glasses, snapped on my cleat covers, and went to join the lunch crowd under the pavilion.

There was more catching up to do, and some name-asking on my part, once I found myself sitting across from one of the fastgirls. Despite the large spread of food from Business Bistro, I didn't eat anything. 

I found Winter Larry as he was leaving the party and tried to run in my cleats to catch up to him. We sat on the grass and talked. We heard cheers erupting from the pavilion, and, for the second week in a row, I'd run my mouth and missed the festivities. The cheer, apparently, was for the online ride calendar.

I went back to the pavilion, hungry now, and caught the end of Ira's speech as I folded a veggie burger in half and ate it with my hands. 

Gordon and I left together, winding through the shady path to the wooden bridge over the Assunpink Creek. He talked photography while I tried not to overexpose.

The water was a murky, sickly green.

Cheryl is leaving for Florida tomorrow, after spending two months up here. She made sure to give me a pair of socks first. "Hellraiser," they say.

They'll go in the drawer next to the pair that says, "Master of the Shit Show." I have such good friends.

Ride for McBride Weekend (A Blog in Four Parts)

20 September 2017

I: Route Prep

The first Ride for McBride was mostly unintentional. I hadn't planned on making it a charity ride until the week before, when Big Joe died. There were so many riders that I had to call in additional leaders, and Joe's family even showed up. A few months later the real Ride for McBride was created in the living room of Big Joe's house, and we've been handing out scholarships every year since.

In the first couple of years we would meet regularly. Then we settled into our duties and conversed online. For the past couple of years we've barely had to say much at all. I come up with the routes and the cue sheets. Little Joe is in charge of lining up the arrow painters. Jenna does the graphics. Judy makes copies of the cue sheets and insurance forms. Ira brings in rest stop supplies. Dave loads them in his van. A team of McBrides manages the kitchen at Tall Cedars. And Jared became the go-to guy for everything, our de facto leader, while he was finishing up his PhD in history. Somehow it all comes together every year.

The 50-mile route almost didn't. I'd mapped it to approach Mirror Lake in Pemberton from the west. Ridewithgps let me map through the northern end of Fort Dix. NJ Bikemap let me do it too. Less familiar with that area than I am with the eastern side, I thought I had a visual of it, a chain-link fence surrounding Air Force housing, SUVs, a playground.

I was wrong. At 5:00 p.m. on the Monday before the ride, Joe emailed me. Two of his painters had gone out to mark the first 25 miles of the 50 mile route, the only segment of all of the routes that hadn't been painted yet. They were ten miles in before they came face to face with the gated entrance to Fort Dix.

He caught me at a good time, as I had about twenty minutes to spare. I sped to my office, pulled the doors closed, and did the fastest mapping I've ever done, moving the route over and away from the gate, back to the east, approaching the lake from the north, and adding almost two miles in the process. Riders would go 30 miles before the rest stop, but that would have to do. I fixed the cue sheet, emailed it off to Joe, told Jared to hold off on printing until the painters were finished, and zipped back into the lab.

Joe painted from mile 10 to 30 by himself, and for that I am eternally grateful.

II: Short and Simple

Meanwhile, I was scheduled to lead a ride the day before Ride for McBride. I had no route in mind, knowing only that I wanted to keep things short and simple so that we'd have legs for the next day.

Jim met me at home, and Sean pulled in to ride with us some of the way. Jim was enamored with Sean's period-perfect throwback Masi, and they chatted for the four miles to Twin Pines.

We were met with a diverse crowd. Three of the riders (Ken, Jose, and Ed) would have been more at home with the hilly fastboys, and I wondered, with a critical mass of B+ riders, if they'd have the patience to stay with the Slugs or if they'd egg each other on and disappear off the front. I needn't have worried.

We had some of the Slug regulars: Aside from Jim and me, Ricky and Blake were there. Nevada was there, but Cheryl was saving her legs for tomorrow.

There was a new rider too, Sue, whom Chris had talked into trying the hills. 

After a short discussion, I decided that we'd be better off going to Sergeantsville than to Lambertville if we wanted to avoid newly chip-sealed roads.

Without a set route in mind, I decided to go back to the sunflowers on Wertsville and Losey to see if I could get better pictures. I didn't, but it was worth a try. Doing it right would have required getting off the bike and walking up a dirt path to the edge of the field at the bottom of Losey. I didn't have time to do that; most of the group went ahead.

I didn't think about how we'd get home until we were about to leave Sergeantsville. We'd gone 27 miles without hitting chip seal, but I wanted to show Sue the Green Sergeants covered bridge and there would be fresh gravel for a quarter mile on Lower Creek Road. We went anyway, and even though the gravel was rough, the road was flat and we turned off onto Covered Bridge anyway.

We climbed back up past the church and graveyard at Sandy Ridge. I warned Sue early about the long slog we'd be facing on the way to Mount Airy and South Hunterdon High School.

As is my tradition, I stop at the farm at the top of the first hill. There were no cows today. Sue and Jim stopped with me.

"It's a hay baler!" Sue said.

"You're speaking a language I don't understand," Jim told her.

"I read your blog," Sue confessed. "I like the pictures."

"Thanks. They help me remember what went on." The red barn, slowly losing slats and color, has regained a few window frames on the front and side.

I narrated the next part of the hill for Sue. The rest of the group was waiting in the high school parking lot.

"It's not about speed," I said as she pulled up. "It's about being comfortable climbing. Being a faster rider doesn't make you a better person. It just increases your chance of being an asshole."

"I'm afraid to ask," she said, "but was that the last one?"

"No," I said. "There's more. There's always more." [See, Jim? Ride leaders don't always lie.]

I wasn't sure what more we'd encounter. I was winging it. My only goal was to avoid going up Wargo. Ken had expressed his relief that we'd gone down that way in the morning; it would mean not going up on the way home. We both have the same reaction to it: it's not a steep hill, nor a long one, but it's there, a handful of miles from the end, out in the open, slightly bumpy, and just slightly annoying. Also in the late fall it smells like broccoli.

We hit an unlikely stretch of gravel on Rocktown Road as it approaches Route 31. Jim sang us across the highway, and we had to explain that to Sue too.

Snydertown annoys me at the end of a ride, so I skipped it and we went straight down Linvale, across Route 31 again, and found ourselves at 518.

"One hump or two?" I asked. Showing mercy (or maybe not), I chose one hump: New Road.

"Harbourton-Woodsville has been chipped," Jose said.''

"When?"

"A few weeks ago."

"Let's try it."

So we went up New Road. I promised Sue this would be the last one. Ken and I remembered the days before New was blacktop, when it, too was bumpy chip seal.

Harbourton-Woodsville looked pretty good. A road crew had been back to stripe it, so we figured it would be fine to descend.

"I'm gonna give you a beautiful downhill," I told Sue.

Ken said, "If you get up enough speed you can coast up the hill at the bottom." A few of us did.

We got a little spread out over the last mile down Lawrenceville-Pennington Road. Ken and Jose peeled off for home. The rest of us trickled into the parking lot.

"I'm hooked," Sue said.  Sorry, Chris. I think you might have lost one.

We finished with a couple more miles than I'd planned, and more elevation gain than I'd expected. So much for short and simple, Jim griped.

III: Ride for McBride

There was a large group going out for the 50-mile route. Ira was nominally leading. I was with a smaller crowd of Slug types. They left before we did, but we caught up to them, got mixed up with them, and the group rearranged itself to the point where I never really did figure out who was with us and who wasn't.

The chain-link fence around the Air Force houses was on Croshaw Road, it turns out. I'd been off by 90 degrees and a few miles. The route turned out to be okay, and Joe agreed that it might be good enough to use again next year. 

I only stopped once for a picture. It was too good to skip. "Attention back stabbing hypocrites thanks for nothing" it said on one side."

"Hope your happy with yourselfs," it said on the other. Both sides!

The author had to be a disgruntled Trumpist. No liberal would own that many American flags.

The folks running the rest stop in Plumsted weren't given the key to the bathrooms as they had been in years past, so we stopped at the CVS on our way back. I don't know what this means for next year's routes. Was this an error, or are we going to have to find a new spot for the 25-mile and 50-mile halfway points?

When we got back to Tall Cedars I spent so much time catching up with people in the parking lot that by the time I put my own bike away and changed into a dry t-shirt I missed the entire award ceremony. Dang. I hung around after most of the riders had left so that I could talk to Jared, Judy, and Jenna.

Although the number of cars in the lot seemed fewer than in previous years, Jared had the sense that we had about the same number of riders as usual. We tend to get more donations than riders, and we don't need much to keep the $2000 scholarship going. We did very little in the way of publicity this year; we could always do more. We like keeping it small, though. It's much easier to handle.

Jared hasn't yet posted this year's award recipient on our site, but you can read about previous winners here. You can also still donate; you can donate any time.

IV: Son of Piece of Shit

One more thing: my GPS worked perfectly for the entire 50 Ride for McBride miles. I know that will disappoint some of you out there. I, for one, was relieved.

Last Garmin Standing

Somewhere off of Wertsville Road

19 September 2017

We have to rewind a bit here, back to the second week of September, for the Sourland Spectacular. I talked Bob N down from a 7:00 start. The night before would be Jack's 50^th birthday; I didn't know if I'd be out late. He agreed that 8:00 would be more civilized. Still, the sun was low when I arrived at 7:40 for registration at the Otto Kaufman Community Center in Montgomery. It was impossible to find anyone without standing in the shadow of the building and looking west.

Jim eventually emerged from the glare, and we found Ricky. Bob was delayed by a flat en route. He decided to tell us the story as we rolled out a mere five minutes after our intended starting time.

"There was an alligator," he began, because hurricanes were much on our minds. "If there can be a sharknado there can be a hurrigator," Jim said. "We decided this at work." The alligator turned out to be a wire as thick as a paper clip.

We were about a mile in when we lost Jim. Bob and I stopped to wait on Fairview.

A few minutes later Jim rolled around. "Alan lost the route," he said, and no matter what he did he could not get it back into his GPS display. That left three of us, each with a different model Garmin, to navigate by GPS while Jim dutifully followed the cue sheet and arrows.

This being the Sourlands, and early September, we were bound to run into and over freshly chip-sealed roads. There were at least two before the first rest stop, which was somewhere on Wertsville Road.

Somewhere in here Ricky's GPS got bored with turn-by-turn directions. That left Bob's and mine to battle to the finish.

We hit a long stretch of chip seal on Lambert Road on our way to Sergeantsville. We were nearing 48 of 65 miles and I was in need of caffeine. I asked if anyone would object to a stop at the general store. It was a much-needed rest. We lingered there long enough that volunteers were already packing up when we passed by the second official rest stop. We cruised right on by.

On Werstsville Road again, where Losey comes in, Ricky and I stopped for a field of sunflowers.

They were on both sides of the road, and up the Losey hill, too, but I couldn't get a good shot from Losey.

I stopped again for the view on Rocktown towards the mountain.

On Orchard Road, a group of horses enjoyed an early lunch.

As we neared Hopewell at the top of the mountain, my GPS did its now predictable Hopewell vicinity frying trick. This time the screen went dead. I revived it easily enough, but without the turn-by-turn directions. Ricky's GPS had come back.

On Camp Meeting Road, less than a mile from the end, Bob's GPS began to tell him to turn around.

I stopped on the railroad bridge to do a little trainspotting.

Our late start and Sergeantsville loitering put us at the tail end of the lunch crowd. Over fresh pizza (made from a lunch truck oven and tasting much better than it had any right to) and ice cream sundaes (the last of the Bent Spoon vanilla), we pondered what to do with our freebie universal phone mounts.

"They look like handcuffs," Ricky offered.

I went inside the community center to wash up. When I came out, only a few bikes remained on the racks that volunteers were beginning to dismantle.

During the course of the ride I'd plucked a foxtail for Miss Piggy. I made sure to get a picture of it when I got home.

I got home late enough that there was just time to clean up before heading out to fetch a friend from the train station and drive to Lambertville for dinner, where we met with another couple of friends and I was punchy from hills, pizza, and ice cream.  Then we all went back home to open a bottle of 50-year-old Barolo, which I didn't try because I don't like red wine because I'm weird.

Bob, meanwhile, emailed us all a link in ridewithgps that explains, in excruciating detail, how to set one's Garmin GPS so that it doesn't lose the route. I'd already done all but one step, a setting I'd put in place on the original Piece of Shit but forgotten to set on Son Of. I made the change and hoped for the best. I'd have to put it to the test in a week, for the Ride for McBride.