Recovery Ride with Cows

The Herd on Van Kirk Road 

18 August 2019

I wanted to get a recovery ride in, but I also wanted to sleep in. Two things got me out of bed long after the sun came up: the threat of afternoon thunderstorms; and the fact that the Pig closes at noon on Sundays.

10:15 a.m. was already too late. The temperature was shooting up, and the air was thick. I brought two water bottles and my camera with me.

It's not that I have a thing for cows. I actually think they're kind of ugly. But they're fun to take pictures of, and, well, they're there, and it's expected of me by certain Hill Slugs. There's a herd on Van Kirk Road near Cold Soil Road. Today they were near the road.

I hadn't been down by the Province Line Road pedestrian bridge in a while. I'm pretty sure I haven't been through in the summer in many years. I don't remember the south side being so overgrown. The pavement is riddled with grass-filled cracks. The edges are being overtaken by vegetation. Soon this will be a gravel bike-only situation.

The Stony Brook was worth a picture or three.

Halfway down Bayberry the road turned red with silt. At one point it looked as if the surface had been scraped away. Tire tracks carried the silt for hundreds of yards in both directions. On the other side I asked a pair of walkers what was going on. "They're dredging the lake and putting the silt on a field," they told me. "It'll be done in a couple of weeks. The silt is good for the soil. We don't even drive down there now. We go around."

Throughout the ride I'd been checking the time, making sure I'd be near Pennington by 11:45 at the latest. I got to the Pig at 11:30.

The barista recognized me, and thanked me for keeping my wallet dry in a plastic bag. "People hand me wet money," she said. "No, that's gross," I answered. Plain Jim had a blog post about wet money once. I can't seem to find it. I was certainly extra sweaty this morning. I'd gone 16 miles and had already drained one water bottle. When I stepped outside again I finished off half of the second one before getting started again.

I'm not sure where my pace would fit in along Jim's scale of slow (stately), slower (regal), or slowest (funeral). I'm just glad I had the energy to get out at all on a day that was so humid that water was collecting on our downstairs windows.