Early Autumn Oldwick

Jim, the trick is to stand at the edge of the road and zoom in.

29 September 2019

There's a little bit of fall color starting. Most of it right now is dead leaves. We haven't had much rain. Maybe my planned ride from Hillsborough to Oldwick would have been better a month from now, but the weather forecast looked good. We hadn't been there in a while either.

Tom, Jim, Ricky, Bob, and Blake joined me. I warned as we started that I'd be stopping for a lot of pictures.

Despite the power lines, I like the view facing west on River Road in Neshanic.

The morning began dry, but the humidity and haze were picking up. Here I think it helped filter the light and set some contrast.

While I was stopped at the top of the hill, Tom was at the bottom, taking pictures of decorated hay bales. He waited for me there to make sure I'd see them.

There was a pumpkin too but the light was wrong.

When we got to Thor Solberg Road we had to visit the airport.

Across the airfield the trees gave a hint of color.

The herd of cattle on Mill Road in Readington is always worth a picture stop.

We wound our way north to the intersection of Taylors Mill and Rockaway Roads. A Virginia creeper vine, one of the earliest plants around here to change color, was beginning to turn red on the side of the old mill.

Bob's rear tire was low on air, so we stopped on Rockaway Road at the gingerbread house. While he pumped his tire, a few of us took pictures. The house has been for sale several times. For a while it appeared to be in a state of disrepair. Now it's immaculate again The plants by the fence have been cleared out. Now we can see the entire front yard, and even into the back and sides. The house is old and sprawling. There are two outbuildings. Judging from the two cars half-hidden in the driveway, the new owners aren't short on cash.

From the mill to the top of the hill is 3.5 miles of a slow, shaded incline. As much fun as it is to coast down, I prefer going up. It gives me time to look around. I'm never bored or disappointed.

"Welcome to Mountainville. Thanks for visiting Mountainville." If you say this slowly on Main Street, you'll be in and out of town by the end of it.  Sawmill Road is on the other side. It's more of a climb than any of us remember it to be. I hadn't taken a picture of the old water wheel in a while, so I stopped this time.

We crossed Route 517 and turned right on Fox Hill Road. This is another place where I stop for pictures every single time. We all did. Jim later complained in his blog post that his pictures didn't do justice to the view. I like that his pictures show the road, but the trick is to stand on the edge of the road, zoom in, and take a dozen shots.

The haze helped a lot.

In a half-open barn there was a chair.

I could spend all day in that chair.

I knew it had been a while since I'd been inside the Oldwick General Store. I hadn't figured on it being well over a year. They've renovated. There's more space inside.

For 11:30 on a sunny Saturday morning, the place was empty. We were the only cyclists. I hope this is an aberration. If the general store folds, there will be nowhere else nearby to stop.

The coffee tasted like water. The pumpkin bread made up for it. Tom recommended the cookies, so I bought a couple to take home. Jim was eating a dense, square thing that he claimed contained his day's worth of calories.

Good news: Vliettown Road has been repaved. So have a handful of other roads between Oldwick and Readington. It made the rollers, always annoying, much easier to deal with as the humidity crept up.

As we crossed over Route 78, Bob's tire went flat again. This time I suggested he change it, which he grudgingly did, with admirable speed.

My last picture was on Pine Bank Road. This is, I think, a bittersweet vine.

When we got back to Hillsborough, we all agreed we should do this ride again. Maybe I'll do it in reverse. I've never climbed Fox Hill. Tom has. He says it only sucks a little.

*****

Jim outsourced his Sunday ride to a Cranbury Fastboy today. No, thanks. I passed up an invitation to an off-the-books ride that John K was leading. I needed sleep. I got a lot of it, and would have slept more had I not left the curtain open and been stabbed in the face by direct sunlight at 8:30 a.m.

After adjusting the setback on Rowlf (as I recently had on Beaker, to good effect, thanks to Ross' suggestion), I took him out for a short recovery ride. If I timed things right I could get to the Pig just before they closed for the day.

I didn't have a route in mind. The wind was out of the north at 11 mph, which is enough to let one know there's  a headwind but not enough to set one to cursing. I went into the wind for a while and found myself on Research Road on the ETS campus. This little loop is a gem.

I got to the Pig with six minutes to spare.

Here is proof that I do, indeed, ride the Colnago:

Livestock, Dead Derailleur

Rues Road, Imlaystown, NJ

28 September 2019

I'm already two weeks behind. Blame the glassblowing. And the kitten, Glooskap Beeblebrox. 

I'm getting heat from my two regular readers for being so far behind, so, without further ado, let's get into the handful of recent Hill Slug adventures that have been so long delayed.

Tom's listing for Saturday, September 14, was called "Tom's Swamp Ride." He wanted to get back to Charlestown Coffee in New Egypt, this time avoiding the dirt road I nearly turned us onto last time. He posted the route late at night, so I didn't see what he had in store for us. 

As usual, I rode in from home on Kermit. The front derailleur had stuck for a hot minute on last week's century. I figured it would need a little cleaning sooner or later. Being September, it was still early to take Kermit in for his annual drive train bath and handle bar grooming. 

In the Assunpink Wildlife Management Area, we crossed paths with a pack of hunting dogs who looked as if someone had stretched a dozen beagles. (Later they were identified by the astute Free Wheelers on Facebook as fox hounds).

When we turned onto East Branch Road &emdash; that's the one that goes uphill and empties out on Route 524 &emdash; I tried to shift into my small ring. Nothing happened.

"Mechanical," I said as I caught up with the group at the stop sign. Jim and I fussed with it. The shifter and cable seemed okay; it was the derailleur that refused to move. He managed to get it over the small ring and advised I leave it there. It was just as well; I needed not to mash so much anyway.

"I guess I'm taking Kermit in early this year," I said.

We turned onto Rues Road and headed south to Imlaystown. Near the end there's a farm on the right, harboring alpacas, goats, sheep, donkeys, and cows in a single pasture.

We weren't finished with the livestock, though. As we circled around the back end of New Egypt, on Brynmore Road, we got to see the herd of longhorn cattle who live in the pasture where the road bends eastward. We all stopped for pictures.

"Moolets!" I pointed into the depths of the pasture.

Tom's plan was to turn south on Inman. Now, we're not averse to crunching down a gravel road once in a while, but there's gravel, and then there's mud. Tom decided to reroute, which gave me more time for pictures.

"This is the Livestock Ride," somebody said. (It's been so long now that I don't remember if it was Tom, Jim, the other Ken G, Martin, or Laurie. I had to look up who was there by searching Jim's blog.)

Tom got us back to Route 528 and into Charlestown Coffee, where there was, inexplicably, live music at 10:30 a.m.

Then he led us through a series of winding, neighborhood streets that were, somehow, hilly. One of them skirted a patch of woods. I had no idea where we were until we popped out onto Hawkin Road.

Once we got within a handful of miles of Mercer County Park, I decided to try shifting again. The derailleur moved more or less freely. I figured I'd dodged a bullet, and that there must have been something stuck in there from the Labor Day rain.

We turned onto Nurko Road. Tom asked, "How's the derailleur doing?"

"It's shifting fine now. Look," I said, and immediately the back wheel locked up. 

The chain, stuck on itself, had pulled the rear derailleur forward. It took three of us to set things right, with Kermit upside-down on the side of the road. "Always know where your bandanna is*," I explained to Laurie, pulling it free from around the chain, where I had used it for leverage.

I rode the rest of the way home in the big ring, and dropped Kermit and a spare derailleur off at Hart's later in the afternoon.

Sunday, September 15, was consumed by driving to the outskirts of DC to retrieve Glooskap from his foster, who had driven up from Richmond, and then driving back again.

Having three cats is 200% more work than having two cats. When the third is an 11-week-old kitten, it's 400%. When I was home, which wasn't often, considering I managed to slide into a few extra glassblowing sessions, there was no time for blogging.

Then it was September 21, the day of the PFW Fall Picnic. Again I rode in from home on Kermit, who I'd picked up from Hart's the day before. The dead derailleur, which was new old stock from eBay, had lasted a year. Oscar had handed it back to me with the choice of scrapping it or soaking it in a penetrating oil he didn't have in the shop. Given the amount of free time I'd had lately, I decided that there was one person who would love to take this on: Plain Jim. I carried it with me to the park.

I took the narrow, bumpy, thoroughly unpleasant, bike path in so that I could stop on the bridge over the Assunpink.

I handed off the derailleur and joined Winter Larry's ride to Bordentown. He always takes us to the overlook where we can see the Crosswicks Creek meet the Delaware River, with I-295 and Pennsylvania in the background.

Our rest stop was the deli in the middle of town.

We got a little spread out on the way back to the park. As we waited to regroup at the intersection of Walnford and Polhemustown Roads, I took a few pictures.

There was a horse waaaaaay back in the pasture.

And a foal!

The Fall Picnic is a catered affair, which is to say that Business Bistro drops off a ton of food and we eat it. If I hadn't had to ride seven more miles home I'd have had a real meal. Jack was traveling, so I didn't have a cloud of guilt hanging over me if I were to stick around.

As it was, I had hardly anything at all, because I checked my phone and found a text from the tech at the glassblowing studio. One of the students in the afternoon session was sick. Did I want the 1:00-5:00 slot?

It was 12:50. I texted her back that I'd most likely not get there until 3:00. I didn't wait for a response. I made a series of hasty goodbyes and hammered all the way home. I got half a shower (why wash my hair when I was just going to sweat again), ate half a lunch in double time, grabbed my glass stuff, and got to the studio at 2:30.

There was fog in Sunday morning's forecast. I got up early enough to get the kitten stuff out of the way but still didn't get out of the house until ten minutes after I wanted to. A tailwind helped me to make up some of the time.

I did have to stop at the Princeton Battlefield, though, because the trees in the fog were too good to pass up.

If I'd had more time I'd have pulled into the parking lot at Carnegie Lake to take a picture of the line of orange floats that appeared to be hanging mid-air, the fog hiding both the water and the far bank.

By the time I got to Canal Road, the fog had burned off. I made a note of the collapsing barn on Old Georgetown Road. I knew Jim's route would have us coming back this way. I'd stop for a picture then.

Jim has consistently been drawing a reasonable crowd on his Sunday rides, which is to say that he's been getting six to eight people. Early this season there were regulars. Now those regulars have been replaced by irregulars, among them a rotating cast of Cranbury Fastboys. To hear Jim tell it, the pace has crept up. I wouldn't know because half of my Sunday miles end up being solo.

I'd come home from yesterday's glassblowing session exhausted, my hands sore from making pumpkins, my legs tired from two extra hours of not recovering. As we wound our way through the back end of Princeton, I confessed to Jim that I was asleep on my feet. I wasn't sure if I'd have the energy to stay with the group all the way to Hopewell.

I did, but only because I'm so behind on miles this year. At Boro Bean, I was warned that Carter Road had been milled from Cleveland to Cherry Valley. I wasn't planning on going home that way anyhow; I wanted to stop at the Pig because I missed it last week. As tired as I was, I didn't have any coffee at the Bean; I saved that for when I got to the Pig.

Okay. We're all caught up. Now I can go upload the pictures from today and start getting behind all over again. The kitten is sleeping. I have a fighting chance. 

(* Always know where your towel is.)