Stony Brook Road, Hopewell Township, NJ
18 April 2020
Part of the fun of biking is coming up with routes. I look at the weather forecast, think about where we haven't been for a while, check to see if that little coffee shop still exists, and start mapping how we'll get there.
These days route planning has been turned on its head. There's nowhere to stop, and even if there were, we can't ride in a group to get there. Over the past few weeks, Tom has been hosting Friday evening Insane Bike Posse Therapy Sessions on Zoom. There, after we get caught up, we discuss where each of us might be riding over the weekend. One of us will have a route in mind and let everyone else know where he might be at a particular time. Someone might send a route map.
Last Saturday Tom posted his; I was stuck indoors. That evening, Bob posted that he'd be at the little parking lot on Mountain Road, the trailhead for a little park at the top of the Sourland Mountain.
The trick now is to figure out how to map a route to the unofficial meetup spot and get there on time. Slow as I am, I allowed myself two hours to go twenty miles.
That gave me enough time to stop for half a minute on the southern side of Stony Brook Road for a couple of quick pictures.
From there I took a zig-zag route up the mountain. To make it a true Hill Slug ride, I went north on the gravel section of Stony Brook. While I've descended that stretch more times than I can count, this might have been the first time I've gone up. It's not bad at all. It didn't even feel like a climb. I'll keep that in mind.
I was a little early, but so was Bob. Pete pulled in a few minutes later. Little flies circled our faces as we stood far apart from each other. We took advantage of the emptiness to find convenient trees to hide behind.
On my way back to the lot I saw these flowers on the trail. Spring beauty, maybe?
Bob and Pete chatted in the parking lot.
Bob saw me with the camera and hammed it up.
Bob continued west on Mountain Road. Pete and I went east, riding on opposite sides of the road until the intersection at Rileyville Road, where he went south and I went north. I followed Ridge Road to Lindbergh.
The route I had planned was to stay on Hopewell-Amwell Road down to Route 518, then ride through Hopewell to Princeton Road. I abandoned that in order to get in more distance and climbing. I took Province Line instead.
On the way down, I stopped where the trees stopped, to get a picture of the Hopewell valley and the ridge beyond.
I crossed Route 518 and continued climbing on the other side. When I got to the crest of the second hill, I took a picture of what was ahead and turned around to look at where I'd just been.
I turned onto Cherry Valley and then onto Bayberry, where the sheep and cows were now closer to the road than they'd been yesterday.
I took Elm Ridge off of Carter. The Pennington-Rocky Hill Road intersection is across from a farm on the BMS property.
I'd never seen cows there before. They were well off the road, which was barricaded, so I zoomed in.
The barricade sign has some curious punctuation. Apparently I can speak to a representative who is 24 divided by 7 inches.
I'm not going on long adventure rides these days. I'm not sitting down halfway for coffee and carbs either. My solo rides are short, and I'm not as beat at the end as I would normally be. On the other hand, I definitely feel as if I've done something, but without so much aching afterwards. I have no idea how much fitness I'm losing during this lockdown. What I am losing is motivation. A large part of biking for me is the social aspect. These days I'm getting out only to keep my weight down and my fitness up. Doing that is much less fun when there's nobody to talk to.
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