Start of the Sticky Days

Dock at Assunpink Lake

28 June 2020

The lilies are blooming. On my last weekday ride before returning to the lab, I passed a line of them along a stone wall on Woosamonsa Road. The lighting was a little wrong and I didn't stop to get a picture. I have regretted that. To make up for it I've been trying to get a good photo of the handful blooming along the side of my yard. Last Saturday, only the ones farthest from the fence were open.

We Slugs hadn't managed to get our acts together in time to coordinate a ride. There was a threat of rain mid-day. I didn't want to get up early enough to get to Tom's house at 8:00 a.m. Instead, I rolled out at the lazy hour of 9:10 to ride around the Assunpink Wildlife Management Area. 

I spent a minute at the lake.

People were fishing off the dock and off their boats, and a few were kayaking.

With some trepidation, I registered for Marc's Sunday ride out of Mercer County Park. In the list of registrants, I recognized only a few. With Old Trenton Road being milled near the park, I opted for the path through the woods instead, stopping for a picture of the murky Assunpink Creek at the wooden bridge.

While the pace was a little more work than I'm used to, I kept up. A lot of the conversation these days starts with, "Are you working from home?"

"Yeah, and I'm going crazy."

"Are you going back to the office?"

"Probably not."

Most of my cycling friends got to keep their jobs, even if they were laid off for a while. Of my circle of Slugs, I'm the only one sent home to has gone back. Of those I talked to in Marc's group, only a few were working outside of their homes.

We stopped at Roy's. I ventured inside to buy a drink. One side of the store, the side with the bathroom, was blocked off. The tables were gone. I thanked the cashier for being open. I think she might have been one of the owners. She seemed slightly distraught at the restrictions, understandably. "Best to keep us all healthy," I said, and she agreed.

We spread out along the front of the store, under hanging baskets of bright flowers.

The air was thick. There were showers in the forecast again.

We made our way back north, through the Assunpink in the direction opposite the one I had taken the day before. I looked at the sky as Chris rode past me. "It should just rain already," I said. "It would feel better." It didn't. We were all hot and sticky. I left the group at one of the Village Roads and headed for home, taking my chances on the hairy left turn at Quakerbridge onto Lawrence Station. Things are picking up in New Jersey, but I was able to get across without holding up traffic.

Yesterday was the first time I'd led a ride since March. I've been so busy in the lab that I didn't get around to even thinking about it until Friday evening on our regular Insane Bike Posse Zoom call. I didn't post the ride to the club calendar until something like 8:00 p.m.

Twelve hours later I had five registrants: Ricky, Jim, Jack H, Martin, and Sophie.

The lilies along the fence had finally bloomed. I took the picture I'd been waiting for and pushed off towards Pennington.

We met at the Pig, which is now open Tuesday through Saturday from 8:00 to noon for online orders and walk-ups to a small window at the front of the building. None of us wanting to have to pee in the woods, we didn't get any drinks before we started. Maybe, just maybe, we'd get back before noon.

"It's raining," Jack H said as we started off. "I'm going home." It wasn't really, just a few drops here and there, and we all knew he'd stick with us.

My destination was Lambertville. My route was any road that hadn't been chip-sealed within the past two weeks. That set us on a narrow line, west of Stony Brook, east of the river. In other words, Poor Farm.

I'd been climbing Poor Farm during some of my daytime lockdown rides. It was time to share the fun. I didn't warn anyone, except Sophie because I didn't know if she'd been there before, until we had turned from Burd onto Woosamonsa. If they cursed me out I was too far behind to hear it.

As we passed the barn on Rocktown Road, I instinctively turned to look behind me. More often than not these days, there's a cow at the window.

When we got to Rojo's, we found another walk-up window. As with the Pig, there's only coffee, no food. There was, however, indoor plumbing. Because I've gone back to the lab, I have the public restroom thing down. Wash your hands first, use a paper towel to turn off the faucet, use the same towel to open the stall door, wedge the towel by the lock to use later, don't touch anything with your bare hands, wash them again, use a new paper towel to turn the faucet off, and use that towel to open the door on your way out. Oh, and keep your mask on the whole time. That's important. I was the only one in there anyway, but still.

I'd already broken the no-road-twice rule by taking Rocktown back. To spice things up I said, "I'm an asshole! Straight!" and led the group down the dirt road hill. Sophie said, "Oh, this is where the vultures were waiting for us!" Jim hadn't yet had the pleasure. He was somewhat unconvinced that my choice was better than the newly-chipped Stony Brook.

We got back to the Pig at 12:05 p.m.

There was a geocache under the closed window.

Before I went inside, I took a few more lily pictures. Three had grown sideways, in an attempt to get out from under the sprawling redbud tree, and were blooming on the ground.

I'd inadvertently hit one of them with the lawnmower on Friday evening.

Marc had a B ride out of Mercer County Park listed for Sunday morning. Jim, in keeping with his end-of-the-month routine, listed his ride from Franklin as C+. I hadn't decided which one I was going to try. Marc's would be a hair more effort than I might have after a day of hills. Jim's would require getting up at the ass-crack of dawn to ride the 17 or 18 miles it would take to get there in time.

I opted for the ass-crack, figuring I'd be able to bail at several points if I was too beat to do the whole thing. I hadn't even looked at Marc's route; I figured my bail-out choices wouldn't be as good.

Jim has been starting at the Claremont School. The parking lot at Six Mile Run, where he led all of last year, has been overrun to overflowing. From my house to Six Mile is about 18 miles. I follow Canal Road from Rocky Hill. To get to Claremont, I can still take Canal, and turn up Butler, a gradual climb over less than ideal pavement. Or I can stay on Route 27 from Princeton, where the asphalt is smooth but I have to pass a handful of shoulder-free shopping centers. Last time I stayed on the canal. This time, concerned that I'd left home too late, I chose Route 27 from Kingston.

It was 8:00 a.m. Already I was sticky. My shins were coated with road dirt plastered onto the sunblock. Welcome to summer in central Jersey.

By the time I saw the "road closed 3.5 miles ahead" sign it was too late to turn back. I'd have to be a Hill Slug and wade through whatever if I were to get to the ride start by 8:30. Fortunately, the road wasn't really closed; there was one lane open, monitored by a temporary traffic light.

There was a long, uphill slog in there on the way to the intersection with Route 518. After that, with the wind at my back, I flew into the school with about five minutes to spare.

Dave H was there, recovering after having lead his own ride yesterday, and one of the Judys, whom I've met before, I think.

We coasted downhill on Suydam, passing several dozen cyclists coming up the hill in dribs and drabs, as if there were an organized ride going on. Every one we know about has been canceled.

As we rounded the corner onto Canal Road, I saw a porta-potty and stopped. Mask on, don't touch anything except the hand sanitizer.

On the bank, a fellow was fishing. He showed me the little crawfish he'd caught inadvertently. He was going for trout.

The canal is being dredged. Still.

We went into Veterans Park in Montgomery, and were on our way out when Marc's group pulled in. My knowledge of Montgomery and Hillsborough being somewhat mushy, I wanted to know how they'd gotten here without spending fifty miles to do it. We turned around so that we could find out, and ended up spending a good ten minutes chatting with them.

Being a free agent, as it were, I considered following Marc's group back home. "We're going up Coppermine," he said. Yeah, no, never mind.

We'd put a bit of distance between ourselves and the park when Jim mentioned that one of Marc's riders had said to him, "If you keep leading these slow rides, you're gonna turn into a slow, old man."

That got to him, and to me, too. There was no reason for saying that, other than to be a jerk. "Did you tell him that obviously one can be an asshole at any speed?"

"No," Jim said. He's too polite for that. I'm not.

As I've written here a zillion times before, being a faster rider does not make one a better person.

When we got to Hollow Road, I turned west to go home, riding into the hot wind towards Hopewell. I was thirsty, with almost enough water to get me home. I didn't want to stop to buy more. Instead I picked up the pace again, turning into my driveway at 11:20 a.m.

I was hungry and thirsty and filthy. I hosed myself and Kermit off before I went inside.

Later I checked the ride calendar to see what route Marc had taken. I'm glad I didn't go. Through no fault of his, he chose a bunch of roads that annoy me. I'd have been miserable and would probably have defected to Jim's ride had we met in Montgomery.