The End of Autumn

 

Hopewell Valley Sky

19 December 2020

With a weather forecast that threatened rain, the Insane Bike Posse didn't get themselves together in time to plan a ride, much less list one on the bike club calendar. I had registered for a Cranbury ride that promised to beat me up, but when Bob said he'd like some company in the Sourlands on Saturday, I went with him instead.

By Friday night, the forecast had changed to merely cloudy, with a high in the mid-50s. When I left the house to meet Bob at Hopewell Valley Elementary School, it was in the mid-40s and I was bundled up. 

A clammy haze hung over the valley. 

Bob had a punishing 30-mile route planned. "It's only two thousand feet," he said. Right. He's a much stronger climber than I am. I apologized in advance for inevitably holding him back.

He was a good sport, keeping pace with me the entire time. This was, I think, in part because we were talking for nearly the whole ride.

Our first climb was up Hopewell-Amwell Road, where, of course, I had to stop at the top for pictures of the red barn. This time, though, I trained my camera away from that to the fields and haze beyond. The row of evergreens are tall enough now to hide the house.

We took Cider Mill to the top of the next ridge.

We looped northwest through Reaville, then turned east.

One thing this pandemic has been good for is training me to go farther without eating, eating less, and stopping for only as long as it takes me to eat half a protein bar, which is what I did in a driveway on Wertsville Road. I hadn't climbed Long Hill in a few years; I didn't want to run out of steam halfway up.

We'd planned to stop for real at the end of the ride, at Boro Bean. When we got near, despite the temptation to inhale a muffin, I decided to keep on going. From there to home is only ten miles, and it was cold enough that, if I stopped, I'd never warm up again. Bob agreed it wasn't worth the torture.

I slogged up the hill to Mount Rose. On my way down Carter, the sun came out, and it finally felt like 50 degrees. 

Plain Jim led a ride the next day, destination Boro Bean. This time I took home a muffin.

Three days later we got our first snowfall of the season. It got cold, and it stayed cold. 

Saturday's ride time would be in the high 20s. Sunday would be slightly warmer, but cloudy, with a slight chance of rain or snow. We opted for Saturday at Tyler State Park near Newtown, PA. There, the asphalt trails would be plowed. 

Or so we thought.

Ricky now has a new gravel bike, a more economical version of Pete's Topstone. Bob and Tom both have mountain bikes less than a year old. And here I was, with old Grover, messing with the front wheel alignment so that it would spin freely. 

We had to detour around an unplowed trail to get to the next one that would lead us to the dam over the Neshaminy Creek.

Our first big climb was on the other side. To the left, the trail was covered in snow. The path was clear to the right, so that's the way we went.

At the top, the road to the covered bridge was still under snow. Only Tom wanted to go down to see it. I was relieved that I wasn't the only one content to stand in the freezing cold and wait.

I don't ever remember the park being this crowded. Maybe it's because everyone was shunted onto the cleared paths, and probably because the pandemic has taught everyone how to walk again. 

There were masked people walking shaggy dogs. There were parents with kids. There were patches of unplowed snow with an icy film on top. I almost went down once, when I misjudged one of them, but I caught myself by stepping into the snow on the side of the trail. After that, I clipped out every time I got near a dodgy spot. Once upon a time I'd have barreled through all of it, and if I skidded out, so be it. Now, I risk winding up in a hospital with surgeons poking around my lower back looking for a missing disc or two.

Tyler State Park is hilly. In places it's like a paved version of Clayton Park, winding around and over the Neshaminy Creek. At the top of one of the longest ascents, which ends at the park boundary, we found ourselves unable to make the turn back into the park because the trail wasn't cleared. We were in a residential area, and the street paralleling the unplowed path was a dead end. 

We continued on through the neighborhood, all the way to a busy, two-lane road. We took that to the next neighborhood road and followed it around in the general direction of the park.

At one point, we had to scooch over to make way for a fire engine Santa parade. 

We found ourselves in the parking lot of a country club, adjacent to, but detached from, the park. We followed a golf lane to a tennis center parking lot that was disturbingly full for a pandemic. That didn't get us anywhere either, so we went back to Swamp Road and turned into the main park entrance two tenths of a mile away.

When we got back to where we'd started, Bob begged off. The rest of us went around for another short loop on paths we knew would be clear. This time I stopped for a picture of a barn we'd seen before.

And when we crossed the dam for the third time, I didn't even bother to ride over the ice, which was melting and slippery now. I used the ice as an excuse to take more pictures, now that the light was different.

When we finished, we'd ridden all of thirteen miles. Ricky introduced me to his new bike. It's a one-by with disc brakes, a bit of give in the head tube to absorb shocks, and, best of all, bereft of Cannondale's usual billboard-style logos. It got me thinking that this might be a better bet than Jack H's old bike, but it would cost me at least twice as much.

On the other hand, I was in the front on almost every hill today. Grover might be old and clunky, but he's geared to climb. Maybe I don't need to ditch this one for the latest thang.