Cold and Local

 

Bear Tavern Road

24 January 2021

Tom reminded me today that it's been a while since I put up a biking blog post. "Yeah," I said. "Nobody read the last one. I guess I like spiders more than most people."

So here I am, digging into the camera's memory card and realizing I've got pictures going back to December 27.

That would have been a Sunday. It was cold, and none of the Slugs wanted to venture far from home. Pete filled the hole by inviting anyone who wanted to tag along on a ride with him and his daughter, Sarah. He planned a short route that would pass through Pennington at around 20 miles, then do another loop of 10 or so. I rode up to meet them in Pennington and planned to cut out the last loop. I figured my feet wouldn't last, and they didn't. I also wanted to save my legs for the Team Social Security ride the next day.

We passed the cows on Van Kirk Road.

That's the only time I stopped for pictures. I saved the route, though, because it'll be good for cold days.

Little Joe led the TSS ride out of Etra Park. It was a little warmer, but he kept the route short, without a real rest stop.  Someone had a flat or something (I don't remember now) when we were on Route 526. We could see Great Adventure's taller rides in the murky distance.

There was rain on the way.

Although the university was closed for the week, some sort of reward for working through the Covid mess, I had to go into the lab on December 29. The weather was bad anyway.

I was back on the road with Pete and Sarah again the next day. It was still cold, but a little warmer, and his route was a little longer. Tom opted for a towpath ride from Washington Crossing.

Again I rode up from home. When I crossed Route 206 onto Lawrenceville-Pennington Road, I shifted down on the front chain ring, and the chain lodged itself between the small gear and the frame. I had to turn Miss Piggy upside-down and use a certain amount of force to pull the chain free, sending the protective piece of plastic that had been glued to the frame tumbling to the grass. This sort of thing happened to the old Miss Piggy with unnerving regularity. In the five years I've had this frame, this was the first.

I got back on and tried to make up for lost time. The chain was jumping cogs in the back every time the quick-link rolled through the front derailleur. When I got to The Pig, I checked each link carefully, and made sure the quick link was intact. Nothing seemed out of sorts. 

"That would drive me crazy," Pete said as my chain bounced between two cogs. He suggested I might want to head home.

"Nah," I said, and followed him west on Federal City. 

I soft-pedaled when we got to the first hill, the slow grind from Jacob's Creek up Bear Tavern Road. I stopped halfway to get a picture of the sky.

He led us through some neighborhoods I'd never been in, between Bear Tavern and Route 29. There were big houses and little hills, and I noticed that the more climbing we did, the more my chain stayed where I put it. The quick link must have been a little loose; climbing must have put enough force on it to snap it back into place. Now, all I was hearing was a little scrape along the front derailleur. I could live with that for the rest of the ride.

We popped out of a neighborhood onto Route 29 somewhere close to Washington Crossing. It wasn't exactly terrifying, but I wouldn't want to repeat the experience.

Sarah was the one who noticed Tom's car as we rode past the Washington Crossing parking lot. We doubled back. When there's a chance for a middle finger, we take it. For good measure, I propped Miss Piggy up in the bed of his truck. 

I tried to take Miss Piggy up to Hart's for a closer inspection, but they were closed for the holidays. From the parking lot, I called Michael at WheelFine. "Would it be OK for me to bring my carbon Cannondale up for you to look at?" I asked, shame in my voice. "Sure!" he said.

He took the chain off and laid it out on the table, going over each link. "Sram is crap," he said. Halfway down the chain, one of the links looked a little scraped up. Otherwise, everything was fine, if not a little stretched for only 1500 miles. 

But it didn't end there, because at WheelFine, it never does. We decided to put a new chain on, minus one link, to make things run more smoothly. He took the drivetrain apart and cleaned it. He took the pedals off and checked the bottom bracket. He glued the plastic frame-protector back on. He ran through the gears, making sure everything was shifting smoothly.

With Miss Piggy, that's always a challenge. She's got a triple up front and mountain bike gearing in back. That's a lot of chain movement. At Hart's, Ross and Oscar could get her dialed in very close to perfectly. 

The contest was on. I took Miss Piggy out for a solo ride. Michael got it just about right. We'll call it a draw.