Cranbury in the Hills

 

Sky over Sandbrook Road

5 July 2021

It was one of those days where my head was into it and my legs weren't. 

I half expected it; I'd done a weight workout the day before, and I'm never at 100% even a week after a century. The ride was Tom's, an official one, and it was full of good climbers and a couple of pace-pushers. 

Hoping my legs simply needed time to loosen up, I took the first miles easy, hanging in the back. As the group got more and more spread out, I found myself by myself, most of the others in front of me, one, or maybe two behind, all out of sight. 

Tom had given everyone the route, and this is what happens when that happens. It was like Cranbury in the hills: Drop the leader.

We trickled into Frenchtown. As I slid Miss Piggy's back wheel into one of the last remaining open slats in the bike rack at the Bridge Cafe, I said, "If this were my ride, I'd'a Spragued all y'all!"

I was hoping that the break would be enough to make my legs stop hurting. We set off down Route 29, which helped. When we turned onto Warsaw, I dropped into my granny gear and took my time. I hadn't been up here in years, probably before 2010, before Miss Piggy. 

We turned off of Warsaw onto Hill, one of the few roads left in Hunterdon County that I'd never been on. We regrouped at the top, in the shade.

I arched my back to stretch it, looking up into the tree overhead.

"Hey, Luis! It's a spider, in real time."

I pointed up to the space between dead branches, where an orb web caught the light. Behind it was a speck of a spider.

He couldn't see where I was looking. It takes practice to see spiders between branches. 

He asked, "Can you get a picture of it?"

"I doubt it, but I can try."

Without my prescription glasses, it wasn't easy to focus from the camera's viewfinder on something that small. I aimed the camera upwards as Tom rolled in and got the group moving again. Had there been time for a dozen shots, I might have captured something. As it was, I got a spider-shaped blur that's only discernable after some zooming and color adjustments. It'll have to do.

See that spot under the leaf in the center there? That's a spider.

And this is what I saw when I took the picture:

I was still lagging, but we were mostly finished with the hills. Now my back hurt. 

As we got to the end of Covered Bridge, Albert said to me, "At least we didn't get rained on today."

"We're not done yet," I said.

On the last mile, I finally stopped for pictures before descending Sandbrook into Lambertville.

As I drove out of the city, there were raindrops on my windshield.

Today, Tom led another ride, this one off-the-books, the final ride from his house before he moves to a gated community in the wilds of Jackson Township.

I prepped Beaker for the ride, the cushy antidote to Miss Piggy's harshness (I guess the aluminum seat post helped not at all yesterday). 

With not quite enough sleep, I left the house on Beaker at 7:35 and somehow had the legs to get to Tom's house early. His route was mostly flat except for the southbound climb up Province Line near Chesterfield. Compared to yesterday, I took what few hills we had well. 

We stopped at the general store in Chesterfield. I hadn't been there in over a decade either. I took a picture of the sky for continuity.

I started to get a little tired as we made our way back north, but that passed. When we got near Mercer County Park, I headed for home. I thought of detouring to the parking lot where the Free Wheelers were staging the All-Paces rides, but, lost in thought, I missed the turnoff and kept on going.

I was wondering if the saddle adjustment on Miss Piggy was off a little since the temporary seat post went on, so I measured it when I got home. Everything is as it's supposed to be. It was me. Better luck next week.