Fog

 

Burd Road, Pennington, NJ

11 December 2021

I printed the sign-in sheet four times: twice on Friday afternoon, once on Friday evening, and again early Saturday morning. People kept signing up.

The weather forecast was bouncing around all week, between rain and no rain, wind and lots of wind. It settled on no rain and some wind. That was enough to get 11 people on board. 

We woke up to dense fog and wet pavement. One person dropped out. It was cooler than predicted, and by the time I engulfed myself in more warm clothing, I was running late. I burst out of the fog into the Twin Pines parking lot at 9:05. Immediately, two riders told me they were fog-skittish and wouldn't be joining us.

That left 8 riders, a much more manageable number. 

I repeated the Route I Stole From Dave, which avoids nearly all of the usual hills. It's perfect for unpredictable weather because it never gets too far from the starting point. 

Depending on where we were, it was almost too warm for what we had on, or it was just right. There was thick fog sometimes, like on Burd Road heading towards Woosamonsa:

We rode in and out of fog between Pennington and Bear Tavern Road. Once we reached Hopewell, we could almost see where we were going. Once in a while I felt some rain for a drop or two. 

A strange noise was emanating irregularly from either my front wheel or a pulley; I couldn't tell which. It was a rapid swish-grind, but I couldn't see anything in the way of brakes nor the chain. It dawned on me that it might have been five years since I've changed the brake pads. There was so much crud on the damp roads that my brakes weren't working very well anyway. 

Our break was at the Blawenburg Bistro. As we dismounted, we felt the beginning of the high winds that were set to swoop in for real around 1:00 p.m. 

One of our riders left us there, to go to his favorite bike shop up the road. 

My GPS burped on our way out, and I mistakenly thought I'd gone the wrong way. I hadn't, but by turning around and continuing north on Route 601, I managed to cut out about three miles. I took this to be a good thing, because we'd be into the wind for much of the trip back home. 

What I didn't cut out was Province Line southbound from Route 518 to Cherry Valley. Now we were uphill into the wind. This didn't seem to bother anyone.

Another rider peeled off near his house. 

Of the original 11, we were down to 6. Plain Jim would call this an "attrition ride" and mock me for it. 

After the usual post-ride chitchat, I made it home by 12:30 p.m. 

I hosed Miss Piggy down. If I were to bring her to Michael at Wheelfine, I'd have to make her presentable. I gave him a call and scheduled a tune-up for next weekend. Miss Piggy can use some TLC and OCD. Michael suggested a few things I could do for the brakes meanwhile.

While the pads look worn (there's a groove in my rim, too), I found the real problem: a little maple leaf wedged up in the fork, behind the breaks, invisible until I got down to eye level with the wheel.