Hill Slug Chronicles: Hook Mountain Eagle

Hurricane Lee wave on Sandy Hook Shore

24 September 2023

I can tell I'm behind in blogging when I have to clarify which Atlantic storm I'm writing about. While we hunker down as Ophelia spits on New Jersey, I'm writing about the waves Lee sent to our shores while visiting New England. Which was a weekend ago.

I: Sandy Hook

Tom listed a ride from Freehold to Sandy Hook. We do this route at least once a year. The summer heat was, for now, gone. We started the ride with arm warmers on.

We were a small group: Tom, Rickety, me, Xindi, and Craig.

On our way to the shore, we wound through the old Bell Labs site in Holmdel. I always take a photo of the water tower. It's supposed to look like some piece of electronics I've forgotten the name of, but to me it looks like the Martians from War of the Worlds. This water tower would make much more sense in West Windsor.

We had some hard rollers and small hills to climb. "I'm just not feeling it today," I said. It all comes down to sleep. I don't get enough when we start early or I have to drive a bit to the beginning of a ride. Try as I might, I never get to bed on time.

In Middletown, we cut through the Circus Wines parking lot, past the sign that has an entry in both Wikipedia and Weird NJ.

After the hard rollers and traffic that got us near the coast, the slow, fun, scenic part of the ride began.

I'm pretty sure we had a rest stop, but for the life of me I can't remember where.

We rode through Highlands with the bay in sight, then got onto the Henry Hudson Bike Trail. The best photo is the one I didn't take, of water, sand, and Phragmites, as we entered the trail. To make up for it, I stopped a few times farther south.

The trail ended outside of Waterwitch.

We crossed over the Navesink River on the Highlands Reach bridge.

Every time I see those houses on this narrow spit of land, I wonder how and why they live there without the constant fear of their homes being swept out to sea. I mean, I love an ocean view as much as the next sucker, but there's a limit.

There was a lot of traffic on the Sandy Hook peninsula. We rode on the bike path instead. A strong crosswind made things interesting. On the bay side, we could see a dozen windsurfers' kites and decided we'd get a closer look on the way back down the hook. For now, we stopped at one of the parking lots and climbed the stairs to the beach.

All the gulls on the sand were pointing themselves into the wind.

In the distance was a container ship, a gray muddle on the horizon.

With New York across the bay, waves from Hurricane Lee, which was pummeling New England at the time, crashed on the shores of Sandy Hook. There aren't usually waves here.

I took another picture of the gulls.

And one of our bikes. That's Janice on the left.

Rickety brought Barney. He thought I'd be on Kermit, but until Kermit and Beaker get their stems raised, Janice is doing all my long hauls.

The sky was clouding up.

We went a little farther north, but Tom didn't want to have to fight the wind all the way back from the tip of the peninsula. We stopped about halfway, before the path went into the low woods.

By the time we got to where the windsurfers were, they'd all stopped and were resting on the beach, their sails in the sand. There wasn't a good place to stop even to get a picture of that.

On the way back, after leaving the park, Tom stopped along the road where we could see surfers riding the waves.

I don't know what this little guy is on the fence post, but I like it.

We continued along on the sidewalk, against the rock barrier between the beach and the road. At regular intervals were stairways that went up and over the rocks. The majority of them were marked as private.

Everyone was waiting for me at the end of the path. Across the street was an empty parking lot facing the Shrewsbury River. Tom pointed out that there was a gull on every post.

We crossed the drawbridge and rode through Rumson and Red Bank. The wind was kicking up now, but it was more of a crosswind, which wasn't so bad.

Our second rest stop was at a pizza place in Little Silver. There's really not much that's bike-friendly there. It's in the right place at the right time though. On our last visit here, I remember buying some garlic knots. I did that again and immediately remembered why I ought not to have done it again.

Garlic burps for the rest of the ride home.

We didn't have much farther to go. I got a second wind in Colts Neck and got a little ahead of the group. It was a busy road and I wanted to get off of it. At the turn onto Laird, I didn't see them behind me. There was no other place they could have turned in order to Sprague me, but if they did, I deserved it.

I waited at the intersection.

After a few minutes, I called Rickety but it went to voicemail. I had just left a message when Tom called. Xindi had a flat and they were fixing it. "I'll be down by the apple jack place, taking pictures," I said.

Except that the sign that read "Laird's Apple Jack" is no longer there. I couldn't tell if the place was vacant or being used for something else.

I crossed the street to take pictures of the apple trees through the wire fence.

There were a lot of cars leaving the orchard.

I took a few pictures of a lichen-encrusted fence.

Then I backtracked towards the intersection in time to see everyone coming down the hill.

The rest of the ride was uneventful. We stood around in the parking lot for a bit, discussing riding plans for the next few weeks. Tom's other bike friends, his new ones, his new family, were planning a ride from Liberty State Park to the George Washington Bridge. When he said what time he'd have to leave home, I said, "Too early."

II: The Sourland Limbo: How Slow Can You Go?

"Too early" was why I didn't expect to join Blob and Pete on a very hilly training ride in the Sourlands the following day. 55 miles of wind and rollers aside, they wanted to start at 8:00 a.m.

I should back up a bit here and explain. Blob was about to leave for a biking trip in Bhutan and wanted something on the order of 30 miles with 3000 feet of elevation gain. Mid-week, I sat down for about ten minutes and came up with a ridiculous route for him that started in Hopewell. It would be 37 miles with 3100 feet of elevation, riding up and down roads on the east side of the Sourland Mountain five times. I picked the worst roads and didn't include a rest stop. I did not expect him to write back, "Looks good."

I also did not expect to be there and told him as much. But I felt better than expected when I came back from Sandy Hook. "If you start at 9:00 I'll join you. I need sleep." He checked with Pete and agreed to the later start.

Not wanting to add 20 miles to the stupid route, I drove to Hopewell. Pete and Blob had each ridden in from home. I didn't think I'd last the whole route, but with five ascents, I could bail at any time.

Blob was on his mountain bike, a one-by geared so low he couldn't have gone fast even if he'd wanted to. Pete is so strong he couldn't have gone slowly even if he'd wanted to. And I was in the middle, on Janice, the only rule for myself being that I wasn't allowed to use my lowest gear (36-36). We stopped at the top of each ascent to collect our wits and slow our heart rates.

We started with Spring Hill, which I'd somehow never climbed before. We continued on Long Hill to Hollow and cut across Grandview to Route 601. Next was Dutchtown-Zion, which Tom describes in his Road Biking NJ book as a "rude" hill. It lulls a rider into a false sense of securtity then throws a wall at the end. We went east on Long Hill down to Wertsville, then climbed back up the mountain on Zion, a hill that never seems to end until it does. We were 20 miles in, so we stopped to stuff energy bars into our mouths.

We went left on Long Hill and walked across the nearly-finished bridge at Hollow (as I write this, the road is open again). Then we went down Hopewell-Amwell and up that bastard of an incline where it meets Province Line. We took Province Line to 518, where we could have called it a day. But we'd done 3 of the 5 ascents already, so up Hopewell-Amwell we went, all the way to the short, sharp shocks at the top of Lindbergh and down the other side.

One more climb to go: Rileyville from the north, all the way up. I'd done this climb definitely once, maybe twice. This hill called for a little Taj Mahal. At the top, Pete announced that he was headed home and disappeared off the front. I coasted into Hopewell, straight across Broad Street to where my car was parked.

Blob went on into Boro Bean to get a meal before riding home. I put on a t-shirt and met him there to get my well-deserved stash of muffins (I still have one and a half left a week later; I know how to ration these things). I hung out there while Blob finished his lunch. I left with the command that he send us a middle finger photo from Bhutan.

He didn't disappoint.

24 September 2023

III: Esteemed Order of the Double Eagle

All of that Sourland nonsense put me in good stead for the ride that Our Jeff had been promoting (threatening?) all summer: his end-of-season Double Eagle ride.

I've been up Eagle Road, or Jericho Mountain, a few times, but I couldn't tell you which way I went. Apparently, there's a hard way and an even harder way. The first time I climbed that hill it was because our ride leader was lost. It was also my second week with Kermit, back in 2000, and the lowest gear I had was 39-27. I remember having to stand, gasping for air.

I'm pretty sure now that I'd gone up the harder way, because Our Jeff took us up the hard way last week and it didn't seem as bad.

Now, with the Double Eagle, we'd go over the mountain twice in 15 miles. Having done the Sourland Limbo three days before, I felt ready.

I cued up Taj Majal again for the first ascent (the harder way) and got 'er done. The second climb was the culmination of all the shit I'd put myself through this summer. It was me shoving anxiety aside. Finally.

Our Jeff corraled us for a selfie after the second climb. Here we were, he said, the Esteemed Order of the Double Eagle, and I was the newest initiate.