Autumn Miscellany

 

Herman Black Rd

26 November 2023

We've finally had some decent weekend weather recently. Here's a handful of snapshots from a few bike rides.

This is Canal Road, somewhere north of the Griggstown firehouse, I think. It's that wet spot on the northbound side. I was riding up to meet Plain Jim's group. It was the morning of the Princeton Half-Marathon, and the roads through town had been closed. I deliberately left home late enough to avoid the runners. I gave myself extra time in case I had to detour; I didn't have to. I got farther along on Canal Road than I'd thought I would, so I stopped for some pictures.

This Thanksgiving weekend, I got out three days in a row. On Friday, a small group of us rode one of Tom's Allentown to New Egypt routes. This photo was taken on Herman Black Road near the Sykesville Road intersection.

Leaving New Egypt, Tom's route avoids nearly all of Hawkin Road by winding through several miles of hilly real estate. I'd only gone this way once or twice before. I had no idea where we were or which way we were pointing until we came out on the northern side.

What made that ride extra fun was that, somehow, I'd disconnected my GPS from my Di2 shifting system. It's not a big deal. I don't need them to be talking to each other; it's merely convenient. I was befuddled until I got home and found that the sensor had somehow been renamed "Llllllllleeeeeemmmiiii." I'd seen that on my screen, figured I was picking up someone else's system, and disconnected it.  I blame the kitten, who was on my lap when I was downloading the weekend's routes. When I deleted the nonsense and entered "Janice," the GPS found my bike.

Yesterday was cold. We'd been planning a ride on the Lawrence-Hopewell Trail. Late Friday afternoon, I decided to list the ride. Both new takers ended up canceling, so I wound up with the same folks I'd have been with had I not made the event official. 

The only time I stopped for photos was on the Province Line Road bridge over the Stony Brook.

Ridewithgps says the climb out of the valley is an 8% grade. I think that's an underestimate. 

Today I went on Plain Jim's ride. There was rain in the forecast for early afternoon. While it wasn't as cold as yesterday, the clouds made things gloomy. I was out late the night before, so I drove to the ride instead of meeting the group somewhere on Canal Road. I'm glad I did, because the rain started half a mile from the end of the ride. In the summer, I don't mind getting wet on my way home. When it's this cold, though, I'd spend the rest of the day shivering. Since I had the car, I took the long way home, stopping at Boro Bean for a big ol' box of muffins. 

Sleep is Everything

 

Mount Airy

5 November 2023

When it comes to my being able to ride my bike without falling apart, sleep is everything. 

Duh.

Despite knowing this, more often than not, I enter the weekend sleep-deprived. Lately, I've made a point to break this habit. This means sometimes going to bed ridiculously early, so early that I sequester myself in a small, dark room, on a sofa bed, until Jack is ready to sleep (because reasons), at which point I stumble into the bedroom. It's not ideal. The sofa bed isn't as comfortable, and walking around an hour and a half into what should be sleep is disruptive, but it's better than 7 hours or less.

That, and a lot of extra PT for my back.

Saturday was the second rain-free Saturday in a row. I had to be home early, and so did Heddy, so I led a relatively short* ride with 7 other people to Sergeantsville.

Our destination was the Covered Bridge Market. This is a new cafe where the Bagel Barn used to be. There'd been some talk about it on the PFW's Facebook presence and I wanted to test their coffee game. 

The first thing we noticed was that there are two, count them, two, bike racks. They even have indented slats at the base to keep wheels from rolling. 

They redid the entrance well. I do miss the ceramic pig though,

Inside is spacious. The food selection is eclectic. They focus on coffee. Heddy's measure is whether or not a place can make a good cortado. These folks did well. There's a smattering of carbs, some lunchmeats, and a bit of prepared food off to the sides. 

The group liked the market. I've always felt like a traitor when I've gone past the Sergeantsville General Store. Not so much lately. When Sun retired and the new owners took over, there were some repairs to the place. Recently, though, it's fallen back into decrepitude. Sun made the decay charming. These new folks, not so much, 

The Covered Bridge Market has only been open since Labor Day. It might take a while for them to find their footing. It strikes me as the sort of place one would see in Lambertville or New Hope, not up in the hills of red-hat Hunterdon County. I wish them well. 

Our way back was more direct. I stopped for the cows at the top of Mount Airy. One rider, new to the group, wasn't aware of our (well, my) tradition and continued along the road without us.

I took the camera out again as we collected ourselves at the corner of Pennington-Harbourton and Bear Tavern.

After the ride, Heddy showed us the rough ideas for the 2023 ride leader jerseys. I don't normally take pictures of people, but the combination of Jim's dapper hat and his day-glow orange jacket over green suspenders was worth the shot.

Too bad you can't see the suspenders.

I don't normally do two hilly rides in a row either. In anticipation of having to do four or five hilly days in a row in nine months (I know, I know), I signed up for Dave S's Sunday Sourlands ride to Lambertville. It was listed as a C+ ride with the same elevation gain as mine over a few more miles. 

We got an extra hour to sleep last night. That helped. The ride was designed to be relaxed, and it was. The group was so large that some of us split off and went to Luminary Coffee while the rest crammed themselves into Lambertville Trading Company. It came down to which one did the better cortado (I don't know the answer). 

On our way back, I was at the front and turned onto Alexauken Creek Road from Route 29. I could swear that's what my GPS told me to do. A few hundred yards in, though, my GPS was telling me I was off course. Our Jeff was with me. The rest were close behind us. Dave S pulled up. He had planned the route when Alexauken Creek Road was still closed. We were supposed to have turned on Lambertville Headquarters. 

I apologized for leading the group astray. "I like this road better though," I added. "So do I," he said. We picked up the planned route at the other end, cutting off a couple of miles that nobody seemed to miss. 

Our last climb was the most difficult, up Rileyville from Saddle Shop. Before we started, I told Bolong, "The good thing about this hill is that you can see what's coming. The bad thing is that you can see what's coming." I think starting from Saddle Shop rather than Wertsville eases the agony a little; even though Rileyville is flat at Saddle Shop, there's enough of an ascent before it to take some oomph out of your legs. Anyway, we all made it up. 

There was that little bump at the top of Lindbergh, but we'll let that slide. The rest was downhill.

My legs are less sore now than they were after yesterday's ride. Sleep is everything.

(*Anything under 40 miles is short. This one came in at 39, although, with my ride in from home, I stretched it to 46 miles, which counts as a real ride.)

Between Rainy Saturdays, Century #68

 

                               Moxie Shenanigans, 3/24/11-10/11/23                                                                              Etra Lake 10/18/23

3 November 2023

I realize it's been over a month since I've written a blog post. 

A lot has been going on, plus, I'd been spending so much time at my computer at work that I wasn't interested in sitting in front of it at home too.

I: Rainy 77

Let's rewind to September 30, the last time it was not supposed to rain on a Saturday. I had eyes on Mike V's Sprague Memorial Century scheduled for the following week. With that in mind, I led a metric out of Mercer County Park and added to it by riding in from home. After so many rainy weekends, I'd lost any distance training I'd had.

The forecast was right on that line between dry and wet. Only Plain Jim, Rickety, and Pete G were willing to join me. We rode in and out of something more than fog and less than mist. A few miles before our 20-mile rest stop at Roy's, we rode through actual rain.

At the break, I asked them if they wanted to go on or go home. "Let's keep going," Rickety said. Jim and I agreed. Pete said, "Majority rules."

I got a photo of the sky to the west. We were headed south.

Only later, when I took a longer look at this photo, did I realize how wet the roads were.

We got drizzled on again before we reached New Egypt. We were dry by the time we stopped at Charleston Coffee.

Our route back was more direct, but uphill into the wind on Province Line Road. That's when we got rained on for real. 

Naturally, the sun came out as soon as I coasted into my driveway. I gave Janice a bath and cleaned her chain. I was grimy, but at least I got some training in before the century...

...which ended up being canceled due to rain...

II: RIP Moxie

...which ended up being a good thing, because Moxie needed my attention. I'd noticed a change in his behavior. He was around us a lot more, and licking more surfaces than was usual for him. In May, he'd lost his half-brother. We expected things to change between him and Glooskap, and sometimes it can take months for that to settle into a pattern. I was a little worried, though, because Burnaby had died suddenly at 13 and Moxie was now 12.5. Glooskap was scheduled for a checkup, so I added Moxie to the appointment.

The day before the rainy New Egypt ride, Moxie had a bout of messy diarrhea and then a forceful vomit. I packed him up and took him to the vet. He had a fever. The vet felt a thickening in his digestive tract, which could have been as benign as an infection with inflammation, or as malignant as lymphoma. We scheduled an ultrasound for the next available day, the following Tuesday. They hydrated him, took blood and urine, and sent me home with antibiotics and an appetite stimulant.

He ate voraciously when we got home, and seemed to be more himself. That lasted for a few hours. By the next morning, the day I would have been on the century ride, I was force-feeding him, trying to stimulate his appetite. In the afternoon, we were back at the vet for more hydration. He wasn't in dire enough condition to warrant hospitalization, so I took him home again. The hydration helped. He ate a little, and even got a bit goofy when I spent a while petting him. 

But when I got back from the PFW Fall Picnic, where I led a ride, Moxie had again stationed himself in the one carpeted room we have left, moving from one spot to another, watching the world and not eating. I took him back to the vet on Monday morning. The supportive care I was administering at home wasn't enough. They admitted him for an overnight stay, since his ultrasound was scheduled for the next day anyway.

In the hospital, he improved. He ate voraciously. "Clinically, he's doing great," the vet said. They gave him a dose of gabapentin for his utrasound, which would calm him down while they scanned his digestive tract.

They found two obstructive masses and a thickening in between. It was advanced lymphoma. The only course of action was to try steroids, which work well in cats with less advanced lymphoma than his to reduce inflammation and hold tumor growth at bay. 

I took him home. He seemed more like himself than he had been in days. I went off to glassblowing class. Jack texted me pictures of Moxie eating, hanging out on the washing machine (one of his favorite spots), and being investigated by Glooskap.

When I got home at 10:00, Moxie was still on the sofa. I brought down his meds. He didn't resist at all when I opened his mouth to pill him. All the energy had gone out of him. The gabapentin had worn off.

At midnight, as I was dropping something off in the kitchen, he wandered in. "Well hello!" I said. "Can I interest you in some food?" He walked over to it, sniffed it, and walked out, back downstairs to his carpeted corner. His eyes looked sunken.

The next morning, he was still in his corner, lethargic, with brown discharge under his nose, last night's food regurgitated through his nostrils. I sat on the stairs in my pajamas and called the vet. "I can't do this to him anymore." At 8:40 a.m., we euthanized Moxie Shenanigans Bananigans Benanabrain Mox MoxMox MoxOx MoxOxOx Moxford Moxpox Moxinpox Moxwox Moxinfay Lord Mox Moxington Moxo Pinknose Nosepink FirstUpTheStairs Fourthkitten.

III: Hello, Clementine

Glooskap needed a friend. On Saturday afternoon, we drove up to SAVE to enquire about adopting a young cat or bonded pair. I filled out an application. Visits are by appointment only; without a specific animal in mind, we were told to check the website. The receptionist said she'd call us if they found a match.

We hadn't been home more than a few hours when SAVE called back. Abbot and Costello, a pair of black and white brothers, six months old, were available. We could visit them the next day at 3:00. I checked their bios. They were described as skittish. I wasn't sure if Glooskap would bond with a pair of scaredy-cats. After all, Mojo and Moxie were that way too. 

I wondered what Glooskap would think if we brought these two home. Would he think he was seeing double? I looked at their profiles some more, and by the end of the evening I had picked out their names: Reginald and Bertie. As in Jeeves and Wooster. How original. 

When we met them the next day, they were more interested in playing on the floor than they were in meeting us. Abbot interacted a little. Costello kept his distance. 

I heard a little meow from another cage. Inside was a golden-eyed calico kitten crying for attention. "What's her backstory?" I asked. The volunteers weren't sure. "Can we see her?"

They handed her to me, and she melted into my arms, purring. Her shelter name was Acorn. "We'll take her," I said. 

I named her Clementine because she has little oranges. 

The next day had already been scheduled for Glooskap's annual checkup. We added Clementine to the visit. She and Glooskap met between bars of their carrying cages. 

She lived in the bathroom for a handful of days.

Next, we put her in Jack's office with Glooskap. He was wary at first, then curious. Clementine, used to being around strange cats, explored the room, climbed and swatted at things, and sniffed Glooskap as just another object in the room. Glooskap inched closer. He put himself at the top of the cat tower, where he could maintain dominance.

A few days later we gave her run of the house. 

Clementine is the eigth kitten Jack and I have brought in. She's the first directly from a shelter, the rest having been home fosters. We don't know how long she was in a cage, but when we let her loose, she zoomed around the house at such speed I was worried I wouldn't be able to catch her for her next vet visit in two weeks. 

When she finally figured out the place, she settled into a pattern of following Glooskap everywhere. She'd charge at him, just another toy, and he'd give her a tentative swat back. By the end of the week, they were following each other around. It didn't take much time after that for the two of them to play together, wrestling and tumbling across the floor for the better part of an hour at at a time. If I wasn't sure where Clementine was, all I needed to do was see which way Glooskap was pointing.

In her quieter moments, Clementine is definitely a lap cat. She enjoys the bed, what with so many toes to pounce on. For the past couple of nights, she's taken to sleeping in the crook of my neck, between me and Jack.

If Glooskap is tired enough, he'll even cuddle with Clementine.

There are times, though, that she gets on his last nerve. She doesn't care. He deserves it, for all the times he badgered Moxie after Mojo died.

IV: Getting Ready for the Century

I was way behind in distance training. I hadn't done anything more than 40-something miles in a month.

The day we brought Clementine home, I rode into Plain Jim's Hopewell ride and took the long way home with Pete and Jack H. It still didn't even reach 40 miles, and, to make things worse, I got another flat 3 miles from home. I spent what felt like half an hour fixing it because it took so long to get the tire on and off the rim. When I got home, I asked Plain Jim for advice on a portable lever that works with tough bead-rim combinations. He recommended the Tire Monkey. Fortunately, I haven't had the chance to test it out.

One Saturday later, it rained.

When Plain Jim listed a Sunday ride to Montgomery the next day, I decided to ride in from home and leave the group after the rest stop so that I could head to Hopewell for muffins and somehow stretch his 37-mile ride into a metric. Needing two pockets for muffins, I didn't bring my camera.

Luis was good enough to send me a couple of photos he took from the corner of East Mountain and the Great Road.

I squeezed 62 miles out of that ride. I felt a little better about the upcoming Sprague Memorial Century, although by this point I assumed it would rain again.

As October 28 approached, the forecast for good weather held. 

I decided to burn up a vacation day on October 25. I have so many now that soon I won't accrue any more. Tom led a ride from Allentown that would cover some of the same roads as the century would. Pete and Rickety were there too. 

Pete chided me about not having the good life of a retired person.

During a detour into Etra Lake Park for a bathroom break, I got some photos of the lake. I think this day was our peak color day.

Somewhere near Rickety's stomping grounds is a farm, where "he grows corn so nobody can take pictures of his sunflowers." 

I found a break in the corn and, out of spite, snapped some photos of the pumpkin patch.

On our way back, we went through the Assunpink Wildlife Management Area.

Next to the Reed Recreation Area parking lot, a tree in full color popped out from behind a field of corn,

V: Finally, the Century

If I hadn't been determined to get my minimum of two 100-mile rides in each year, I wouldn't have signed up for this one. I've done my share of October centuries. The wind is always up, and the early morning starts are chilly. 

Originally scheduled for September, then rained out twice, it looked like this one would actually happen. It would start at 8:00 from Cranbury, half an hour's drive from home. I planned to try to go to sleep at 10:00, no easy feat considering that my bedtimes have been creeping later and later this year. I was brushing my teeth around 9:30 when a text came through from Mike V. Due to a family emergency, he couldn't lead and was looking for volunteers.

I volunteered.

I didn't want to fire up my computer so close to bedtime. I'd looked at the route to get a general sense of where the hills and rest stops were, but a fair chunk of the course was on roads unfamiliar to me.

I drove to Cranbury with the sun low in the sky. In the parking lot, I tasked Luis with taking the faster riders in our group. "We'll stick together for the first half," he said.

Thirteen-ish miles in, he got a flat. I took a picture of a farm field (on Iron Ore or Daum) while we waited. Someone timed him at 8.5 minutes. He said that was a record.

We had a gentle tailwind out of the west. At our first rest stop in Jackson, we picked up Tom, who planned to ride with us to Avon By the Sea.

I'm glad he was with us, because I missed the turn onto the Edgar Felix bike trail off of Atlantic Avenue. Sorry, not sorry. I've been on it before, also on a century. I remember it as bumpy. Tom got us back onto the trail farther down, where, lucky for us, there was fresh blacktop for part of it. I think we missed about half of the trail. It was crowded, which is a good thing. 

We reached the coast in Manasquan and rode north through Spring Lake to Belmar. Our planned stop, at not quite 50 miles, was the same spot I use, 16th Avenue. It never occurred to me that chains like Dunkin and Playa Bowls would close for the season, but closed they were. All that remained was a hollowed-out pizza place. Even the trailer of bathrooms on the boardwalk was gone for the winter. In its place were two porta-potties with no toilet paper. There was one bathroom in the pizza joint. It had no light bulb, and, by the time I took my turn, no toilet paper either. A sympathetic cook let us use the employee bathroom instead. 

Janice in Belmar

I took some pictures of the beach. There were so many people there that I had to zoom in to crop them out.

I found an empty stretch, cordoned off by fences.

By this point, we'd already spent far too much time stopped. I motioned to the group that we needed to hit the road. Not everyone had made their entire way through their gargantuan pizza slices, but they were far enough along to pack up. 

We were missing Henry, Martin, and Mark. "Henry's body surfing," someone said. Mark was on the boardwalk, guarding Henry's clothes. Martin was on the shore, taking video of Henry's plunge.

Nope. Not waiting. I told Mark, "You guys signed up with Luis. My group is leaving."

We made it up to the Shark River inlet drawbridge before we had to stop again. It was a solid five minutes at least before the deck returned to horizontal, by which time Luis' group had caught up to us.

People watched the inlet while they waited.

In a crosswind, we tried to hold a steady pace while avoiding pedestrians and cars that were backing out of parking spaces.

Tom led us off-course to the convention center at Asbury Park for a group photo. I put Janice in the picture but kept myself out of it.

Tom left us there, directing us around the building. We eventually got back on course, on a busy road a block from the water. 

For much of our trek up the coast, we hadn't been able to see the water. The beach is often behind high sea walls. It was sometimes easier to see the shore when we were farther from it, when gaps between the gargantuan mansions of Deal let us look to the east.

If I'd ever been through Deal, I have no memory of it. I was gawping at the mansions, pointing out to Mark the more outrageous ones (think Borg starship, but with glass-lined balconies). "Hurricane food," I said. It was weird to see such opulence with basketball hoops in the driveways. 

We turned towards the shore at Long Branch, where the view of the beach was unobstructed. Then we were stuck in traffic again as cars backed up for several blocks where the bridge over the Shrewsbury River took us off of the coastline. 

I'd pulled the group up the coast. Now I was pulling them through Rumson. I got tired. I asked Mark and Len to take a pull. They got in front of me and dropped me right away. So there I was, pulling again.

We were relieved to find the Wawa in Red Bank, where we could get real food and use the bathrooms. Jason doused himself with what was left of a gallon of water. It was 80 degrees now.

The rolling hills started near Holmdel. I was in the middle of my 70-mile wall and started to fall towards the back of the pack. When we regrouped at a light, I was finished being polite.

"I pulled y'all up the coast and halfway through Rumson, and now that I'm tired you drop me. Thanks."

Heddy added, "Dial it down. Let's all finish together." Three cheers for Heddy!

At one point I could feel cramps coming on. I told the group they could go ahead, but they waited for me as I lay on my stomach in the grass at an intersection, stretching my back and digging through my bag for salt tablets. I found them quickly. It took as long for us to find a break in the traffic for the left turn as it had taken me to find and swallow the pills, but I was glad for the extra time. 

At another light, a few of the faster folks left the rest of us behind.

Ten miles from the end, Luis got another flat. I took the opportunity to stretch my back in the grass again. Rama took his shoes off and lay on his back. Kamaljit sat down next to him. Heddy and Martin checked their phones and took photos of Luis and company fixing his flat. This repair went faster that the first one. 

We made it back to the parking lot around 5:00, a full hour and a half after the stated return time in the ride description. 

So that was lifetime century number 68, during which I broke 2000 miles on Janice. My back, while still sore at times, fared much better than it had in July. I felt better all around this time. I came in at the pace I figured we'd reach, given the hills, wind, and meandering along the shore. The elevation gain for this century was about the same as my century route to the shore. There's no escaping the sand dunes of the Outer Coastal Plain when one rides to the beach from the western edge of the Inner Coastal Plain.

Now that my season's second century is out of the way, I can relax for a while. It won't be long before I have to start training for Nova Scotia, a mere nine months away.

VI: Another Thing

The day that Moxie was admitted to the hospital, I found out that our glassblowing classes are being canceled for the spring semester. We're apparently the most expensive class on campus. The Dean's office was not prepared for the outcry from 18 greedy glassblowers. With nearly 30 years of activism under my belt, I've became the spokesperson for the class. We don't know the full story. The bean counters have not heard the last from us. This will be the subject of a Hot Mess post, whenever it resolves, if it ever does.