A Bit Much for January

 

Water Droplets on a Wire Fence

Moores Mill - Mt Rose Rd

28 January 2024

Now that I'm officially sacrificing the next 13 Sundays to glassblowing, I feel the need to get the most I can out of the next 13 Saturday bike rides. 

In the past few weeks, we've had rain, then snow, then more rain. Yesterday was a break between storms, so I plotted an evil route from Pennington to Sergeantsville. Sending folks up Mine Road when we haven't had a road-worthy weekend in so long is a cruel thing to do. That said, I had 10 people signed up by Friday night. Nine of those folks were regular customers.

I listed the ride as C+ instead of B, which is probably something I ought to have been doing for a while now. My rides in the hills only barely get into B territory when I map something that has fewer than 50 feet per mile of elevation gain. 

Of the 10 riders, 9 showed up. Of the 9, 5 of us are going on the Nova Scotia trip in August (me, Our Jeff, Heddy, Martin, and Glen). There's one day that has us climbing 2 mountains, the first with some 8% grade climbing and the second one throwing us a bit of 12.5% grade. 

Mine Road, if Ridewithgps is to be believed, has a maximum grade in the 12% range. I put at least one 8% climb in for good measure.

I've been training indoors, putting Rowlf to work on my Wahoo Kickr as I explore hills via Rouvy on other continents. I know what 12% feels like on a stationary trainer with a freehub. 

I didn't sleep well on Friday night, and my guts were feeling a little off as I set out for Pennington on Janice. When, on Moores Mill-Mt Rose Road, Our Jeff had a flat that took some finesse to fix, I was grateful for the break.

When he flatted again just as we were about to ascend Mine Road, I feared the worst. This time, more care was taken to find whatever it was that caused the flat. Jim carries tweezers (smart; I should do that), which New Chris used to extract a tiny shard of glass from Jeff's tire. 

Mine Road had been closed for years. Now it's open to pedestrian traffic. There are bollards positioned at the base of the metal grate bridge. The cap to one of them was off, and the top four inches were nearly full of iron-tinted water. And, as someone noticed, a golf ball.

I fished it out.

Meanwhile, Glen, a bridge inspector by trade, climbed onto the guardrail to read a sign on the steel support beam. We were hoping it would tell us when the bridge was built, but it didn't. Glen guessed it was some time between 1880 and 1920. (1885!)

The B+ group, having left Pennington an hour after we did, sped past us. They were Sergeantsville-bound too, but, as Jim pointed out, taking the sensible way, up the rest of Stony Brook Road.

When Jeff finally had his bike back together, Heddy gave him a wipe for his hands. I offered him the golf ball to clean. "You get to ride with it," I said.

By now, I was genuinely cold. We had only the length of the bridge before the climb began. As I approached the steepest part of the hill, I couldn't feel my arms. That was a weird sensation, coupled with my vague nausea and general light-headedness. I wondered if I were about to die. 

I didn't die. I made it to the top just fine. Although we had a lot more climbing to go before Sergeantsville, none of it seemed particularly difficult. There's a benefit to putting the worst hill right up front. I felt pretty good.

I put in a residential road, between Old York and Toad, to get us out of traffic. This is another thing I ought to have done before. 

The B+ group was finishing up when we arrived at the Covered Bridge Market. Nowadays, if Heddy is around and ordering a cortado, I'll get one too. We rate rest stops according to their cortados. 

Leaving Sergeantsville, we went down another residential street that links Sergeantsville and Rittenhouse Roads. From side to side, the blacktop was so fresh and defined that I wondered how long the paved road had been there. 

We had to climb from Queen Road to Mount Airy, then to South Hunterdon High School, and then up Dinosaur Hill to 518. In my mind, that's three hills. According to Heddy's Garmin, it's one long hill. I made things worse by crossing 518 to hit the 8.9% grade at the end of Harbourton-Mount Airy Road.

The rest of the way was mostly downhill or relatively flat. As we cruised along, I told Our Jeff that he was to carry the Golf Ball of Shame until someone else got a flat, at which point he was to hand it over. This would be a study in how long it would take for the golf ball to make it back to one of us. "I'll keep it in my car," he said.

At the end, folks reported 2500 to 2600 feet of elevation gain over 40 miles. I knew, when I mapped the route and got 2371 feet, that Ridewithgps was underestimating. I can't ever tell by how much, though. The weird thing is that most of us are using Garmin GPS devices. Jim and I have the same model, yet mine reported Mine Road as 11% when I uploaded the ride, while his said 14% after the fact. Heddy's GPS, a different Garmin model, reported 14% at the time. Whatever. We definitely got our training in.

I'm glad I listed the ride as C+. It gave me license to chill. 

I'm feeling more relaxed about the whole Nova Scotia trip too. I've made all my hotel reservations. I'll be driving up with Glen and Martin in Glen's car. They'll be sharing my hotel rooms. We've booked the ferry from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth using a 3-for-the-price-of-2 special. I'm still alone in Exile House, but I'm actually glad about that at the moment. 

All that's left for me is to train well, not overdo it before the trip, and to stop focusing so much on the two mountains. As an erstwhile Hill Slug once said, "There's no hill I can't walk up."

A Walk in the Park

 

Red-Tailed Hawk, Tyler State Park, Newtown, PA

21 January 2024

Still on the mend, Tom announced he'd be at Tyler State Park's boathose at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday if we wanted to join him for a 5-mile walk.

We all had to drive at a snail's pace when we entered the park because we'd hit the end of an organized polar bear run and the road hadn't been plowed wide enough to accommodate two-way traffic as well as the runners.

We did find each other relatively easily, considering the mayhem. Joining Tom were Jim, Pete, Rickety, Cheryl G, Eric, Heddy, Our Jeff, and me.

We sometimes ride here when the roads are too icy because the asphalt paths are usually plowed. They were today, too, more or less, but not as tidily as in the past. It would have been rough going if we'd brought our bikes. 

I was testing out a new ankle brace. My old one is from 1992, the year I had surgery to tighten up a ligament gone loose from 12 sprains in 11 years. All that flopping around destroyed the proprioception; my brain doesn't know where my left ankle is. So I do strengthening exercises for the muscles around it, and wear a brace any time I might encounter unlevel ground. The brace shores up my ankle, and, should it wobble, the pressure from the brace tells my brain where my foot is. To my surprise, the new brace, much stiffer than the old one (no surprise, considering), was comfortable, and there were probably times that it was doing its job.

We started by walking across the dam over the Neshaminy Creek. 

On the downstream side, what looked like rocks were, upon closer inspection, Canada geese.

Tom led us off the paved path, down a snowy trail to the covered bridge. This part is never plowed. We usually park our bikes up top, walk down for pictures, and trudge back up again. We did the same thing today, reversing course at the bottom.

But first we milled about, taking pictures.

The view from the far side of the bridge, on the sunny side, showed shallow ice floes on the water's surface.

On the other side, the bridge cast a shadow on the creek.

There were more goose-rocks in the water.

Tom seemed to have disappeared. I followed a trail down to the water's edge. He was there with his good camera, gloves off so he could work the controls. He's been taking photography classes lately. He was already good at this. I expect the photos he'll share from today will put the rest of us to shame.

At the top of the hill, Our Jeff and Pete took a break on a bench. I didn't notice Jeff's finger until I uploaded the photo (click to embiggen).

He did that because he saw what I was doing to Tom's gloves.

We went back up the hill.

There was a horse farm I hadn't noticed before.

We came down a long, steep hill that we usually ride up. I ought to have taken a picture. I don't know why I didn't. 

Later, I noticed some duckweed in a shallow section of the creek.

We reached the dam again. I took some pictures of the path we didn't take that we usually ride up and back on. There's a big hill up that way.

Some of us thought the walk was over. Jeff and Pete called it a day. I almost did too, until I found out that we were going to walk along the path on this side of the creek for a bit. 

Heddy and I got to talking and got a little ahead. The guys called us to turn around.

We found a red-tailed hawk perched on a branch over our heads and stopped for photos. The sun was in my eyes. My glasses are the kind that darken in sunlight, and they're polarized too. I could barely see my camera's display. I was mostly shooting blind.

We walked on, and the hawk flew in front of us to land on a branch closer to the stream, and to us. We stopped again.

This look says, "I'm giving you guys one more minute. After that, I have mice to catch."

This bird must be used to people by now.

Someone left a pile of dried fruit and nuts on both sides of a little bridge over the creek.

The last time I went walking with the Insane Bike Posse at Tyler was in the winter of 2021. Jim and Mighty Mike had just received their first Covid vaccines, and I had severe vaccine envy. We were walking outside with masks on. I'm glad the Posse is still together three years later.

Weird New Weather

sky over Twin Pines

14 January 2024

Saturday

"That was more work than I expected," I said, pulling into the Twin Pines parking lot on Fozzie, my no-frills gravel bike.

The wind was out of the west at a steady 17 mph, with 29 mph gusts. The ground was still wet from the early morning rain. A tree had taken down a power line where Lawrenceville-Pennington Road meets Denow. There was debris to be dodged. 

It was 54 degrees when I left the house. In January. In New Jersey. 

Overhead, the storm was on its way out, with gray and white clouds moving at a noticeable speed.

We'd been dithering for several days over whether or not to ride. As Saturday drew nearer, I decided not to list anything on our club's calendar. The towpath and LHT would be a muddy mess. The trees up on the Sourland Mountain were probably spitting branches; my front yard was already week's supply of campfire kindling, and that was just from one tree. Our best bet, I figured, was to ride in the shadow of the mountain rather than on it. 

At 7:00 a.m. we still weren't sure. We decided to meet at Twin Pines at 10:00 if things cleared up by 9:00. Pete G, Martin, and Heddy were in. 

The sun came out at 9:00.

Four of us, on our gravel bikes, did the Old Friday Night Route (if you know, you know).

We took the new bike path on the north side of Keefe Road. I stopped to get photos of the head-high grass in the field against the puffy clouds, blue sky, and fresh blacktop. We used Heddy for scale.

The counterclockwise route went past the Pole Farm, around Carson Road Woods, through ETS, up Carter, over Bayberry, over to Moores Mill, up to Route 31, on 31 (briefly!), down Woosamonsa and Burd, into Pennington the back way, and then down Pennington-Lawrenceville Road to Twin Pines.

We got rained on a few times. If there's water on your GPS, it counts as rain. We had confirmation by looking at the droplets hitting roadside puddles.

The wind picked up and the temperature dropped.

At the end of the ride, Heddy, Martin, and I talked about the Nova Scotia trip. We're in the thick of logistics now, reserving hotels and our spots on the CAT ferry from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth. To anyone who hasn't traveled to New England in the summer, this seems very early to be doing all that. It's not. The ferry only leaves once a day.

The sky between me and home was gunmetal gray now. It was raining. I surfed the tailwind when I had it, and leaned into the gusts that threatened to send me sideways when I didn't. 

After I got home, had lunch, and warmed myself back up, I made the journey up to see Michael at Wheelfine. It had been a year. I had to confess to my sin, Janice. 

Tony G was in the shop, picking out bar tape to go with a Di Bernardi frame he was going to build into a fixie. Tony G has a lot of bikes. Tony G does not admit to knowing how many that many is. "If I knew," he said, "I'd have to tell my wife." I'll let that one slide. 

I bought a pack of 3 metal tire levers with thin ends for a whopping $5. Given the tint of the plastic wrap, the bag had probably been around since the Carter administration. I need levers this thin to get the damned Vittoria Rubino Pro tires off Janice's Boyd carbon rims. 

Anyway, Michael and I chatted for a while as the wind shook the door to the shop. Tony puttered around, having decided on black tape to go with the dark blue frame. We'll have to coordinate bikes when he's ready to take his fixie out on a ride. It'll look good next to Beaker, my blue Tommasini.

At night, Eric H and I traded texts for at least an hour, trying to figure out if it would be possible, let alone safe, for him to lead his planned Sunday ride from Claremont. The route required crossing the D&R Canal at Griggstown. I went down a rabbit hole gawping at NOAA's water gauge tables. The causeway was flooded. Would it still be in the morning? What about the predicted snow squalls? 

Sunday

I got up early and put my warmest winter gear on. That meant the wind-stop leggings that, unless I bunch them up at the knees, feel as if they were meant to immobilize me.

At a few minutes before 9:00, Eric texted me to tell me he cancelled the ride. The causeway was still flooded. Two of the six riders had already bailed.

No problem. I could work out on my trainer instead.

Or, wait! There was that hike that TEW was leading out of the Pole Farm. It was already filled, but maybe she'd let me in. I called, and she did. There were, it turned out, several last-minute add-ons, including Jack H and Plain Jim.

We walked in sunlight with a stiff wind.

I have no sense of distance on foot. The loop was five miles. Somewhere in there, maybe halfway, clouds started moving in.

the pole

With half a mile to go, I stopped to take some pictures of the thick, gray clouds to our west. These were the snow squalls, and they were heading our way.

I tried to get a picture of the less-threatening sky to the east, as seen through one of the round, screened thingies next to the Reed/Bryan Farm parking lot.

We did get some snow squalls maybe half an hour later. They didn't amount to much. None of that zero-visibility stuff that the forecasters had been threatening, anyway. Nothing stuck to the ground. It doesn't count if it doesn't stick.

Some real winter air is headed our way this week. It'll be 25 degrees colder tomorrow than it was yesterday morning. This is, I guess, what passes for normal now.