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."