15 June 2024
"I dreamed I swallowed a rock."
"I dreamed I found a transparent trash bag full of socks in my attic."
The two sentences above have to do with today's ride only in that they were uttered by another rider and by me on a hill somewhere in Hunterdon County. There's no reason I'm putting them here except that the first is so poetic it deserved to be in the blog, and the second is something I dreamed the night before returning to work after a two-week vacation.
Anyway.
I almost went on John K's Challenge T1D hilly ride today. It would have been 66 miles without any planned rest stops. And it started at 8:00 a.m. I'm all about hills this summer, but I do have my limits.
So I registered for Dave S's "Prallsville Country Cruise," and, to get the distance above 40 miles, I mapped some extra towards the end of the ride.
Prallsville Mill is an ideal place to start a ride. It's out of the center of Stockton, and it's very close to Lower Creek Road and Route 519. That means one doesn't have to spend more than a minute or two on Route 29.
However, the main lot is frequently off-limits due to private functions at the art gallery. There's a spillover lot, the "sawmill" lot, just south of the main one, and that's where we were guided. I arrived at 8:40 for the 9:00 a.m. ride. I got one of the last available spots, parking parallel along the lot's edge, next to a long patch of poison ivy. Several riders had to leave the lot and park somewhere closer to town. We weren't the only ones; a handful of towpath riders had been diverted to the lot as well, and more had to drive out right away.
After a brief delay to amass the dispersed troops, we got rolling to Lower Creek and Covered Bridge. We worked our way up to Sandy Ridge, then bumbled along eastward toward Rosemont-Ringoes Road. Then we went north on 579, west on Yard, north on Sandbrook-Headquarters, and north again on Route 523.
I knew what was coming at mile 15. Where 579 intersects 523 on the north side looks like a 45-degree angle and feels like one too. Add the traffic, and you've got barrels of fun. Dave was wise enough to turn on a residential road, Dogwood, instead. I'd only ever been down Dogwood. I remembered it being steep, and I knew that, no matter how long the street was, we had to get to the top of that evil hill. With a clear view of the incline that bent to the right, I shifted into my second-lowest gear, 36/34. I can get 36/36 if I really need it, but I'm saving that for Nova Scotia. I do occasionally get that low by accident; sometimes I miss the little squeak that the derailleur does to let me know I'm out of gears. When I do hear that squeak, I get out of 36/36 right away. That gear is for emergencies.
I was saying to myself, "Come on, Janice. Come on, Janice," as I ground through the steep part. Janice came through.
After that, it was mostly downhill, in that up-and-down way that Hunterdon County has. We'd voted for the Covered Bridge Market instead of the Sergeantsville General Store. I used to feel bad about that, but lately the general store has been looking more run-down, and, really, the food isn't as good as what's on offer at the the chi-chi market.
The general store used to be the spot where all the cyclists stopped. We'd arrive seemingly in shifts. Now this is happening at the market instead. There were so many people that the line was out the door. Heddy was somewhere in front of me. Someone in our group stuck his head out the door and asked me if I wanted her to order me a cortado. "Yes, please."
It was ready by the time I made it inside. It was lukewarm. "He didn't steam the milk," she said.
After the break, we went back down towards Lower Creek Road, went through the covered bridge, and turned onto Upper Creek.
Heddy and I cortadoed our way to the top. Dave wasn't finished throwing hills at us, though. After a few miles of a meandering respite on the ridge, we found ourselves at the top of Federal Twist. We turned off onto Milltown right away, went south on 519 for a bit, then turned west onto Strimples Mill. There was a nasty incline climbing out of the Lockatong Creek valley. We did pass the mill though, and a pretty little bridge, before that.
We turned back onto Federal Twist, right where the steep descent begins. I neary missed our turn at Raven Rock even though I was looking for it. I thought it was a driveway. We were climbing here, too, but gradually.
At the end of the road, I turned left, with four people in tow (Heddy, Martin, Bob W, and Thomas R), while the rest of the group turned right. "Any more hills?" they asked. "Just a couple hundred feet," I told them "over 5 miles."
I hadn't done my homework. Those couple hundred were all in the first half mile. Only when we reached the top did I recognize the climb from a ride Tom H had led years ago.
From there, we turned east on Sandford and, shortly after that, it really was downhill all the way home. We rode the entirety of Lower Creek this time, so we were there twice in one day. Can't beat that.
When we arrived back at the sawmill lot, we were met by a cop. Somebody had decided to park more or less on the towpath, and their car was being loaded onto a flatbed towtruck. The cop told us that, after today, we'd no longer be able to parallel park along the side. There are going to be signs up soon. So much for starting at Prallsville Mill.
While I feel bad about chickening out on John K's ride, I'm glad I got so many hills in today. I feel better about Nova Scotia.
I took a look at my mileage for the year. I'm far behind my usual. By now I'd have at least one century under my belt. I'd have nearly twice as many flat miles as hilly ones. 2024 has upended all that. I have nearly three times as many hilly miles as flat ones. I haven't done a single metric century, let alone a full one. All this nonsense will end, I assume, when I return from Nova Scotia.
Or will it?
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