Schvitzing and Wincing

Lambertville Headquarters Road

5 July 2020

My back hurts. Like, prescription, topical NSAID hurts. I've lived with this L5/S1 herniation for a decade now. Most of the time I feel nothing. Then, usually in the middle of the summer, I'll maybe skip a PT session or two, pile on a few stressful days at work, then go out for a couple of hard days on the bike, and remember why I shouldn't skip my stretches.

That was this weekend. Plus the relative humidity was up around a zillion percent. If you don't know what schvitzing is, you either didn't grow up near New York or haven't had the pleasure of a summer day on Northeast Corridor. Go look up the word. I'll wait.

When I left the house Saturday morning to ride to the park, I was dry for about four miles. The headband around my neck that was serving as my mask would have to go somewhere else if I were to keep it dry. I wrapped it around my braid.

Tom promised us a short and easy route because we'd have hills to contend with tomorrow. We started at 8:00 a.m. to avoid the worst heat of the day.

On our way to Roy's we passed a horse farm on Harvey Road. I'd never seen so many in one place so I stopped for pictures.

Roy's was open (takeout only, no bathrooms), as was the hair salon next door (but not they gym that seemed to occupy the same space). Music was blasting from inside the salon. Outside, they'd set up a table with masks, hand sanitizer, and forms for customers (one at a time inside) to fill out. Before anyone could enter, they had to have their temperature taken.

Bob bought a gallon of water for the rest of us — Tom, Jack H, Ricky, and me — to share. I bought a little container of watermelon and grapes. That hit the spot.

We went north through the Assunpink, stopping at the lake. The sky was clouding over, making the water look a murky grayish-brownish-green.

Ricky split off when we got out of the Assunpink. Tom left when we reached Route 539. Bob and Jack H went back to the picnic area on their own after I left at Old Trenton Road. I got back home soaked with sweat, but I couldn't take care of that until I got a picture of Moxie first.

When I spend a long time pedaling without a break, my hamstrings get tight, and they pull on the muscles near my herniation. The feeling is akin to writer's cramp. A quick stop where I can put both feet on the ground and arch my back usually takes care of it. These days we don't stop much. Our mid-ride breaks are shorter too; sometimes we don't even sit down. Towards the end of Saturday's ride I could feel my back getting tight. I ought to have done a round of PT when I got home, but I didn't. An hour later I felt fine anyway.

Saturday morning we started from Lambertville at 8:30 a.m. It was cooler than yesterday, but the humidity was way up. It was going to be one of those rides that I do because I think I have to in order to stay strong. In 47 miles, Tom had mapped out 2800 feet of elevation gain. I called bitching rights early, just in case.

Fortunately, I knew all of the roads and what lumps and bumps they contained. We started off easy, on Alexauken Creek. Then we turned up Bowne Station, which is a series of increasingly annoying little hills. From there we turned north on Lambertville Headquarters, which is the same thing, only with a picture-worthy view of a farm halfway up,

and a wooded, three-way intersection at the top of the ridge. I turned to look back. The road was damp.

In front of us, the view was shrouded in haze.

Beyond the trees we could see three more ridges.

I told Jim, "I'm going to have to look at a map when I get home." I wanted to know what we were looking at.

What we were looking at, it turns out, is where we were going. Lower Ferry and Ferry cross all three. We continued north, took a turn west at Sky Manor Airport, then continued north on Michelin Corner. We went west again on Airport Road, passing Alexandria Field.

I'd never noticed the runway before because we're usually going in the other direction.

"It's all downhill from here," Tom said.

"No, it's not," I shot back. "Stamets has hills."

And for that, when we got there, Jim and Ricky called him a lying bastard. Jack H simply floated up the asphalt walls, because that's what he does.

The Bridge Cafe in Frenchtown is doing what the Pig and Rojo's are doing: selling coffee from a window they might not ever have tried to pry open until now. We watched groups of riders on hybrid bikes come and go along the canal towpath.

I'd taken my gloves off before getting in line for coffee. When the break was over and I put them on again, they were still soaking wet. I hadn't realized how wet they'd been.

Tom gave us a little break, a few flat miles on Route 29, before signaling a left turn at Fairview. "Asshole!" I hollered, and downshifted. I hadn't been on this road in probably a decade. The last time I had the choice, I offered the group "Fairview or fuck it," and the late Frank A had said, "Fuck it," so we did, and stayed in the valley.

Not today. I remembered that it was a grind. We had a flat-ish stretch at the top, and that's where my back let me know that climbing was fine but coasting wasn't.

Tom's plan was to get mostly back towards the river, then climb to Sandy Ridge to avoid Route 29 between Stockton and Lambertville. The late Joe McBride liked to take that detour. I've always hated it, as it threw in a few hundred feet of unnecessary elevation gain just to avoid a few hundred yards of no shoulder. As we bounced along Muddy Run Road, I told Tom that I might end up taking the river route home.

As we approached the covered bridge, peer pressure got to me. I said, "I can't be known as Iron Balls Lynch if I don't take the hilly route." Unbeknownst to me, however, Jim had already put in a vote for taking our chances on Route 29, and Tom had seconded the motion.

So we turned down Lower Creek instead, which made me happy, because it's slightly downhill and very pretty. Route 29 wasn't bad either, partly because it was a holiday, and partly because we're not completely out of lockdown yet. [As of 5 July, NJ's Rt has risen to 1.01. Don't fuck this up, people.]

Turns out the distance is the same no matter which of the two routes we take, and we saved ourselves 250 feet of climbing, which is totally fine by me, because when I got home and walked Miss Piggy to the door, my back still hurt.

I did some extra time on the inversion table and went to bed pain-free. I knew, though, that if I were to take Kermit to Griggstown and follow Jim's group to Hopewell tomorrow, I'd be in a world of hurt grinding up Princeton Avenue to get back home. I emailed him to let him know I'd meet him in Griggstown but would bail in Princeton.

And that's what I did, making the journey an out-and-back affair. I was already soaking wet when I caught up with Dave H on Canal Road. He was going a little faster than I'd been going, which woke my back out of slumber.

At least I got to say hello to Madhu, who Jim and I are actively recruiting for Slugship, and caught up with Dr Lynne, who I hadn't seen since last summer, before the pain started to creep down my leg. I bailed at Harrison Street, hoping to make it home before my toes went numb.

I peeled off my wet clothes, but there was still a lawn to mow. Sometimes, when my back hurts, it helps to walk it off, to loosen things up. I thought the 20 minutes it takes to cut the grass in our little yard would do the trick. It didn't.

I showered and did a full round of PT, which requires, among other things, that I lie on my back, on the floor, with a belt wrapped around one foot, which I hold in the air and pull towards my head. The cats love this. They get to nose around my face, purr in my ears, and maybe even gnaw on the leather if they're in the mood. It helped a little, but, in the end, I had to resort to the NSAID.

This will take a day or two to subside. I haven't had more than two days in a row of rest since January. It's probably time for my traditional summer week away from exercise. Drat.

Start of the Sticky Days

Dock at Assunpink Lake

28 June 2020

The lilies are blooming. On my last weekday ride before returning to the lab, I passed a line of them along a stone wall on Woosamonsa Road. The lighting was a little wrong and I didn't stop to get a picture. I have regretted that. To make up for it I've been trying to get a good photo of the handful blooming along the side of my yard. Last Saturday, only the ones farthest from the fence were open.

We Slugs hadn't managed to get our acts together in time to coordinate a ride. There was a threat of rain mid-day. I didn't want to get up early enough to get to Tom's house at 8:00 a.m. Instead, I rolled out at the lazy hour of 9:10 to ride around the Assunpink Wildlife Management Area. 

I spent a minute at the lake.

People were fishing off the dock and off their boats, and a few were kayaking.

With some trepidation, I registered for Marc's Sunday ride out of Mercer County Park. In the list of registrants, I recognized only a few. With Old Trenton Road being milled near the park, I opted for the path through the woods instead, stopping for a picture of the murky Assunpink Creek at the wooden bridge.

While the pace was a little more work than I'm used to, I kept up. A lot of the conversation these days starts with, "Are you working from home?"

"Yeah, and I'm going crazy."

"Are you going back to the office?"

"Probably not."

Most of my cycling friends got to keep their jobs, even if they were laid off for a while. Of my circle of Slugs, I'm the only one sent home to has gone back. Of those I talked to in Marc's group, only a few were working outside of their homes.

We stopped at Roy's. I ventured inside to buy a drink. One side of the store, the side with the bathroom, was blocked off. The tables were gone. I thanked the cashier for being open. I think she might have been one of the owners. She seemed slightly distraught at the restrictions, understandably. "Best to keep us all healthy," I said, and she agreed.

We spread out along the front of the store, under hanging baskets of bright flowers.

The air was thick. There were showers in the forecast again.

We made our way back north, through the Assunpink in the direction opposite the one I had taken the day before. I looked at the sky as Chris rode past me. "It should just rain already," I said. "It would feel better." It didn't. We were all hot and sticky. I left the group at one of the Village Roads and headed for home, taking my chances on the hairy left turn at Quakerbridge onto Lawrence Station. Things are picking up in New Jersey, but I was able to get across without holding up traffic.

Yesterday was the first time I'd led a ride since March. I've been so busy in the lab that I didn't get around to even thinking about it until Friday evening on our regular Insane Bike Posse Zoom call. I didn't post the ride to the club calendar until something like 8:00 p.m.

Twelve hours later I had five registrants: Ricky, Jim, Jack H, Martin, and Sophie.

The lilies along the fence had finally bloomed. I took the picture I'd been waiting for and pushed off towards Pennington.

We met at the Pig, which is now open Tuesday through Saturday from 8:00 to noon for online orders and walk-ups to a small window at the front of the building. None of us wanting to have to pee in the woods, we didn't get any drinks before we started. Maybe, just maybe, we'd get back before noon.

"It's raining," Jack H said as we started off. "I'm going home." It wasn't really, just a few drops here and there, and we all knew he'd stick with us.

My destination was Lambertville. My route was any road that hadn't been chip-sealed within the past two weeks. That set us on a narrow line, west of Stony Brook, east of the river. In other words, Poor Farm.

I'd been climbing Poor Farm during some of my daytime lockdown rides. It was time to share the fun. I didn't warn anyone, except Sophie because I didn't know if she'd been there before, until we had turned from Burd onto Woosamonsa. If they cursed me out I was too far behind to hear it.

As we passed the barn on Rocktown Road, I instinctively turned to look behind me. More often than not these days, there's a cow at the window.

When we got to Rojo's, we found another walk-up window. As with the Pig, there's only coffee, no food. There was, however, indoor plumbing. Because I've gone back to the lab, I have the public restroom thing down. Wash your hands first, use a paper towel to turn off the faucet, use the same towel to open the stall door, wedge the towel by the lock to use later, don't touch anything with your bare hands, wash them again, use a new paper towel to turn the faucet off, and use that towel to open the door on your way out. Oh, and keep your mask on the whole time. That's important. I was the only one in there anyway, but still.

I'd already broken the no-road-twice rule by taking Rocktown back. To spice things up I said, "I'm an asshole! Straight!" and led the group down the dirt road hill. Sophie said, "Oh, this is where the vultures were waiting for us!" Jim hadn't yet had the pleasure. He was somewhat unconvinced that my choice was better than the newly-chipped Stony Brook.

We got back to the Pig at 12:05 p.m.

There was a geocache under the closed window.

Before I went inside, I took a few more lily pictures. Three had grown sideways, in an attempt to get out from under the sprawling redbud tree, and were blooming on the ground.

I'd inadvertently hit one of them with the lawnmower on Friday evening.

Marc had a B ride out of Mercer County Park listed for Sunday morning. Jim, in keeping with his end-of-the-month routine, listed his ride from Franklin as C+. I hadn't decided which one I was going to try. Marc's would be a hair more effort than I might have after a day of hills. Jim's would require getting up at the ass-crack of dawn to ride the 17 or 18 miles it would take to get there in time.

I opted for the ass-crack, figuring I'd be able to bail at several points if I was too beat to do the whole thing. I hadn't even looked at Marc's route; I figured my bail-out choices wouldn't be as good.

Jim has been starting at the Claremont School. The parking lot at Six Mile Run, where he led all of last year, has been overrun to overflowing. From my house to Six Mile is about 18 miles. I follow Canal Road from Rocky Hill. To get to Claremont, I can still take Canal, and turn up Butler, a gradual climb over less than ideal pavement. Or I can stay on Route 27 from Princeton, where the asphalt is smooth but I have to pass a handful of shoulder-free shopping centers. Last time I stayed on the canal. This time, concerned that I'd left home too late, I chose Route 27 from Kingston.

It was 8:00 a.m. Already I was sticky. My shins were coated with road dirt plastered onto the sunblock. Welcome to summer in central Jersey.

By the time I saw the "road closed 3.5 miles ahead" sign it was too late to turn back. I'd have to be a Hill Slug and wade through whatever if I were to get to the ride start by 8:30. Fortunately, the road wasn't really closed; there was one lane open, monitored by a temporary traffic light.

There was a long, uphill slog in there on the way to the intersection with Route 518. After that, with the wind at my back, I flew into the school with about five minutes to spare.

Dave H was there, recovering after having lead his own ride yesterday, and one of the Judys, whom I've met before, I think.

We coasted downhill on Suydam, passing several dozen cyclists coming up the hill in dribs and drabs, as if there were an organized ride going on. Every one we know about has been canceled.

As we rounded the corner onto Canal Road, I saw a porta-potty and stopped. Mask on, don't touch anything except the hand sanitizer.

On the bank, a fellow was fishing. He showed me the little crawfish he'd caught inadvertently. He was going for trout.

The canal is being dredged. Still.

We went into Veterans Park in Montgomery, and were on our way out when Marc's group pulled in. My knowledge of Montgomery and Hillsborough being somewhat mushy, I wanted to know how they'd gotten here without spending fifty miles to do it. We turned around so that we could find out, and ended up spending a good ten minutes chatting with them.

Being a free agent, as it were, I considered following Marc's group back home. "We're going up Coppermine," he said. Yeah, no, never mind.

We'd put a bit of distance between ourselves and the park when Jim mentioned that one of Marc's riders had said to him, "If you keep leading these slow rides, you're gonna turn into a slow, old man."

That got to him, and to me, too. There was no reason for saying that, other than to be a jerk. "Did you tell him that obviously one can be an asshole at any speed?"

"No," Jim said. He's too polite for that. I'm not.

As I've written here a zillion times before, being a faster rider does not make one a better person.

When we got to Hollow Road, I turned west to go home, riding into the hot wind towards Hopewell. I was thirsty, with almost enough water to get me home. I didn't want to stop to buy more. Instead I picked up the pace again, turning into my driveway at 11:20 a.m.

I was hungry and thirsty and filthy. I hosed myself and Kermit off before I went inside.

Later I checked the ride calendar to see what route Marc had taken. I'm glad I didn't go. Through no fault of his, he chose a bunch of roads that annoy me. I'd have been miserable and would probably have defected to Jim's ride had we met in Montgomery.

Lockdown Chronicles: End

Bayberry Road, Pennington, NJ

17 June 2020

At 8:55 a.m. we ended our daily Zoom check-in, during which, having run out of stuff to say about our projects, we ended up talking about our pets. Our boss wondered, yet again, if, perhaps, we didn't need to have these calls every day. We said goodbye and disconnected.

At 8:58 a.m. our boss forwarded an email from the Dean for Research. We could return to work. Effective right now. 

Our lab is well stocked for PPE; we've all been buying it on our own in case the university couldn't get its hands on any. On Monday I'd filled every spray bottle available with 70% ethanol and distributed it to lab benches and offices. Every shared facility has a signup calendar now. There are rules about which masks we must wear inside the lab and which ones in the hallways. There was an official online training course, a health report form, and a mandatory self-reporting app. Physically, we were ready.

Mentally, not so much.

I stood up from my makeshift home office desk, a round picnic table in the screened-in porch facing our back yard. Ergonomically it was the best place to work. Internet connectivity-wise, not so much. I looked around, dazed, and stumbled inside to tell Jack that I'd be going into the lab tomorrow morning.

There was a pause, then a mad flurry of emails and Slack messages. There were orders to place and rooms to reserve. There were loose ends to tie up, details to iron out, maybe one more paper to squeeze in for the literature search I've been helping with since March. 

While I hadn't been going into work, I had always been working. I never did learn how to tend to sourdough starter, nor did I make mountains of jewelry, nor repaint the back hallway. The yard is far less weedy than it has been in years, however. That's something, I suppose.

There was still one thing I could do to finish this properly.

At 5:45 I wheeled Kermit outside for one last lockdown ride. I would take the bovine route, chip-seal and all, and deliver a final round of livestock photographs to the faithful.

The sky, in a double layer of clouds, added to the drama of the Hendrickson Farm on Cold Soil and Van Kirk Roads.

The herd was far off, in the middle of the field.

Closer in, mourning doves hid in the grass by the stream.

I knew that Bayberry Road had been freshly chip-sealed. I almost didn't take it, but for the Brick Farm flock with the bell-collared goats. A car passed me, kicking up dust. I pulled my mask over my face. Problem solved.

They were on the north side of the road today. Everyone had their heads down in the grass.

Nearly everyone. The dogs looked up once in a while.

Wargo Road, too, had been chip-sealed.

I saw, as I passed, that Old Mill had a fresh layer of gravel as well.

On Pennington-Rocky Hill Road I turned onto the entrance to the Lawrence-Hopewell Trail to get a closer look at the eagle's nest at the far end of the field.  A cyclist passed me.

"I'm trying to see if the eagles are around," I said.

He called back, from a safe distance, "They're the most-photographed eagles in the county!"

Nobody was home. I guess they've gone back to work too.