Cranbury West

 

Suydam Road, Franklin Township, NJ

19 December 2021

The last time I led a ride with 25 people on it was years ago at one of our Spring Flings*. I swore I'd never do it again, and I haven't. 

Plain Jim's rides, which started out small and mellow a handful of summers ago, have morphed into large and aggressive affairs. They've become Cranbury West: twenty-some-odd riders, the fastest of whom shouldn't be there and the slowest of whom have long since looked elsewhere for their Sunday saddle time. That leaves a few of us middle-B folks hanging on while the B+ newcomers take over the pace. I stopped going on Cranbury rides when they got this big and unruly. Jim is a close friend; I can't abandon him so easily. 

Instead, when the registration list had rocketed past 20 last night, his ride being the only Sunday sure thing, I emailed to suggest I peel off some of the slower folks so that he could get his speed on. 

When the list was sitting at 26 early this morning, I regretted my offer. Fortunately for all of us, there were some cancellations and no-shows. 

I wasn't going to bring my camera, but I changed my mind at the last minute. The sky over the parking lot was doing interesting things. There might be more later, not that there would even be time for a photo.

Jim announced that I'd be co-leading. I followed it up with, "If you normally ride B+ or are into some Strava shit, go with Jim. If you ride B and like cows, go with me."

Jim pushed off, and it looked as if most of the crowd was going to stick with him. I was left with 7 or 8 riders, and we waited for the fastboys to disappear before we left the parking lot. 

Dave H, in red, swept. I was in front of a group of indiscriminate yellow jackets and Pete G, also in red. We'd ride up to the rear of the fast crowd gathered at a light, meld with them for the thirty seconds it would take for the fastboys to rocket past us, and be on our own again. At one point we passed the lot of them because they'd stopped at a park for a kidney break. I hadn't even seen them there. 

We bunched up again in the Hillsborough neighborhood where the sneaky little sidewalk shortcuts are, and then dispersed again, only to bunch up where all of our GPSs were telling us to turn on Burnt Mill but Jim was going straight. I waved my mob forward, but some of them turned anyway. By now I had no idea who was with which group. I just kept Dave H in sight and stopped when I couldn't see him. Those who stopped with me were the ones riding with me, I guess.

By the time we got within a few miles of the Blawenburg Bistro, Jim was more or less back with us. He'd given up trying to keep everyone together. Not that he'd had much hope of that from the start, of course.

Anyone who has led in Cranbury knows it's a game of drop-the-leader. "This is Cranbury West," I told him. I said the same thing last week, I guess not to him. I've seen this building for a while now.

After the rest stop, the fastest of the fastboys charged ahead, leaving a scraggly dozen or so hovering between Jim and Dave. When we reached Township Line and stopped for traffic, I asked him if we were going to follow the GPS up Butler or take his most recent preferred route, Suydam, from Canal Road. The few of us left agreed on Suydam, with its smoother pavement. 

Finally, for all of maybe four miles, it felt like the sort of ride I wanted to be on. I even stopped to get pictures of the sky as we turned onto Suydam Road.

On one hand, I'm happy for Jim that his rides are so popular now. It's taken a lot of perseverance on his part to keep the Sunday morning thing going, and it's good for keeping his head on straight. Maybe I'll even get a little faster.

On the other hand, there are too. many. people. 

As I packed Beaker away, Luis came up to me with a fist-bump. "Nice not riding with you today," I said.

(*I solved the problem by heading straight for Dutchtown-Zion, after which most of them begged off and I was left with a reasonable 7.)

Fog

 

Burd Road, Pennington, NJ

11 December 2021

I printed the sign-in sheet four times: twice on Friday afternoon, once on Friday evening, and again early Saturday morning. People kept signing up.

The weather forecast was bouncing around all week, between rain and no rain, wind and lots of wind. It settled on no rain and some wind. That was enough to get 11 people on board. 

We woke up to dense fog and wet pavement. One person dropped out. It was cooler than predicted, and by the time I engulfed myself in more warm clothing, I was running late. I burst out of the fog into the Twin Pines parking lot at 9:05. Immediately, two riders told me they were fog-skittish and wouldn't be joining us.

That left 8 riders, a much more manageable number. 

I repeated the Route I Stole From Dave, which avoids nearly all of the usual hills. It's perfect for unpredictable weather because it never gets too far from the starting point. 

Depending on where we were, it was almost too warm for what we had on, or it was just right. There was thick fog sometimes, like on Burd Road heading towards Woosamonsa:

We rode in and out of fog between Pennington and Bear Tavern Road. Once we reached Hopewell, we could almost see where we were going. Once in a while I felt some rain for a drop or two. 

A strange noise was emanating irregularly from either my front wheel or a pulley; I couldn't tell which. It was a rapid swish-grind, but I couldn't see anything in the way of brakes nor the chain. It dawned on me that it might have been five years since I've changed the brake pads. There was so much crud on the damp roads that my brakes weren't working very well anyway. 

Our break was at the Blawenburg Bistro. As we dismounted, we felt the beginning of the high winds that were set to swoop in for real around 1:00 p.m. 

One of our riders left us there, to go to his favorite bike shop up the road. 

My GPS burped on our way out, and I mistakenly thought I'd gone the wrong way. I hadn't, but by turning around and continuing north on Route 601, I managed to cut out about three miles. I took this to be a good thing, because we'd be into the wind for much of the trip back home. 

What I didn't cut out was Province Line southbound from Route 518 to Cherry Valley. Now we were uphill into the wind. This didn't seem to bother anyone.

Another rider peeled off near his house. 

Of the original 11, we were down to 6. Plain Jim would call this an "attrition ride" and mock me for it. 

After the usual post-ride chitchat, I made it home by 12:30 p.m. 

I hosed Miss Piggy down. If I were to bring her to Michael at Wheelfine, I'd have to make her presentable. I gave him a call and scheduled a tune-up for next weekend. Miss Piggy can use some TLC and OCD. Michael suggested a few things I could do for the brakes meanwhile.

While the pads look worn (there's a groove in my rim, too), I found the real problem: a little maple leaf wedged up in the fork, behind the breaks, invisible until I got down to eye level with the wheel.

Follow the River (The Longest Short Ride Ever)

 

Boys and Girls Club of Mercer County, Trenton, NJ

5 December 2021

Yesterday's ride was all about me feeling guilty for being so overly Covid-cautious that I suggested perhaps Jim should be in quarantine until he finds out if TEW's exposure to a positive colleague didn't infect either of them. 

I know, I know: biking is an outdoor activity that is relatively safe as far as these things go. However. Quarantine is quarantine, and when I was exposed to Covid, I rode by myself for two weekends even though I tested negative four times by PCR during that period. I don't mess around with the risk of lung, kidney, and brain damage. I don't want to be that asshole who transmits the virus to someone who can't fight it off. Instead, I'm that asshole who is overly cautious. And if you think I'm bad, there are people I work with who are more cautious than me. And I'm 3 x Moderna, fer chrissakes.

Anyway.

Tom led a ride from Reed Recreation Area. I had glass to deliver to John K and Rickety, so I drove to the park.

It was an uneventful, chilly, gloomy ride. We could have used Jim to sing us across a couple of hairy intersections. I only took a few pictures, late in the ride, after we'd meandered more or less counterclockwise to the Wawa in Jackson and were heading back through the Assunpink Wildlife Management Area. 

We were waiting to regroup and find out if we were going to detour to the lake (we weren't), and we happened to be next to a tree that wanted its picture taken.

At the intersection of Sharon Station and Herbert Road, we regrouped again, and I got a shot of the gloomy sky. 

At the end of the ride:

Having bowed out of Jim's Sunday ride, my plans were up in the air. Rickety wanted to do something Sunday, so I said I'd contact him later. Jack and I went to walk around Lambertville in the late afternoon. When I got back, I was minutes away from suggesting a ride on the LHT when Jack H emailed a bunch of us.

Meet him at 10:00 at the East Ferry Road (where?) towpath parking lot and follow him to Roebling on trails and roads. After a flurry of emails settling where East Ferry Road is (just north of the Calhoun Street Bridge on the PA side), Jack H had me, Rickety, and Martin to accompany him.

It never occurred to me that I wouldn't have had to ride 10 miles to Washington Crossing and then follow the towpath for another however many to get to East Ferry Road. Only after Rickety seemed surprised I didn't take Fozzie straight through Trenton did it occur to me that I could have done this in something like five miles. Derp. 

Martin brought along a friend, Glenn; they'd ridden from Martin's house. Jack H came rolling down from his house up the hill. 

We went south to the Trenton Makes bridge and walked over to the NJ side. After that it was a maze of sidewalks and parking lots and Center Street, where I halted the group to gawp at the fence in front of the Boys and Girls Club of Mercer County:

There was more where-are-we-going weirdness and then we were on an elevated park, South Riverwalk, riding under arches and over pavers that covered the history of Trenton in such detail that Jack H said it took him and Dorothy over an hour to read them all.

On the other side was a long ramp that led us closer to the river.

He led us down a side street and then, all of a sudden, there was a well-groomed towpath under tall trees. It went on for a few miles, and we could hear I-295 next to us.

"Are we going to be near the 295 overlook?" I asked.

There was a fork in the trail, and Jack H led us to the right, where we found ourselves at the foot of the ramp that leads to the pedestrian bridge over the highway to the overlook.

We spent five or ten minutes there before turning around and getting back on the trail, which carried us over the Crosswicks Creek before dumping us near the light rail station in Bordentown.

We climbed the steep hill into town and followed Burlington Road all the way to Route 130. There was a crosswalk there, and a sign that said we were on the Delaware River Heritage Trail. We'd seen a few of those on Burlington Road too. We followed a footpath that took us to Crystal Lake Park.

There were real bathrooms there, so we stopped. I took the opportunity to pull the toe warmers out of my shoes, no small operation considering that my shoes are lace-ups and the booties' zippers require safety pins to keep them up. I wasn't in a rush, though, because Martin's rear wheel had been making a concerning noise all this time. Glenn and Martin turned the bike upside down and came to the conclusion that it must be a bearing in the hub. There was some mention of some kind of nut, which I mangled into "kronut" because why not. 

We made our way out of the park and onto Old York Road, still following the Delaware River Heritage Trail, apparently. We turned onto the Kinkora Trail, the one Tom had taken us on a few weekends ago, and followed it to the Delaware River at Roebling.

Some wag had figured a cairn was appropriate:

There was some boob-like facility on the Pennsylvania side south of us.

We decided here was as good a place as any to down our snacks, and we spent probably too long just hanging around. There were Roebling twisted cables to talk about, after all. When we finally started up again, I was almost cold.

Glenn needed to refill his water, so we stopped at the QuickChek on Route 130. There were tables outside. The guys sat down for a spell. 

We retraced our steps back to the towpath. When we got there, Jack H, in true Jack H form, did what amounted to an all-out sprint, as much as one can do that on a somewhat bumpy, slightly winding path. I followed in hot pursuit. 

When we got to the other side, I was far hungrier than I had reason to be, and downed the second half of my energy bar. This was only a 30-mile ride; I should be able to do it on half a bar. When I looked at the time on my GPS, though, I realized why I needed to eat again: it was almost 1:30 p.m.

I just wanted to get home, but Martin was deep into his phone, trying to figure out which Roebling scion had drowned on the Titanic. Jack H feigned shock at my impatience and said I needed to put this in my blog. Here ya go, Jack H.

When we reached the Trenton Makes bridge, Jack didn't dismount. We followed him over. I wondered if we were going to get caught by the bridge keeper at the other end, but the shades in the house were drawn and we sailed on through. 

At the East Ferry lot, Jack H said, "This was the longest short ride ever." When he got home, Dorothy teased him mercilessly for taking so long. I offered to shoulder the blame as the resident photographer. Rickety offered up the multiple bathroom breaks and the Titanic business. 

But Jack H was having none of that. He wrote, "NO NO NO. I was the leader, I and I alone will deal with the burden. If I want to lead a ride I must  be able to handle abuse. I learn a lot from Tom."

So there you have it. 

Mud, Pie

 

Delaware Canal Towpath Near New Hope, PA

26 November.

Martin has a pie problem.

It's 10:03 a.m., 40-something degrees, partly sunny, and the wind is howling out of the west on the NJ side of Washington Crossing. I've been on the road, pushing against that wind, for 10 miles on Fozzie, my gravel bike, to get here on time. 

When I woke up at 6:45 this morning, the rain was still coming down. Pete bailed. The rain finally stopped a little before 9:00, and because Martin and Jack H weren't concerned about a little towpath mud, the ride was on, leaving me with not quite enough time to get properly bundled and leave the house.

The roads are surprisingly dry for the rain only having stopped half an hour ago. The front is moving off to the north. I get a good look at the clouds as I pass by Twin Pines. I'm trying to replicate this color in glass, so I stop for pictures. I'm not helping myself with the punctuality problem here, but I've already emailed Martin to tell him that I'll be rolling in late.

So it's 10:03 and I'm sitting on the curb, loosening the laces on my right shoe, hoping that this time, with some paved hills to contend with, my feet won't go numb from anything but cold. 

Martin is explaining the pies. He's been adhering to a keto diet for a while now, so never eats carbs. Yesterday being Thanksgiving, he was surrounded by pies, and, well, he's here to atone.  

While he's explaining, I see the moon over the trees by the river.

We set off to the south, enjoying the tailwind that eluded us both on our rides over here. The path is, surprisingly, mostly dry. 

Jack H, coming from the south, meets up with us halfway to the new Scudder Falls Bridge pedestrian path. They've both been over it. I haven't, and that's why I'm out here right now.

Jack H warns me that it's no Tappan Zee. That's fine with me, because nothing could be as horrid as the GWB.

Martin points out the recessed lights that are set into the railing at regular intervals. It's there he found a spider last week, and he took a picture of it for me. Naturally I'd done my best to figure out what we were looking at; he'd done his best to assure me it didn't matter. Now it's too cold for spiders, but there are gnat-embedded web wisps in each alcove.

The path has bump-outs for scenic views. The first faces Pennsylvania.

It's a long way to the first bump-out, but it doesn't feel as if we've come this far.

It's another long way to the next outcrop, halfway across the bridge. The NJ hills are in the distance.

On the lower side of the Pennsylvania half, plastic barriers separate us from the traffic. Why these barriers only go so far up the bridge remains a mystery, despite Martin's vigilant sleuthing and photo documentation during construction.

We coast down the Pennsylvania side, and it lets us off at Woodside Road, nearly directly across from the Delaware Canal towpath entrance.

The PA side has not dried out. We scoot around puddles, or ride through them. I can hear the water and mud on Jack H's new gravel bike's brakes: skrrr skrrr skrrr. Eventually, Fozzie is mucky enough to make noise like that too.

Jack H rides ahead, then stops.  "This is the Jack H--- Memorial Massacree Bridge," he says. Shorty after Ida, he'd ridden over this bridge when it was closed. There was a cop waiting for him at the other end. Long story short, he paid a small fine and had to pick up the garbage. 

While we're stopped, Martin asks me to take a picture of him riding, "so I can prove that I worked off the pie."

He doubles back.

Then starts towards me, letting go of the handle bars.

South of New Hope, there's a disintegrating wooden building. Behind it are two pieces of land-moving equipment that might or might not still be in use. It's a good spot for a kidney break and for photos.

Jack H gets a call from home. There's family over, and there are things to do, so he rides with us as far as New Hope and turns around. Martin and I walk across the bridge to Lambertville.

It's clouding over again.

Now we have a stiff tailwind. The New Jersey side is dry, and the 6 miles to Washington Crossing are finished in what feels like ten minutes. 

Martin wants to return to the PA side on the Washington Crossing bridge, then ride over the Scudder Falls path again, to complete a Strava segment. He offers me coffee at his house if I go with him. I thank him, but decline. "If I stop, I'll get cold." 

He turns towards the bridge and I cross Route 29 to climb out of the valley on Washington Crossing-Pennington Road. The tailwind pushes me the entire time, and continues to push me all the way down Pennington-Lawrenceville Road. 

Fozzie needs a bath. When I get home I hose him down, then clean the chain, as the wind picks up over my head, blowing in a new blanket of cloud cover that lasts for the rest of the afternoon.