Tom H has a ride to Belmar coming, so he was doing a 55-mile pickup ride in prep for that today, but I had a hot date with The Excellent Wife (TEW) yesterday, and another one tonight, and I didn't want to risk being overtired by the early start and long distance to it... and I haven't seen the Saturday Cranbury folks for a while... and anyway, I decided to do Ira's ride out of Cranbury today, as did sixteen others.
Well, sixteen to start, anyway. Peter F led a B+ ride out of there at the same time, and we hadn't gone a mile when one of our number split off and picked up Peter's ride. It wasn't really an omen; over the course of the ride, two others went off, but they were heading for home on the way back, so that didn't count.
Here's the route, which includes my 8-or-so-mile ride to the ride from Plainsboro (and my four-or-so-mile ride back). We went over some of Ira's favorite roads; through the Assunpink (more on that in a bit), and down to Phil's, then wide east and north to avoid some of the hills and winds on the way back (although the wicked Cranbury west winds were somewhat mitigated today).
Along with us came an arrant newbie, Christina, who'd never done a group ride before. She did really well, although when she saw that first hill into the Assunpink, I thought I saw her eyes get wide. She kept up, though, and made it through the 42-or-so miles of the ride with only a chain drop for mishap. She made the mistake of asking me an equipment question, though, and had to ride off and talk to some sensible people before I'd even got to chapter six of my usual dissertation.
Oh, well. Tomorrow, to Lambertville for a ride with Laura OLPH and the Hill Slugs.
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