chris c leads almost 50 out of allentown, I fall down and get right back up, and I get a new pump

Both The Excellent Wife (TEW) and Laura OLPH sang the praises last week of the rides out of Jimmy Bruno's in Allentown, so I drove down this morning to do the "B" ride led by Chris C, and to get a pump from Jimmy after the store opened to replace my benighted Blackburns.

Jimmy's got quite the picturesque bicycle graveyard behind the shop:

... which will play a small role later in today's post.

There are two other rides that leave from the shop at about the same time, rated B+ (way too fast for me) and C+ (with whom I'll probably be riding in a few more years), so there were quite a number of riders getting suited up and started, in the lot behind the shop:

... and on the street in front:

Below, the eponymous Jimmy of Jimmy Bruno's; he's in the finals for the nicest bike shop owner in the state (it's a hotly-contested competition, I assure you!).

Six of us were out for Chris's ride: besides me and Chris (of course) were Joe M, Marty, Ken W, and Prem, who evidently has been cuttin' his teeth on C+ rides, and who so impressed Laura yesterday. Chirs started leading us south, on a route that eventually had us in Mt Holly, which was lovely on this gorgeous day. (I didn't get pictures of Mt Holly, but I did get some of our progress there.)

We stopped at a 7-11, with some shade, next to a pond; we went turtle-watching.

There IS a turtle in that picture above, I promise.

The 7-11 didn't have toilets for us, so on the way back, Chris found a park with a porta-potty. The way in was graveled, and graded; at the bottom of the lot, the gravel was deep enough that my wheel dug in and I went over. I got a bit of a leg scrape (that I didn't discover until I got home to shower) and a pain that persists in my hand where I fell on it, but no blood, nothing torn, no damage to the bike - even my bar tape was unaffected. Henceforward, I'm walking on gravel, and I'm forswearing Dutchtown-Zion Road until they pave that last bit; here's my excuse, all pre-wrapped for me.

Other than that, and some seat-of-the-pants navigation that may have added (or subtracted) a bit of the route, we got home without incident on this beautiful day. Chris left us around Crosswicks, but Joe and Marty knew the way back. Y'wanna see the ride page?

When we got back, I stopped in at the store to part Jimmy from one of those Bontrager pumps I'd seen on Wednesday. I bought the Turbo HP tall, and on the way back to the car, I tried it on one of the Schrader valves in Jimmy's bike graveyard, and on the Presta on my bike.

It works great.