The new Freewheeler online calendar has one downside: with the ability to post rides right up to the time you want to leave, it's hard to make plans on Tuesday for Saturday's ride, because the ride you want to go on might not be posted yet. I didn't see Tom H's Pinelands ride for today until Thursday night. And I grumbled a bit about having to drive all the way to Bordentown, but Tom knows I'm never happy unless I'm complaining.
Laura OLPH was off blowing glass (while I miss her company, she needs to do more glass blowing; it's WAY cool), and only six of us showed for Tom's ride (where were all of youse?): Joe M, Chris C, Ricky G, and Jack H came out.
That's Joe's bike. How did I not get a picture of Joe?
Tom promised 60 miles, and said we'd be headed to Nixon's in Tabernacle, because if you're goin' that way, you're either stopping at Nixon's or you're stopping at one of the Wawa's on 206; there aren't a lot of other options. If you check out the ride page, you'll see we did pretty much that: straight to Nixon's, and straight back.
Well, not quite. Because, you see, when we got to Smithville...
Of COURSE the bridge was out...
...but we're going to try it anyway...
...and when it's impassable, we gotta come back...
...and go across the pedestrian bridge in the adjacent Smithville Park...
...where the road was ALSO closed, but the gap in the fence was wide enough to get through.
And so down to Nixon's, where lot's of people apparently had the same idea.
There's Joe!
I had to get that picture of the tree above. Evidently, it's been spring someplace, even if it hasn't been around me.
And back we came, until we turned onto...
I think this was Philo's Bridge Road, where the pavement looked like this for a few yards:
...until the pavement disappeared completely and we were riding on dirt.
Tom calls us his "Insane Bike Posse", because he says we KNOW this kind of stuff is likely to happen, and we come out anyway.
After recovering from that, I needed a drink. So I took out my Polar bottle with the new sport cap, and pulled the nozzle with my teeth, whereupon it separated from the bottle and leapt from my teeth. I went to try to find it, but I was unsuccessful. I went to ring my bike bell, and the clapper jumped off, evidently to elope with the now-missing nozzle. It was quite an eventful two-hundred feet or so of biking.
One of these things is not like the other.
When I did my ride in January, I wasn't sure I was ever going to be able to do a ride like today's again. Even last week's ride, while good, was quiet; there was little conversation (at least as I remember). Today's ride, though, had the camaraderie that is a big reason I stay with the club. It was a great ride on a great day. I hope you had a good day, too.
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