finally seeing friends, and 65 for 65

Group rides for our bike club, the Princeton Freewheelers, have been cancelled for weeks. As noted in Tom H's blog, some of us have been gathering for meetings on Zoom. But it's not the same as riding together.

While they haven't been riding together, some of Tom's Insane Bike Posse have been riding to a meeting point, and hinging out for a few minutes, shouting at each other at a "social distance" (see some of the pictures from this post in Laura OLPH's blog).

I haven't been going. I've been a bit freaked about the whole COVID-19 thing.

But with the governor opening the parks this weekend, I thought I might like to meet the gang. Tom suggested a meeting at a location in Bordentown, 30 miles from me one-way over roads that are not the most bike-friendly. But he talked about a start from the Mercer Park East Picnic Area, a much-more-reasonable 20 miles away, over less-threatening roads. I could make their 9:30 am meetup easily if I left the house at 7:30, and the weather looked cooperative.

I made it so easily that I was half an hour early. There weren't many in the lot.

I decided to make the most of the time by rolling over to the main entrance to the park. It might be hard to maintain social distance on the park path, so I went by road. The entrance sign warned:

but I figured that all would be right in the world because they spelled "cancelled" with two L's, the way I prefer. (Yes, I made a point of getting a picture of the sign. In fact, I got three; this is the best of the lot.)

I rolled back to see that folks had arrived, and they were, in fact, (mostly) masked and keeping social distance.

After some in-person chat, we decided to go our separate ways. Some of them were riding with Tom for at least a while; I was going my own way. As I was fiddling around with the bike GPS, up rolled Peter G, just that bit too late to have met anyone else.

We also chatted for a bit, and went off.

I had only about twenty miles to get home... but I have a sixty-fifth birthday around the corner. Now, among our bike club members, there's a tradition that the old geezers (well, we're mostly in that crowd) should ride their age in miles around their birthdays. Mine comes early in the riding season, so I haven't done it most years, and I decided, since I was on my own today, that I would. Instead of going straight back, I set a route that I thought would add enough miles...

...and it mostly did. I was a few miles short as I was closing in on home, so I turned south as I neared home and retraced my earlier steps (or pedalstrokes), until I got home with just over 65 miles.

Happy birthday to me.