ride on a beautiful day

For the last Sundy of the month, I usually post a C+ rated ride (instead of the B-rated rides I usually lead); I started on the theory that The Excellent Wife (TEW) could come along on some of the rides that I lead, but then we had a disagreement about how fast the rides were actually going and she didn't want to come. I kept leading the C+ rides because I liked the people I met on 'em, but TEW wasn't coming.

Things have changed, however, and for today's ride, TEW agreed to come along (it doesn't hurt that she's seen the pace of my last few end-of-the-month rides, and knows she can keep up). Also along came Alan & Gale C, Andrew A (whom I've not seen since I don't know when; he's been off bike-camping on his own), Rob N, and Ed K, who's the founder of the Bicycle New Jersey Facebook page (he's made me a moderator, but with the limits I'm imposing on my Facebook use, I'm doing little in support these days...). Ed had something come up and couldn't ride with us from the start, although he did meet us at the stop and rode with us for a bit thereafter.

Also along can Juan R, a Princeton student, who had a new (and unfamiliar) bike, and who said he was not used to riding in groups.

(He did fine. Several of us spent much of the first part of the ride using our wiles to try to persuade him to join the club).

We did this route (OK, that one includes my ride to and from, but it was MOSTLY that route). I apologized for the long out-and-back on 518 Hopewell-Rocky Hill Road, but I'm trying to manage some variety from that start location, and miss the hills that are on both sides (one of my occasional riders will happily tell you how I nearly killed her by taking her on Provinceline Road last summer when the 518 bridge was out).

We got to the Boro Bean, apparently about fifteen minutes after every other rider in Central Jersey did. We opted not to get drinks or snacks there, as the line was just too long (although the toilet did see some use). Gale mentioned a social engagement and left from there, although Alan came back with us to pick up his car.

Much better picture of Juan, despite the mask.

Juan went home at Great Road (his bike is hi primary transportation right now), Ed headed for Rocky Hill when Alan, TEW and I headed back up towards Montgomery - and then when I called for a turn onto Butler Road, TEW exclaimed, "Oh, no!" and continued up Canal Road to Suydam and back to the school where the car was; she's convinced that her way has fewer hills.

She is undoubtedly right. I know better than to disagree.

almost true

It's not quite true:

Original here.

ride for aug 30

So it's the last Sunday of the month, and I'm doing a C+ ride. My last two C+ rides have come in at just below 13mph, so let that be a guide.

Also, The Excellent Wife (TEW) is planning to come, and I'm not leaving her in the dust again; it gets BAD when I do that.

The route will look like this one, except that starts and ends at Six-Mile Blackwells Mills, and that's too crowded for a start. We'll start at Claremont School, 175 Claremont Road in Franklin, at 8:30. (I haven't nailed down the exact route yet.) Stop at Boro Bean in Hopewell. Sorry about the long out-and-back, but I'm trying to avoid hills AND have a little variety. 35-ish miles overall (maybe a smidge less). EDIT AUG 28 NOONISH: The real route is this one.

The porta-potty at Claremont School is gone. There's reasonable privacy for the courageous, but make your own choices. Ahem.

We'll be at Six-Mile Blackwells Mills about 8:45, and can pick people up there, or along the route elsewhere. Please let me know if you want to do that; my email is available at the original ride listing on the Freewheelers site.

Regular club rules and special COVID-19 rules apply. We're all at different points about coronavirus precautions. Please try to act with concern for the person who's a little more cautious than you are.

You must register; no registrants, no ride. I hope to see some of the folks I haven't seen in the heat and humidity. (I also hope to see some regulars; please don't feel slighted if I didn't specifically include you.)

posted on facebook

My latest post of Facebook says:

I turn into a jerk when I'm on Facebook (there will be those who say I'm a jerk most of the time, but trust me; on Facebook, I'm worse). I've either gotta limit my time here or find a way to mitigate my descent into jerkiosity.

It's got twelve likes. I guess I'm not alone. (It's also got one, almost certainly sarcastic, comment.)

weekend rides aug 22-23

Edit 8/23/20 2:25pm: I just remembered some coolness from Eric H on today's ride; see below.Also, I called Eric "Ed" throughout, and just went through to correct.

Tom H invited a few of us on a flat ride this weekend; it looked like this. Jack H, Laura OLPH, and I met at Tom's house. From there, we ride to Cranbury Village Park.

We went to see who was going on Peter F's and Winter Larry's rides, and to pick up Ricky G.

Although it was humid, the heat wasn't bad. We zipped around Tom's fairly flat route.

The stop came late in the ride; we stopped at a Wawa near route 33. Most of those pictures didn't come out, but this one, of a sign that caught my attention, did:

What other purpose are you gonna use those premises for?

On the way back, we caught up with Larry's ride again.

We decided not to go back to Cranbury; Ricky went off on his own and we headed back to Tom's.

---

For today, I had a ride listed for the Princeton Freewheelers, to do a route I'd done a month or so ago; I had few takers and was gonna cancel... and then Laura, Dave H, Eric H (a club newbie), and Sophie T signed up. Sophie didn't appear, and Laura and Dave said they'd meet us along the way, but Eric was there at the start. We rolled over to Blackwells Mills/Six Mile to get Laura, and then up to Amsterdam Ave... where one of the long-missing porta-potties has been replaced.

Eric took the stop in good spirits.

This wasn't Eric's longest ride, but it WAS his first club ride, so I tried to ensure that he felt welcome and will come back (we can get back to our usual petty catfighting at some future date).

Eric and I got to talking about bike maintenance. He'd had a problem with his cables that was fixed at Kim's Bike Shop, and I bent his ear about parts, tools, shops, and the like. I stopped before his eyes glazed over completely.

Now, the GPS turned itself off TWICE on this ride, so I did what I could to keep it going, and eventually had to stop the navigation (I knew the route anyway).

The route is linked here.

Edit to insert cool quote: There were a couple of points during the ride when we felt droplets that COULD NOT have been rain. We discussed what might be happening, and Eric said, "Mountain sweat". From now on, such droplets will forever be "mountain sweat" to me.

We picked up Dave in Hillsborough, and continued along, until we got to the stop at Thomas Sweet.

At that point, Laura and Dave rolled off; Eric and I headed towards home. He lives close; he may be the only person in the club who lives closer to that Claremont School start than I do. And he SAID he'd be back out on club rides; I hope to see him again.

And when I plugged in the bike GPS to upload the route... it gave up the ghost. It won't turn on. I can't even do a factory reset.

Oh, well. Research and shopping is in my future.

ride for 8/23

Yeah, so I didn't get it together to list a ride last week until late, and there were no registrants, and then we got rained out anyway. Let's try again. More-or-less the same route as a month ago (it probably won't be exactly that, but it'll be close), 35-ish miles; 8:30 start at the Claremont School, 175 Claremont Road in Franklin. Lots of parking. Porta-potty is gone, but if you're discrete and not too fussy... (I've been scouting out a few other porta-potties. What is wrong with me that I've taken on this particular project?)

About 8:45-9 I expect we'll pass the Blackwells Mills/Six Mile lot, so we can pick you up there, or other places along the route. Let me know if you want to do it that way, and where you're gonna be.

Plan on a stop at the Thomas Sweet. We'll go by the site of the shuttered Philly Pretzel Factory; I may need a moment to shed a tear. You can get a pale substitute pretzel at the Wawa, but it's nowhere near as good. (They were the emptiest of empty calories, so I needed to be on a ride to justify 'em. There's one more source I know of, but I don't ride out of Bordentown that frequently...)

The usual club rules and special COVID-19 rules apply. I'll have your phone and emergency numbers when you register, so we can avoid the sign-in-sheet awkwardness.

Plan on the usual Plain Jim low B pace (Al P's C+ rides are faster than my B rides). Registration required; if there are no registrants, I'm gonna go bother somebody else. But I do hope to see you.

opportunist

I had expected to have to get a short ride in early today, because later in the day a visit to The Excellent Mother-In-Law was planned... but while I was on the ride, I got the message not to come, because she was on her way to the emergency room after a fall. I am postponing contemplation of what the outcome might be.

But for the ride, I decided to stretch it to over 50 miles. I might have gone longer on the light and responsive Yellow Maserati, but the Krakow Monster weighs 38 lbs loaded, and the ride was long enough.

On the ride, I got a picture of the sign that replaced the earlier "Black Lives Matter" sign on Canal Road:

...as well as one of the dredging barges on the canal (they were both working between the water plant and the Blackwells Mills causeway today):

I love that the name of the barge is "Palm Beach". Irony.

That garage at the top of Canal Road in Millstone was open today. The guy has a pair of HUGE antlers on stands (I couldn't get pictures of both):

... as well as this nifty car I couldn't identify:

The porta-potty at Blackwells Mills/Six mile is still gone, but the one at the park on Amsterdam is back, as well as at the school before the turn onto Hillsborough Road. I also found a mile-long park on Mountain View Road with TWO, but the park is not convenient - to get pretty much anywhere after that requires a mile on Route 206.

My hopes are dashed about the Philly Pretzel Factory at 518 & 206; not only is it closed, but most of the store fixtures have been removed. I mourn; I know the pretzels are the junkiest of junk foods, with ONLY empty calories... but I loved them, for taste and for associations (they reminded me of an earlier, less-fraught time).

It was while I was stopped at the grave of the pretzel shop that I got the call not to go visit The Excellent Mother-In-Law, so instead of going straight home, I went to Kingston to spend a bit of money at Gennaro's, where The Excellent Wife (TEW) and I went to celebrate the anniversary of our first date. The fellow at Gennaro's lost a freezerload of food when his power went out during Isaias. My little purchase will not make him whole, but it's better than doing nothing.

From there I went to Princeton to the Terra Momo Bakery and got a salami sandwich (if I'm pushing that heavy Krakow Monster around for all this miles, I figure I can afford the calories). And from there, home, and laundry, shower, nap, and awaiting news of the condition of the mother-in-law.

Ride page. How did I push that bike at over 14mph for all those miles?

ride for 8/16

With the iffy weather predictions, I wasn't sure I wanted to post a ride, and this one is going up late, and there's a lot of competition, so I may not get anybody... but I'm posting this one anyway. We'll do 35-or-so from the Claremont School, 175 Claremont Road in Frnaklin, on a route that looks a lot like the one I did about a month ago. Start at 8:30.

The porta-potty that had been at the school was gone last week. You've been warned.

We'll be passing the parking lot at Blackwells Mills/Six Mile Run at 8:45-9; riders-in can hook up there (or anywhere along the route, but let me know to expect you).

We'll stop at the Thomas Sweet unless the weather suggests a stop at the Wawa is a better idea. Neither has toilets available, so we'll arrange those as we can.

Usual club rules and special COVID-19 rules apply. If you haven't ridden with me before, send me your cell and emergency numbers so I can pre-print the sign-in sheet and we can avoid making you sign (and transgressing the whole social-distance thing) don't bother, I figured out how to make the questions mandatory..

Usual Plain Jim Low-B pace, although there will be places to sprint. Nobody dropped. There are faster rides listed for the day, if this doesn't interest you.

Registration required. If there are no registrants, I'll go do something else.

Edit: Bad weather cancels. Don't sign up if the weather is bad.

thoughts on "hamilton"

The Excellent Wife (TEW) and I are watching "Hamilton" on the Disney Network (I can only take watching anything in small doses these days, so we stopped for the night about forty minutes in).

Rap doesn't move me the way more traditional musics do. The poetry plays with rhyme, assonance, and meter (I find myself thinking of Gerard Manley Hopkins). The sometimes-startling images I get from other forms of poetry I have not heard in the little bit of rap with which I'm familiar, (and that's OK, I don't think that's what rappers are trying to do), and what I've heard so far in "Hamilton" has not made me change my mind about that.

It's my contention that American musical theater will become (or has become) a repertory form, the way Italian opera is, and "Hamilton" represents a new form-within-the-form. I think part of the buzz is the novelty, and the adaptation of street music to musical theater. I find that interesting.

One thing rankles, though, and I can't get past it. So far, all - ALL - of the people in the cast are persons of color, EXCEPT for the one loyalist and the by-turns-comical-and-threatening King George. They are pure white.

This is racist casting. There is no other way to describe it. It is perhaps understandable given the history of casting all forms of theatric art. It is racist, nonetheless.

everybody wants to ride

I had to turn away people today.

And The Excellent Wife (TEW), who led a C ride starting only a few miles away from another C ride, led by a popular leader, had a few takers.

I listed a ride limited to ten. I had two who wanted to sign up after capacity had been reached; I invited the first after I heard about a cancellation. (There was another cancellation that I didn't hear about until the ride had already started. Sorry...)

We're doing the thing where I start at the Claremont school, and pick up some at another point along the way (the temporary suspension of the need to sign in has made this easier; I'm gonna lobby for extension of this policy when the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions are lifted, because it's that convenient). So those of us who started together picked up, first Laura OLPH, who apparently got tired of waiting and rode up the route to meet us, and then Dave H, at the Griggstown Firehouse.

Two more were to meet us a bit farther along, but when we got there, there were five. To maintain the COVID restrictions, I asked the others not to ride with us. They followed, but a bit later, I asked them to go on ahead (they were faster, after all...)

We proceeded along the route, and picked up Peter G (we were one down from the ten, after all), he showed us another route through a neighborhood and a path before we got to the ETS property. It was pleasant and added a bit of distance, and maybe I'll do it again (but maybe not...).

On we went to the Boro Bean.

Bike pics!

Those cruisers are pretty, aren't they?

Somebody noticed I had a broken spoke while we were stopped. I stuck it where it wouldn't get hung up. The wheel was true enough to proceed (and I fixed it after I got home; I had ordered extra spokes when I built the wheel).

Some of the folks from my ride went off, and the few folks who met us earlier were at the Bean, so they came along! After the break, we headed on, but with the newer, faster folks along, we split up, and I had to collect the gang and be careful to keep folks together.

At Burnt Hill, about half of my group rolled off, and the rest of us went back to the school. I got to show off a few of those Hillsborough paved paths I like so much.

Ride page.

ride for august 9

Start at 8:30 from Claremont School, 175 Claremont Road, Franklin, NJ 08823. We'll do 40-45 miles down to Princeton, then to Hopewell (with stop there), then Montgomery & Skillman.

If you want to ride in and meet us, we'll be passing the Griggstown Firehouse 8:45-9, maybe. Route here.

Regular club rules and COVID-19 rules apply. As I posted last time, we're all at different points on the coronavirus concern web. Try to act with a care for the person who's a bit more concerned than you are. Masks will be expected to be used at the start and at stops when not eating or drinking.

Pre-registration required. If I don't know you, email me your cell phone and emergency numbers; I'll pre-print them on the sheet and save the sign-in awkwardness.

There's been a porta-potty at the school, and we'll be passing a few. We'll likely stop at Boro Bean, who has had their toilet open (but if it's wicked hot we can stop at the convenience store instead).

Hope to see some of youse.

fsitawafbh

I deleted my Strava account. I haven't used it in years; there's nothing there I want that I can't get better elsewhere; the competitive thing that they promote is no good for me.

As for the title of the post, it's an acronym that Snakehead and I came up with back when Snakehead was Snakehead. The third and fourth letters stand for "in the", and the last five stand for "with a flaming barbed harpoon." Readers with a puzzle-oriented mind and a rudimentary grasp of English profanity will be able to figure out the rest.

recovered enough to lead

You may already have heard that Laura OLPH was in a bike accident this week; it killed one of her bikes and left her person a bit the worse for wear... so when she dropped hints that she was going to lead a ride today, I was all in support. I wanted to be along to make sure everything was OK (although I don't know what I would have done if anything were not).

She listed a fifty-ish mile ride out of Mercer Park East, and when I got there, I saw that people were also gathering for one of Sue M's rides.

Shortly, Laura's crew came driving or rolling in.

Peter G and his daughter Sarah, Tom H, Bob N, Ricky G, Jack H, and Peter R. We went rolling off towards New Egypt.

We climbed that benighted section of Roosevelt Ave to get into the Assunpink (although climbing is better than descending), and stopped by one of the parking areas for pictures.

Damn geese. We need some wolves.

We stopped at Charleston Coffee, which was open (yaaaay!), and had toilets available.

Most of the gang found a place to hang out in the shade.

Laura told us about her crash. You can see from her post that the bike is totaled; you can't see that she's got a bit of road rash, and the most dangerous-looking ecchymosis around her eye, probably caused by the glasses she'd been wearing. I certainly wouldn't call her lucky after having been in the crash, but it might have been worse.

We proceeded home. We rode at a fairly fast pace for this crew; one appeared to be tiring, so we made sure none rode alone. The ride page shows I had an average of 16mph, and I think others might have been faster. We were strong today.

I'm sorry for Laura's bike (it as one of her excellent ones), but I'm glad she was better enough to lead. I'm glad I could go along.