Jennings said, "The recently-released information about Trump's taxes proves he is either not a good businessman (because of the reported losses) or a good American (because of the tax avoidance), and possibly both.
"Those who continue to support him, knowing this, must support him for other reasons. It suggests that their real reasons are racism and misogyny.
"Are you surprised?"
I've been cutting my own hair in the pandemic. I'm not very good at it, but that's not what I want to talk about; what struck me is how thin it's gotten.
My mother used to say I had the best hair in the family, it was that thick; but now it's thin on top, and I have a bald spot in the back that looks like tonsure. It's like the warranty on my hair ran out when I turned 64.
And if that's the case, the warranty on my lower back ran out about six years ago, and it's been deteriorating at an accelerating pace ever since.
Between bad balance and a benign essential tremor, I could use a new wiring harness, too.
On the last Sunday of the month, I like to do a slower ride. We started as an opportunity for The Excellent Wife (TEW) and I to do a ride together, but then the pace started creeping up, and TEW didn't want to do it anymore... but she's come out for the past few. Perhaps I've become better-behaved.
I get a different group on the slower rides; none of 'em are interested in impressing anybody, and they enjoy the conversational pace. I like these rides (but I also like faster-paced rides, although I don't like the competitive edge that sometimes attends those).
New member Eric H has been riding on roads around here that I usually don't, and posts his progress on the Bicycle New Jersey Facebook page. I stole one of his routes, added some of my usual roads to it, and came up with a less-than-30-mile route that I thought might be a good one for my slower, C+ adherents. I hadn't ridden the roads, so this was to be an experiment.
At the start:
Some of 'em were the Team Social Security guys, who wanted to get out today because Yom Kippur is tomorrow, and they weren't planning to ride on a high holyday.
We headed out up to Blackwells Mills Road, and from there up to Somerset. We got split on a left turn onto Schoolhouse Road.
Amol, with his back to you above, just joined the club, and now has to go to a job in California. He also just got married, and his wife isn't going with him. It's going to be difficult for them, and I feel like he would have been good in the club. Here's hoping they are back in the area someday.
From there, we crossed the river towards Hillsborough, where there was another park with a porta-potty, and then down through some of my usual roads, and back across the Blackwells Mills causeway to the start. A little under 30 miles (ride page says 35, but that includes my rides in and out from home), less than 1000' of climb, and just about 13mph.
TEW said it was just right. I'm keeping this route for some of my C+ rides.
Umpteen years ago, Tom H led a more-than-moderately-hilly ride starting from Frenchtown, immediately crossing the Uhlerstown bridge, and heading west, navigating a series of hills around Lake Nockamixon in Pennsylvania. He was perhaps ingenuous about the amount of climb he intended, the number of closed bridges he would cross, and the terror to be engendered by the downhills, and the route became known as the "Lying Bastard Ride".
He runs it every year, altering the route somewhat each time; he invites a number of his riding friends along each time; each time we complain about what a chore the route and ride are... and each year, a few of us go out with him on it.
He calls us his "Insane Bike Posse". One of the humorous "definitions of insanity" is "doing the same thing, and expecting different results", and by that definition, Tom has decided we're insane, because we do complain, but we consistently ride with him anyway.
I can't argue with him on it.
At the start in Frenchtown, I saw this:
Yeah, one portapotty wrapped in "do not enter" tape, and the other on its side. We found trees to fertilize, instead.
Crossing the Uhlerstown bridge:
Tom is known for leading us over closed roads and bridges. This one has been closed for years, but Tom thinks it's just because PennDOT can't be bothered maintaining it.
Except for the weeds, there's nothing to interfere with a bike going across. We've used this crossing for years.
Either I'm getting stronger, or Tom really had misrepresented the ride; the climbs were demanding (like many in that part of Pennsylvania, some rise sharply, but not for very long), but were not more than we do regularly. Some of the descents, though, were scary. There's a section of Headquarters Road that's little more than a path (it doesn't show on some maps). It was a wicked sharp descent on a poor road surface. On the way down, I got a steering shimmy, a poorly-understood and terrifying phenomenon where the handlebars shake back and forth, out of control. It can be managed by either speeding up (no, thank you) or slowing down, but Robert N was behind and I didn't want to risk his rolling over me. I made it to the bottom of the descent still upright on the bike, but my confidence (among other things) was shaken.
At one of our stops along Lake Nockamixon:
New Jersey has one covered bridge that is a reconstruction, but this part of Pennsylvania has real covered bridges that are still in use.
Did you note the wetness on the roads? I can't really say it rained, but there were prodigious amounts of what new Princeton Freewheeler Eric H has christened "mountain sweat". The hills were definitely sweaty today.
We rode for a short way along Dublin Pike/Pennsylvania 313. There was a descent there, with vibration indentations along the right side of the lane for the traffic. I inadvertently rolled onto it, and thought the shimmy was back. I was more careful thereafter.
We came upon this house that had sculptures in the yard. I had to get pictures.
That one above is a cow, made from a household heating-oil tank and a milk can.
We stopped again to take pictures of the lake...
...and to send this picture to Laura OLPH, who had blown off this ride for her glass-blowing class.
How would she know we still loved her if we didn't send some abuse?
This story from CNN is about a town in Wales that lost its broadband every day at the same time. It turns out that there was a poorly-shielded, almost obsolete television that was leaking electrical interference.
When the owner found out,
Jones said the resident was "mortified" by the news and "immediately agreed to switch it off and not use again."
Because he's Welsh, of course. If he were from the US, he would have gone into a rant about his right to use his own property, and damn the consequences on anyone else, before producing half-a-dozen guns and refusing to wear a coronavirus mask.
Tom H scheduled a pickup ride for Saturday. Laura OLPH was going to be driving back from Maine on Friday, and didn't want anything too demanding, so Tom set up a flat 50-or-so-miler starting from Mercer County Park. When we got there, Sue M's ride was also gathering.
There were just a few of us for this one.
We rolled out and headed for the Assunpink. Rochdale Road hasn't improved any, but the lake was pleasant enough.
We did this route. We took a stop at Charleston Coffee, one of my favorite stops (double-chocolate crumb cake!), where I saw this tucked on a corner of a walkway.
Laura's got a new memento of Maine hanging from this bike, along with the moose on her top-tube bag.
On the way back, we tried to get across Miry Run on Holmes Mill Road...
...but it really was impassable. Here's Jack on his way back.
On the ride page, you can see that little appendix where we went to the bridge, and then backed out. A local said that the construction might last to Thanksgiving, but then also mentioned next March. So there.
One other thing I want to mention about this ride: Justice Ginsberg had died the night before, and I wore my custom "Justice" jersey in her memory.
But a guy in a pickup shouted something unintelligible (but clearly unfriendly) as he passed; another left turner flipped us a bird when I "thumbs-upped" in gratitude for letting us pass, and it seems to me a few more cars than usual passed unusually close. I think some of it was a response to the jersey, and I'm retiring it for group rides (except perhaps on Memorial Day or July 4). I may be seeing something that's not there, but I'm not going to put riders at risk.
For this Sunday, I wasn't planning to do a ride. I'd had an unpleasant experience last Sunday, and thought I'd take a week off (or more)... but Bob N wasn't going to get a ride in because of the Jewish New Year on Saturday, so I decided to run a ride.
I was surprised to get eight takers: besides Bob, Andrew A, Alan B, Luis C, Chris C, Eric H, Laura OLPH, and Sophie T all came out (some of them, I think, because Dave M had scheduled a ride that he had subsequently cancelled).
We did one of my usual routes. Eric had a flat, and was far too apologetic about it; he did a good job of replacing the tube with only Chris C and I overseeing (How many Freewheelers does it take to change a tube? How many do you have?)
We stopped at the Thomas Sweet in Montgomery, which still doesn't have the toilet open (we'd stopped once already for a potty-stop - it helps to know where they are along the route).
While there, I saw this dad with his sons out for a ride.
Let's check back in ten or fifteen years and see if we can enroll 'em as members.
