tew says just right

 

 

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.

 In these pandemic days, it's heard to tell what's going to be open, and it doesn't hurt to plan rides around potty stops. Shortly before the break, I led the group through Colonial Park, where the real-plumbing toilets were open. From there, we went to the convenience store in Millstone.

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.