memorial day all-paces

 Mostly, you'll want to see the photo album on the FreeWheeler website; it's at this page.

But I took a C ride on the All-Paces yesterday...

... which was mostly memorable to me for two things: Anthony G's beautiful Basso:

 (How many lovely bikes does he have?)

... and the fact that we pulled into Allentown minutes before a parade was to start. We did manage to get through, but I think a number of the locals thought that we were the overture to the symphony that was to follow. (I gotta find an alternate route in case we're a minute later next year...)

We did this route. Afterwards, Paul Kimball pointed out a minor correction that will keep us off the dangerous Robbinsville-Allentown Road (county 526), which I will also incorporate for the future.

(Paul, if you see this: that saddle is the Selle Anatomica.)

(I got ANOTHER flat on the Krakow Monster. I need to review the whole tires/tubes situation on that bike.)

I also got a couple of leads for Ramblin' Wrench/mechanic business. I'm starting to get busy; this may turn into something.

cold gravel ride

Above, near the start at the Washington Crossing bridge; below, Martin tells us about a memorial for soldiers who died before the crossing.

 

Friend Peter G invited a few of us on a towpath ride for 12/23 (we're usually road riders, but the cold weather suggested an alteration of plans was a good idea). I went along. I didn't get may pictures, because my fingers were RIDICULOUSLY cold for the first umpteen miles (hint: if it's cold enough to justify a towpath ride, it's cold enough to wear the heaviest gloves; I had fears of frostbite for a while... but I'm typing this without incident, so my fears were unfounded).

Most important to me, though, was the opportunity to talk to a few people I trust about some emotionally-laden decisions I have to make. A few decades ago, there was a men's movement (one of many, recurring men's movements) that advocated for support groups, but the support groups as such never really got off the ground. Some people get their support in different ways from formal groups, and this group of riders is one of mine. This ride was hugely helpful for me.

I came home, though, with several cubic feet of towpath stuck to my bike and my person. I had to clean the dried sand and mud out of the car, and then, because the hose is not connected for the winter, I poured several buckets of water over the bike, and had to wipe down the bags and other accessories. Even the camera, in my pocket for most of the ride, had an accumulation of gook on it.

Ride page.

memorial ride

 Neil C's wife passed away recently. Neil posted a memorial ride for yesterday, so a number of FreeWheelers decided to go along and show some support.

But in the days before the ride, evidently both of Neil's usual bikes had problems; the one he intended to use broke a steerer tube. He contacted Laura OLPH, who included me in the conversation. We decided we'd see if we could get his ancient aluminum Trek into rideable shape, and Laura would bring one of the bikes in her stable along if that didn't work out.

It turned out the Trek just needed some new cables and adjustments to the braking and shifting, and re-installation of the saddle. It took about two hours (the settings of the derailleur limit screws, for example, appeared to have nothing to do with the actual derailleur and crankset that were on the bike), and we got Neil set up for the ride the next day. Neil was Neil: constantly talking, making bad jokes and engaging with us. I had high hopes for the ride.

Neil had put in the announcement that part of the ride "Includes a rail-to-trail (dirt)." I decided that I'd bring the 30-plus-lb. Krakow Monster, the gravel bike with the wide tires. In addition to the weight, it would have an additional challenge: I ride with flat pedals and regular shoes, rather than being clipped-in. I wanted to see if I could do the 57 miles with that setup. (I needn't have worried about the rail-to-trail; everybody else was fine on their narrow, high-pressure road tires.)

Club president Ira Saltiel came out to offer his respects.

En route:

Below, waiting for a tire to be changed. We decided not to offer advice or point out all the things the others were doing wrong.

The rail-to-trail brought us right to the Pemberton Wawa, where we met a Major Taylor contingent from Pennsylvania, doing the Spellbound ride.

To me, the most important part of the day, was that Neil appeared to be Neil. It's clear he misses his wife, and needs to talk about the experience... but he was talking about the experience. He was not silent and withdrawn, which would make me worry more about him.

I wish him well. We should probably offer him continued company.

Ride page.

tew's farmland route ride

 Earlier this year, The Excellent Wife (TEW) did the Farmland Ride, and was smitten enough with the 30-mile route that:

1. she kept it; and
2. had us drive it to make sure she had it right, and
3. made a date so the two of us could ride it together.

We did it yesterday. It's a great route. Given that it's 30 miles (and not long enough that may of my regular co-riders would want to do just this ride), it includes some great roads (including Yard Road, one of my three favorites in NJ), a decent amount of climb which was satisfying to me without being off-putting to TEW (that demanding switchback on Covered Bridge Road notwithstanding), and the Carousel Deli is just about where you would want a stop. It starts and ends at Mine Brook Park in Flemington, with porta-potties. (They're in wretched condition; nonetheless, they're there.)

It was a great day. We went through the Sergeantsville bridge just because we could. I rode ahead on some of the hills, and let her catch up on the flats and downhills.

(And yes, you may have recognized the bike in the pic as the Krakow Monster, the 30#-plus gravel bike. It's heavy, but it's geared way low. And I use flat pedals and regular shoes on it. We did fine.)

After, we went to dinner to celebrate the 27th anniversary of our first date. Twenty-seven years? How the hell did that happen?

I'm blaming her.

first freewheeler ride after covid-19 restrictions lifted.

Today's was the first ride I led after the listing of the COVID-19 restrictions by the Princeton Freewheelers. Some things worked, and some things didn't.

Things that didn't work:

• Despite my reconnaissance last week, the porta-potties at the park on Amsterdam Ave and the ones at Vet's Park in Montgomery were all gone.
• Two riders did not appear to have masks at all. One was not a member. I have contacted the other and asked that rider to be sure to have a mask on future PFW rides until the COVID-19 special rules are lifted.
• I heard from a source (I did not hear the rider say this myself) that another rider said that s/he had lost taste for a while, ten days before today's ride. It is not clear that this is a COVID-19 symptom, but it is suspicious. The rider and the listener were maintaining social distance, and both were wearing masks. (Edit 6/9/20: I have subsequently learned that the rider who reported losing taste was not masked at the time, although had worn one earlier.)

Things that worked:

• Especially in view of the unavailability of toilet facilities or places to buy food, the shorter route (30 miles) appears to have been a good decision. (My ride was longer, but it includes my rides to and from home, and some more reconnaissance.) 
• The members on the ride, in general, were glad to see one another, and did appear to adhere to the special COVID-19 rules, except as noted above.
• One member, new to me, came out; it appeared he enjoyed the ride and may come back. 
• Another who has been an occasional rider may develop into a Usual Suspect; she is also being prospected as a candidate for Hill Sluggishness.
• Even though it weighs north of 30lbs, the Krakow Monster, in its new incarnation as a monstercross bike, did pretty well today. I'll have a harder time trying to use the weight of the bike as my excuse on a slow day after today's ride.

To remember:

• Access to parking at the Blackwells Mills/Six Mile lot is still blocked by piles of gravel. The porta-potty has been removed from there, as well.
• The Philly Pretzel Factory store in Montgomery... the last local one, as far as I know... appears to have closed for good. I know it's only salted white flour... but I liked it as a recovery junk food after rides.  

I do intend to continue listing Club rides (I know other leaders are deciding not to do so), but I intend to be a bit less forgiving for the time being.

recovery & reconnoiter

After yesterday's ride, Laura OLPH had a route planned that was gonna go right by my usual rides, and she said she'd be there about 9:45am today. Well, the meeting place (at the parking area for the D&R towpath, on the Kingston-Rocky Hill Road below 518) was to close to go direct, so I plotted out a 20-mile route from home to there (it's about ten miles direct) including a couple of roads I might want to add to the rides I lead for the bike club. I left a smidge early, and wound up a bit faster than I expected, so before stopping at the parking area, I huffed and puffed my way up Coppermine Road (with the extra-heavy monstercross bike, the Krakow Monster) and whizzed down Old Georgetown, about doubling the overall climb for the rest of the ride.

I waited at the stop, and saw a rider coming up Kingston-Rocky Hill Road. I turned out to be Jack H. Shortly thereafter, we saw Laura.

WE chatted for a bit (Laura's got an idea for a long ride that might be social-distancing-friendly), and then they went off to roll up towards Manville (Jack thought better of it and changed direction after a bit). I decided to ride through the grounds of the old State Village for Epileptics in Montgomery.

I like to come down from the north to Route 518 in that area, and then go to the Thomas Sweet on 206 in Montgomery. There's a stream that runs parallel to 518, and it means there's a dip in the rod and a subsequent climb. I've tried a few ways to find a less-worse way to do it, and I thought maybe if we went out to 601 in Skillman, maybe it would be better, and we could go out through the old hospital grounds and come back on 518. It depended what that stretch of 601 looks like.

It looks like this:

Yeah, there's still that dip and the climb on the other side. I was doing it in reverse today, so I turned around to do the climb, and... nope. Especially with the extra traffic on 601, that's not a great alternative.

Oh, well.

At that point, I had about 27 miles in. I figured without too much stretch, I could get 40 in for a 100-mile weekend, and I had a little more exploration I wanted to do of those roads in Millstone and Montgomery. I came back down Canal Road, and met Laura AGAIN - she asked how my alternative route had worked out, and I replied with an Anglo-Saxon monosyllable to register my disappointment.

(After I got home, I found out that The Excellent Wife [TEW], on her bike trip today, had also met Laura on the road. I swear, neither of these later meetings were planned.)

From there, home by the usual route. I wound up with 45 miles, making this the first 100-mile weekend of the year. Here's hoping for more!

creating a monster

I have a number of Youtube channels I follow. One of the bike-y ones is Spindatt. His motto is "Ride Reasonably-Priced Bikes", which is right up my alley, even if his nose ring and ear gauges aren't.*

*I'm sure, being Mr. Wears-A-Necktie-And-Gonna-Be-65-In-A-Couple-Weeks, that I'm one of the ones who are supposed to be put off and horrified by the extreme jewelry. In the interests of mercy, I assure you I'm horrified. I certainly wouldn't want these folks risking hurting themselves by doing anything really risky to get my attention!

Spindatt has a shed full of bikes in various states of repair, maintenance, and upgrade. One of them, he calls the Rawnstercross, which name reference I sort-of got: it's more-or-less a "cross" (cyclocross) bike made of some pretty raw parts.

But then, why not just "rawcross" or something like that? Is there such a thing as Monstercross?

It turns out, there is. It's apparently a thing. From one of the linked articles:

Monster cross is a bike designed to fill the gap between a cyclocross bike and a mountain bike. A true do-it-all bike that rides singletrack, pavement and gravel well. Key features are rather simple: tires between 38-45mm tires and dirt drop handlebars.

Note that other references indicate that road drop bars work fine, too. And one of the suggested frames is the Surly Cross-Check.

Now, about five years ago, I built up a bike on a Surly Cross-Check frame, with drop handlebars. I intended it to be for a trail-and-road bike, and put 30mm tires on, much wider than the 25mm tires I was running on the Yellow Maserati road bike. I call it the Krakow Monster, partly because The Excellent Wife (TEW) was in Krakow when I built it up, and partly because of the original Krakow Monster.

But I never really loved it. Recently, I did a number of upgrades to it, and I like it a lot better.

But after seeing Spindatt put 40mm tires on a bike that he was building up, I thought maybe I hadn't gone far enough with the tire width. Well, my favorite bike shop needs some business; I'll order a pair of cheap 40mm tires, throw 'em on the Krakow Monster, and see how I like it.

Oh. My. Stars.

I took it out this past weekend on some of those paths on which I rode the weekend before. There were more people out this week, and, to maintain my safe social distancing, as I came upon them, I'd ride off the path and onto the nearby lawn, or into the woods a bit, or whatever.

The Monster just handled it. And with those wide tires (only inflated to about 50psi, as opposed to the 100+psi I run in the road bike), the ride was smooth like buttah.

It's not fast, but it does OK. Just to prove I could, I took it up Coppermine Road (which goes up about 400' in about .8 of a mile, unless it doesn't), and came down Old Georgetown. It was slow goin' up (although I got up over 32mph on the steep part of the downhill).

But it's a great ride. And it goes over a lot of surfaces without complaint. I could just as easily ride it in work pants and flat shoes as I did in full bike-y regalia.

Club riders (when we ever start riding again) will probably see me on the titanium road bike. I'll save this one for solo rides, local chores, and rides at lower paces.

But now I know why I built up this bike.

(Incidentally, the joke among bike-y folks about how many bikes you need is N_CO+1, where N_CO is the number of bikes you currently own. I adhere to a different rule: the number to own is Q_SD-1, where Q_SD is the quantity of bikes you've bought that will get you separated or divorced. I'm currently at that number, apparently.)

not as advertised

Isn't that  great picture of Ricky?

I didn't know until late Friday whether I was going to be able to post a ride for Sunday or not, given the weather predictions... but finally the predictions appeared to clear enough to go for it. I put in for this 35-mile route, thinking folks might not want to come out for anything shorter.

And then there was all that snow yesterday. It was to rain and warm up overnight, but I was still a bit concerned about the condition of the roads, especially that long stretch of East Mountain. Much of it is shaded, and it's either in the Sourlands, or close enough that I'd have to worry about whether the combination o hills and altitude might mean that the snow didn't clear, or there might be black ice on the road.

Laura let me know that she was going to bring Gonzo, a bike that spends most of its life mounted on a trainer, in order to keep wintry gook off the pretty bikes. I decided that was a good enough reason to bring the cross bike, the heavy Krakow Monster. I had thought its weight was part of the reason for my poor performance just before Christmas, and maybe this would be a good way to find out if that really was the problem.

So with the bike and gear in the car, I took a long way to the start, going over Old Vliet Road, a shaded and little-trafficked road on the way to the canal. I saw that there was still snow on that, and it would be poorly passable on a bike.

With that, I made the executive decision to change the route to the one we did. This one was only about 31 miles, but the roads are more open and better -traveled, and less likely to be snow- and ice-covered.

I told my ride partners, Ricky, Ralph (who knew he'd come all this way for a ride?), and Laura OLPH,that I was changing the route. There was not the hint of a grumble from anyone.

And off we went.

Laura's bike has a fussy rear wheel; if it isn't mounted perfectly it complains until you give it attention. We stopped a couple of times while she got it set up.

The rear wheel on the Krakow Monster, the bike I was riding, is like that; I've had the same problem sometimes. After two tries, it was right, and we continued.

We rode mostly into the wind on the way out. I decided to try my favorite bikeway on the way to Veteran's Park, thinking that I'd turn back if it was snowy... but Laura got there first and was already across before I had to make a decision. After we got across, it looked like this:

Even though we got through I'm not sure I'd try it again, and I planned to avoid any more possibly-dumb stuff on this ride.

We passed the creek at Hollow Road and Camp Meeting Ave where there were folks in the creek a couple of weeks ago, but there were none today. What there was, though, was the emu that Laura has seen at the farm at Hollow Road near 518, that I'd never seen... but I finally did today.

How can you not love New Jersey?

On to Thomas Sweet, with the wind at our back for a long stretch of 518. Ralph has his winter bike set up: he's got these handlebar mittens up front:

... and this splash-fender mounted to the downtube:

I think they're both good ideas.

We got back with about 31 miles. Nobody complained about the short distance: Laura likes this route because it avoids the most annoying hills, and Ricky was saying that, in this weather, thirty miles or so is just about a good distance. So maybe I need to rethink that long-enough-to-come-out-for thing.

A disappointment: when I got the bike out of the car at home, I found that one of the brake bosses had broken on the front fork:

I'm not sure whether I'm relieved that it wasn't worse, or not. It means replacing the fork (I could probably have it welded back, but it's a fussy weld, and I don't know who I would get to do it). Replacing the fork is a lot cheaper than replacing the whole frame... but if I'd had to replace the whole frame, I'd have an excuse to get one of those pretty frames I've been so ambivalent about.

In any case, the replacement parts add up to about $200, and I've already ordered them. I'll post progress when the parts come in. (I've also done a whole rehabilitation of the Krakow Monster; there will probably be two, or maybe even three posts upcoming about it.)

Oh, and as for the weight of the Krakow Monster being part of my problem with it? Well, it doesn't seem to have been a problem today. I was probably just hungry and weak on that day before Christmas when I had all the trouble.

So watch for future posts. Or don't; I'm not your boss.

Edit: Before we departed, Laura, who's roundly sick of hearing me count off that I have two years, four months, and eight days until I plan to retire, gave me this card:

It's one of a series of greeting cards made from the dust jackets of old books. I'm going to make it the background on my work computer.

knife to a gunfight

Can you see those Santa-tights on Chris?

I haven't led a Sunday ride in three months. I knew that October would be busy (and it was), and November turned up with a couple of rainy Sundays and a couple of busy ones, and then the Excellent Mother-In-Law had a stroke, and I seem to remember on one of those weekends Tom H wanted to lead, so I gave it up for him...

...and the next thing I know, I haven't led a ride since September 22. Yesterday was too cold for me to go out on a club ride, but I put one in for today. I had thought to ride in from home for extra miles...

... but then Laura OLPH hinted that she might have a gift that she would bring.It turned out to be this bit of vitreous excellence:

...with reactive color bits that change depending on what else is in the neighborhood. I like it.

Laura appeared, of course, as did a few others of The Usual Suspects: Ricky G, Chris C, Jack H, Dave H... and Luis C, who couldn't ride along, because if a bit of morning frantic disorganization (where WERE those goggles?), he left his helmet at home. Knowing that I'm a bike-socks aficionado (or, at least, enthusiast), he ported these excellent Christmas socks, and I had to get a picture before he left.

Now, I brought the other bike. On most of my rides, I use the Yellow Maserati, the titanium-frame bike that is my undoubted favorite. A few years ago, I built up a bike using a Surly Crosscheck frame. I've never really loved it, and I embarked on a project to rehabilitate it (there's a story in that, which I'll write up eventually). Part of the problem was a saddle that I used to like, but don't anymore. I've replaced that with a Selle Anatomica X2 (there's a story in that, too), and I've replaced the downtube shifters with those Gevenalle shifters I like (I don't ONLY like them because they're obscure and weird, but that doesn't hurt). I like the Crosscheck (which I call the Krakow Monster; Of COURSE there's  story in that) much better with the changes... but it's 12lbs heavier than the Maserati.

Nonetheless, I decided to bring it on today's ride. I paid for that decision; I was way off the back on the hills, way off the back at the end of the East Mountain Road run, and huffin' and puffin' when I was climbing the wall on Burnt Hill Road. (In a fit of misplaced compassion, I decided to try to avoid the climb on Opossum Road. The consensus was that the climb on Burnt Hill going to 518 was worse. Caveat rider.)

It didn't help that I underestimated how hungry I was at breakfast. We made a stop at Thomas Sweet.

I made my way through a chocolate-chocolate-chip muffin faster than it took to type the words just now. It must have helped, because after the break, I was doing much better at keeping up with the crew.

Or maybe they were just being merciful.

In any case, I've got a few more changes to make to the Krakow Monster, but then I'm relegating it to solo training rides and rides rated C+ or lower. Pushin' that heavy thing will help me to keep from running away with the pace, as has been complained about (see the last paragraph in the page linked above for September 22).

Anyway - it's good to be back leading a Sunday ride. Here's hoping for some good weather and open scheduling, so I can do more. When the weather is a bit more genial, maybe youse can come out, OK?