saturday ride with ira

I didn't hear about any hilly rides today, so I decided to go out of Cranford with Ira S. About 22 other people did, as well, so Winter Larry took a few of them, and I swept of the sixteen that started with Ira. Off we go...

(That's Howie L on the back. Before the ride, he and Ira were waxing nostalgic over their Yiddish heritage, and I spouted off a bit of the Yiddish I had learned from my Jewish friends, growing up in Long Island. Not bad for a lapsed half-WASP, half Catholic.)

Below, at the break, May is going to HATE this picture.

The kid in the picture above, in the Liquigas jersey, and the gal in all red below, came with Ed Post (she's a niece, I'm not sure what his relationship is). While they don't have the stamina yet, they're fast; when they get in shape, they're going to be strong.

 

The last two pics were of folks coming up Rues Lane, and the pic below was at the top. I took off up Rues Lane (my kind of hill: long and not too steep), and impressed the young fellow, Eric, in the Liquigas jersey. Later I had him lift my heavier-than-his bike so he could learn that speed is not all about light hardware.

Above, the other Erich, and a woman we met on the route.

This route includes my not-quite-eight-miles from Plainsboro to the Cranbury start, and my four-or-so miles back. I was slow in the afternoon, but I decided to crank a bit in the morning; I'm satisfied with that 19.6 average to Cranbury (it WAY beats out my canal/Coppermine ride yesterday!).

oddman strikes again

Well, it made ME smile...

From today's Oddman.

bike pics at oddman

Another bike pic day at Oddman; go check it out.

(I love the determination on that first girl's face, and the glee on the other.)

good graphic

That was the graphic for the just-passed Princeton Freewheelers Bicycle Event. It's great.

It's so much better than the club logo:

... which looks like an ad for the League of American Bicyclists ( and even they have updated their logo).

I'll grump some more about this in a future post below.

I saw in the most recent newsletter that an order of Monkey Mirrors did not sell as well as expected, and there was some thought that the Freewheeler logo, above, was part of the reason for the lack of interest. I cannot speak for anyone else, but that's the reason I didn't get one. As a long-time, irritating mirror advocate, I would certainly have gone for a club mirror, except for that graphic.

My other complaint about the club graphics is that they frequently make reference, direct or indirect, to Princeton University. I'm careful not to claim affiliations to which I'm not entitled. So an item with the name "Princeton" on it, which is orange and black, or which refers to the tiger mascot, seems to me to pretend to such an affiliation.

I'm not now in the market for a jersey. I've got more than one orange one, but they don't say Princeton (and no one would mistake my most recently-acquired orange jersey for a University-affiliated item).

When I AM in the market for a new bicycle jersey, I'm more likely to go for one with a graphic similar to the one for this year's event, rather than one with the current logo.

As for avoiding inadvertent affiliations with Princeton University, I'm fairly sure I'm the only person in central Jersey who feels the way I do. de gustibus...

lewis black disses rick perry dissing new york

I just stumbled across this. It's too good to pass up.

No further explanation is needed.

I got it from Daily Kos.

post-event ride

Leader Ken G just doesn't get how hopeless I am at navigation. We did this ride today, which was very similar to the other two rides I've done with him, except for a very excellent side trip off 518, up to Skillman Rd, then up to Long Hill, so we could come down a nifty descent (more later) on Hopewell-Amwell... well, anyway, it was similar to the other two rides, and I could have told you that once we were on those roads... but I still couldn't have found the route, without a cue sheet, a map, two compasses, and a baggie full of Valium.

I need to brag about Hopewell-Amwell, though. In addition to my hopelessness at navigation, I'm not a great descender (although I can hold my own going UP the hills). But that stretch of Hopewell-Amwell is just the ticket: long, steep... and straight, so I can see that there's no traffic comin' to pick me off. Yes, that is a top speed of 41.9, one of the count-'em-on-one-hand times I've broken 40mph.

We started with nine, and finished with six: two decided they wanted a shorter route, and one broke off as we got close to home. But it was a well-matched, and fairly quick (for a hill ride) group; we averaged 15.5 for this hilly ride. Only one was falling off the back; he was complaining of feeling like a cramp might be coming, and you can't always control those things.

I'm not going to try to remember names: you'll see Barry and Paul in the pictures below, and leader Ken, and Bruce, who's ridden on this ride a number of times, and whose hill-climbing skills are improving at a frightening pace. The pictures are not great (and you only get about half of them). If the way to get good at doing hills is to do hills, and the way to get good at riding into the wind is to ride into the wind, I'm hoping that the way to get good at bicycle pictures is to take lots of bicycle pictures.

working the walnford rest stop

The Excellent Wife (TEW) and I worked the Walnford rest stop for the Princeton Freewheelers Event today. Some pictures:

Above, Cheryl M & TEW.

Jack, Al, & TEW.

Above, a view from Fred's booth. He's the owner of Bicycle-Pro, and provided mechanic support at the stop. If I lived closer, I'd probably patronize his place; he was friendly and knowledgeable.

Shiny, lugged, steel frame. Nice.

The guy above deserves his electronic shifter.

In the white hat on the left is Harri, Jack's wife; she was the other volunteer at the stop.

Traffic was slow; I'm sure the weather kept some riders away. But we had a good team at the stop, and we were able to help a number of people.

I didn't get pictures of this, but the ground was sandy, and the grass had been cut recently. Jack and I left out our car snow brushes so riders could clean out their cleats (it was a problem early in the day), and for a while, I had a thriving business hosing off riders' rims and brake pads. TEW would have taken tips for me, if any had been offered. But it was along day, and I was glad to go home when we broke up around 3:00 (we had been there since 7:30 am).

I need a ride, though. Here's hoping for good weather for Ken G's ride tomorrow.

opinel knives

One of my favorite suppliers of new stuff for old, old-looking, or old-feeling bikes, Velo-Orange, posted in their blog that, "We've decided to start stocking a few items that are not directly bike related, but that we've used and really like."  The first of these is a selection of Opinel pocket knives.

From the Wikipedia page about Opinel knives: "Originally sold as a simple working man's knife, the Opinel has since become an iconic symbol of French culture and lifestyle." I've got two of them: one my father gave to me years ago, and one I found in his house after he died. Mine are stainless steel. Knife purists say that the carbon steel (above) takes a better edge and holds it longer, but I've used my stainless ones for everything from cutting vegetables to shaping molding to cutting sheetrock, and I've never had a problem with the edge. One of mine, in fact, has lost about 1/8" of the blade from repeated sharpening.

These are great knives. In an age when gentlemen carried a knife and a handkerchief, for Gallic men, these would have been the knives of choice.

I'd call these "cool tools", but Kevin Kelly has a de-facto trademark on that phrase.

on gay priests, pope asks, "who am i to judge?"

Well, I'm just thunderstruck.

According to this article in the NY Times:

Striking a breathtakingly conciliatory approach to a hot-button issue that has divided Catholics, Pope Francis on Monday said that he would not judge priests for their sexual orientation. “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis said, according to media reports.

!!


Words fail me.

justice jersey

I don't know exactly where it started.

Maybe it started when I noticed that the NeoCons and "family values" folks always co-opted the American flag for their side of any politico-cultural argument.

Maybe it started with the re-election of George Bush, which proved to me that American Christians were willing to ignore pretty much everything Jesus said about taking care of the poor (that was one of the last straws breaking my belief in any kind of god, too).

Maybe it started when I noticed that at the Memorial Day and July 4th rides, some of my fellows had USA-related jerseys on. I thought that was a good idea, and, when a couple of my solid-color jerseys died, I thought I'd get a similar jersey.  But too many of them were either military-related (I have no military history), or were "liberty" jerseys... and, thanks in part to the TeaBaggers, that word has a meaning I can't support.

I needed another kind of USA jersey.

I found this jersey printer, ScudoPro, that will print a "partial-custom" jersey on one of their templates. They'll do a run of any size (including just a single one) and the cost is reasonable (and I'm cheap; if I say it's reasonable, it is).  If you look at the page, you'll see that most of the templates are pretty boring, but one is a USA flag design.

I decided that the word I wanted to face-off with "liberty" was "justice". It's in the pledge, and it just felt right. I went with this design:

And if anybody asks, I'll tell them that without justice, they won't keep their liberty. That a democracy that tramples the rights of the minority is just another form of tyranny. And that if all they want is liberty, they might not really want to live in society of other people.

(By the way, ScudoPro also has pre-printed jerseys, some of which are barfy, but some are cool. I got one of those, too. Check 'em out,)

music to my ears

At one of the rest stops on yesterday's ride, we were approached by a young woman (hey, I'm 58; they're almost ALL young women) who was asking about bikes and group rides. I gave her a club card, and we had some suggestions... but the reason I remember her is that she had the most wonderful Queens accent; I could have listened to her all day.

I would not rule out the possibility that the reason I love that accent so much is that my mother hates it.

joe's ride to the sea

Although Tom H had a ride scheduled for Schooley's Mountain for this weekend, with lots of climbing, early in the week Joe M sent out an email that he was leading a ride from Etra to Belmar. A couple of my friends, including Laura OLPH and Dave C were planning to go on that ride, and I got to thinking that I mostly like the club rides because of the people I ride with. Then Laura emailed that she wanted to do some extra miles, to make it an 80-something mile day in preparation for her plan to do the 100-mile ride at the Princeton Freewheelers Event next week, and so it was decided.

I met Laura behind Cliff H's office at some ridiculous hour this morning, and we rode to Etra to meet the others who were coming. Here's leader Joe and Laura:

Joe B had ridden in from Cranbury...

... and Mary F was getting her first few miles of the day:

So off we went.

(I still haven't got the photo thing down. Laura tells me Chris C can take pictures over his shoulder; I tried that, and here's about the only one that worked:)

(I hope you can see Laura's grin in that one.)

Dave C couldn't come, complaining of illness; I later chatted with Joe about determining how sick Dave was, so I know whether to send the "hope you get better" email, or the "hey, I changed my plans to go on this ride to see you, and you didn't even show up" email.

It was a great day. The heat of the past few weeks had broken, and the threat of rain was holding off until tomorrow. We did this route (link includes Laura's and my extra miles back from/to Plainsboro).

We went to the little mall that includes the Dunkin' Donuts and TR's in Belmar.

We spoke to the owner, who said that, despite Storm Sandy, it was being a pretty good year; evidently, the only thing that makes the difference is the weather: people come out when it's nice, and not when rain is predicted. Despite all the heat, last week was pretty good for him.

And Belmar is just a delight, a circus, even at 10:30 in the morning (which is about the time we were there). Young people trying to look older and more experienced than they are, older people trying to look like kids, lots of skin showing (some of which you wish weren't showing so much), planes trailing signs, parasailing, kites. We saw the beach, and came back.

On the way back, at one point we were chatty and bunched up , and a couple of pickups were stuck behind us; one, as he passed, shouted at us to get off the road. Remembering something I had posted to when this blog was new, I shouted back, "Purple Lampshade Asparagus!" I don't know what effect it had on the driver, but the five of us had a lot of fun with it.

And so back to Etra, and then Laura and I went back to Plainsboro. John B had planned to ride back with us part of the way, but it turned out he turned off fairly quickly. Laura had gotten a call that some mouse brains at her job had suffered ill effects; they were, in effect, cooked. Here's hoping that the fault lay with someone other than Laura.

Probably no group ride tomorrow; The Excellent Wife (TEW) insists that we've been together for nineteen years (I don't believe it myself). The anniversary of our first date is somewhere around this time of year, so we're off to the Washington Crossing Inn tomorrow to celebrate. She'll try to prove to me that we actually HAVE been together that long, and I'll continue to point out that all of my past relationships have fallen apart much sooner than that; how can this one have lasted that long?