gotta get to nixon's

Look: we've had winter around here for about fourteen months. We get one day when the temps are gonna be in the 80's. You KNOW a bunch of us will be goin' on a ride, and it will probably be a long one.

The new Freewheeler online calendar has one downside: with the ability to post rides right up to the time you want to leave, it's hard to make plans on Tuesday for Saturday's ride, because the ride you want to go on might not be posted yet. I didn't see Tom H's Pinelands ride for today until Thursday night. And I grumbled a bit about having to drive all the way to Bordentown, but Tom knows I'm never happy unless I'm complaining.

Laura OLPH was off blowing glass (while I miss her company, she needs to do more glass blowing; it's WAY cool), and only six of us showed for Tom's ride (where were all of youse?): Joe M, Chris C, Ricky G, and Jack H came out.

That's Joe's bike. How did I not get a picture of Joe?

Tom promised 60 miles, and said we'd be headed to Nixon's in Tabernacle, because if you're goin' that way, you're either stopping at Nixon's or you're stopping at one of the Wawa's on 206; there aren't a lot of other options. If you check out the ride page, you'll see we did pretty much that: straight to Nixon's, and straight back.

Well, not quite. Because, you see, when we got to Smithville...

Of COURSE the bridge was out...

...but we're going to try it anyway...

...and when it's impassable, we gotta come back...

...and go across the pedestrian bridge in the adjacent Smithville Park...

...where the road was ALSO closed, but the gap in the fence was wide enough to get through.

And so down to Nixon's, where lot's of people apparently had the same idea.

There's Joe!

I had to get that picture of the tree above. Evidently, it's been spring someplace, even if it hasn't been around me.

And back we came, until we turned onto...

I think this was Philo's Bridge Road, where the pavement looked like this for a few yards:

...until the pavement disappeared completely and we were riding on dirt.

Tom calls us his "Insane Bike Posse", because he says we KNOW this kind of stuff is likely to happen, and we come out anyway.

After recovering from that, I needed a drink. So I took out my Polar bottle with the new sport cap, and pulled the nozzle with my teeth, whereupon it separated from the bottle and leapt from my teeth. I went to try to find it, but I was unsuccessful. I went to ring my bike bell, and the clapper jumped off, evidently to elope with the now-missing nozzle. It was quite an eventful two-hundred feet or so of biking.

One of these things is not like the other.

When I did my ride in January, I wasn't sure I was ever going to be able to do a ride like today's again. Even last week's ride, while good, was quiet; there was little conversation (at least as I remember). Today's ride, though, had the camaraderie that is a big reason I stay with the club. It was a great ride on a great day. I hope you had a good day, too.

late winter in april ride

Tom H's post about the ride read:

• Yea I know it is official spring but it still feels like winter.

...and it has felt like winter, with all the cold and wind. One of my coworkers asked if we should put out an APB on Spring.

Enough of us have had enough of winter, though, that thirteen came out for Tom's ride. I got there early, then Joe M rolled in, then a new guy John whom I just met (but he'd been out with Chris C and Laura OLPH the previous week)... and then either driving or pedaling, people just kept arriving.

(I just wanted that one to be the first picture in the post.)

With a group that big, Tom hired me to sweep. We had a quick discussion about who the ride canary was going to be. (The canary in the coalmine is a sign of the presence of coal gas, because the canary dies before the miners do. The ride canary is the one who doesn't keep up or has other problems, and is the first sign that things might not be going ideally.)

The group were nominally B riders, but abilities were all over the map; we split into fast groups and slow groups, and at several points there was probably a half mile between the one at the head of the pack and me in the back. Slow riders aren't always ride canaries, though; some of those folks can put in that pace for six hours without flagging.

The route wasn't particularly demanding, but the headwinds were. The new guy, John, is a chopper pilot; I asked him how we could turn 90° and still have a headwind, and he actually had a useful answer (serves me right for trying to be a wiseass).

Tom promised us little traffic on a Sunday morning, and wide shoulders on roads that would be new to most of us. Now, Tom has been known to engage in mendacity about things like elevation when he knows the routes; when the roads are new, his reliability is even more suspect. And while the traffic wasn't mostly bad (there was one point at which, I'm sure, we caught the congregation being released from an earlier service), the wide shoulders were not as promised (or at least, not as frequent as I had been led to believe).

The group kept pretty good order, though, especially for a group that doesn't ride together much (like, ever), and for it being this early in the season. We got to some Wawa or other and we were still all together.

The stop was about 32 miles into this 45 mile ride, and on the way back, we fell into the "macho mile" riding about which Laura sometimes complains: the riders know the way back, and make little pretense of riding together. I was sweeping, so I stayed with the folks in the back and made sure we didn't lose anybody... and by the time I left the lot in Cranbury, I was the last one out.

Ride page.

I'll be grateful for some warmer weather, though.

jelly beans, not chocolate bunnies

For years, Laura led a ride, sometime before Easter, that she called the Chocolate Bunny Ride; it had all the hills in the first half, and she'd give out chocolate bunnies at the end to the finishers. And then there were a series of mishaps, not least of which was my crash in 2015 (gory recovery pics here). Since then, she's had "Not the Chocolate Bunny Rides", which have, in the past, had chocolate bunnies anyway... but the routes were better.

For today, there were not chocolate bunnies; there were jelly beans. Perhaps she's trying to exorcise the last of the demons?

Maybe or maybe not. But I wanted this picture to be the first one in this post:

Lookit all that red and black! I think we look like the bicycle equivalent of the backup singers in a soul band (Laura and the Pips, maybe?. Laura insisted Ricky turn around to show off the red on the back of his jersey:

That one's reminiscent of an early-1970's album cover.

Anyway, she posted the ride earlier this week, and Andrew, Marco, Ricky and I came out (as you've already figured out, probably):

Laura wasn't that late; she'd stopped the same place I did for a bagel and the shop was busier than I expected.

Temps were in the 30's when we started and would be near 60 by the end of the ride; a certain amount of wardrobe adjustment was expected.

We were patient, mostly.

We stopped near this abandoned, now historical building, which is I don't know where, of course.

... and began the climb in the middle of the ride. It's not so clear from the ride page (or maybe it is), but almost all of the climb on this ride (except for a few minor annoyances)is in a fairly short band in the middle. Because the GPS screen is so narrow, the distance is compressed, but the elevation appears distended:

To me, it looks like an extended middle finger. Perhaps Laura was giving us one, planning such a hilly ride so early in the season.

Thence down Fox Hill, where there are two places where the vistas open:

...and which was far steeper than Laura and I remembered. Laura thinks it looks worse without the leaves on the trees. I think I need new brake pads.

On to the Oldwick General Store, where we did NOT see the crowds of cyclists at least one of us expected.

The other thing I remember about this ride is that we were mostly silent; perhaps we were dreading the climb (and then recovering from it).

Ah, well. Tomorrow to the Excellent Mother-In-Law's for Easter (the Polish Catholics will NOT have me escape Easter - Wielkanoc!). Glad I got this in; I expect I'll be carryin' some extra pounds on Monday.

this is gonna sound rude

One of the webcomics I've started following is Maximumble. Here's today's offering:

...or you can see the original here.

(I should take the seated guy's advice. Just sayin'.)

fat cyclist jim

In other news, Chris (who led the Sunday ride) forwarded my this picture he took of me at a ride last month. In his sometimes-terse fashion, the email contained only the subject line "you" and the pic below:

I've saved it on my hard drive with the filename "fat cyclist jim.jpg" and I'm using it as motivation to lose a few pounds. Having to buy new pants didn't persuade me, but that gray jacket was hard to find, and I don't want to have to retire it after only one wearing.

palm sunday ride

I didn't know if I should lead this post with the obscure historical marker Chris led us to on Route 130 in Robbinsville, risking our lives in traffic after bobbling around into the wind (so we'd maybe have a tailwind back):

...or the ride down Woods Road, where the few paved places only made the mud feel rougher:

(That dark part isn't wet; it's dirt, and THAT was at the end; the worst of it had gone before.) But I did see this cool barn.

I worked yesterday, and on Wednesday, when there was all that snow, I was off, as was The Excellent Wife (TEW). We spent the whole day doin' chores, because, well, there was all that snow. So I was EXCEPTIONALLY cranky about having to work yesterday, and TEW gently encouraged me (ahem!) to drive down to Allentown to catch Chris C's ride.

Chris leaves from Jimmy Bruno's bike-shop-cum-candy-emporium, and Jimmy makes sure he's open early enough for some conversation and so we can use his toilets.

His shop is one of the few that will work on toy-store bikes, and one of the things we chatted about was whether it was worth it to even try to fix these things. But he's got a few nifty old bikes he's working on.

And there was a nifty cruiser in the window (it's not retro if it's the original model, right?), that I ddn't get a picture of. It's worth the trip. (Spend a sawbuck when you get there; Jimmy's the nicest LBS owner in Central Jersey, and such kindness and community-spirit should be rewarded.)

Chris led (I didn't get a picture of him, but here's our bikes):

and the only other person who appeared was Laura OLPH:

Laura told us the wind was gonna be from the northeast, so we rode in that direction, hoping for a tailwind on the way back. You already know about risking our lives for a historical marker and bushwhacking our way along Woods Road.

Somewhere along the way, we got to "Potholes to the left of me, snow to the right," which got Laura and me onto the the old Stealer's Wheel song. Laura decided that "gravel to the right" made a better line:

Potholes to the left of me, gravel to the right
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you

Laura came up with a whole verse, which I hope she'll remember to put in HER blog post (there's a link a few paragraphs ago where I first mentioned her).

We stopped at a Wawa near Dutch Neck, where I met the most uncommunicative biker; he had on a tank top and tights, and when I mentioned I got cold just looking at him, he shrugged and returned his attention to his smartphone (or it may just be that a smartphone is better company than Plain Jim; it's a reality that I might have to face up to).

After the break, though, we were feeling colder, and decided to head straight back (ride page here; do you suppose I'm ever going to get back up into B-ride ranges again?). I hung out at Jimmy Bruno's for a bit (and spent a smidgen of cash), and when I got into the car, was greeted with hail, snow, and other precipitation. I'm glad it waited.

better rubber band

My Garmin Touring GPS mount is held on by what look like beefy rubber bands, as is the Cateye Rapid X tail light I got to replace the benighted Knog. I got to thinking about those bands: what if they let go? The Cateye is particularly worrisome (Hrmph. You can tell the stuff I worry about!) because it has to be removed each time the light is charged (which is every ride, for me).

Regular office rubber bands aren't strong enough. The replacements are available, and not TOO expensive (for the Cateye; more expensive - as might be expected - for Garmin products; and then you'd have to pay they shipping as well, or have the local bike shop get 'em). But they're just rubber bands. I doubt they're made special for bike products; the market is too small, and it would be more sensible to re-purpose a standard product. So what are they?

I turns out they're O-rings, used in all manner of applications; the ones Garmin uses are made of  a material with the euphonious and appetizing moniker Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer, more popularly referred to by the common graffiti-tag, EPDM. They're usually sold to manufacturers in minimum orders of a gajillion, but it turns out that if you know the size, and have a little patience, you can find 'em in small quantities.

There's still a minimum order and shipping, though. Probably better to support the local bike shop. But I tend to use products long after manufacturers have discontinued them, so I like to know what my options are.

I'm probably just out of my mind. Do you think?