This past weekend I had to go to a family party up in Long Valley NJ. It was a late afternoon party so instead of driving up I thought it would be fun to ride up and have my wife meet me there. There are a lot of nice roads up it that area if you don't mind some hills. I planned a nice 55 mile route that would take me on some nice roads. I had ridden in this area in July when I did my ride to Schooleys Mountain and wanted to go back to some of the roads on my own to take some pictures.Unfortunately the weather was pretty bad on Saturday. I would have done the ride if it was only going to be scattered showers but it was a full out deluge so there was no way to ride. I was disappointed but oh well. I'll do it some other time.
Plan B was to ride with Laura on Sunday but I was tired from the party the night before and didn't get up early enough to get to Lambertville in time. No problem I saw that Ken had a ride out of Princeton going to the Sourlands so I headed out to his ride. The only problem was nobody was there. Although it wasn't raining the roads were a little wet and there was still a chance of some rain so I wasn't completely surprised nobody was there.
At this point I'm on Plan D which meant I was on my own. I really didn't have any route in mind but decided to go to Rocky Hill and start riding towards Round Valley. There were some roads up there that I wanted to explore so that was a good a plan as any at this point.
I headed up Hollow road over the Sourlands. The rain we got the previous day made the stream along side of the road run really fast I stopped along the way and got some good pictures. After getting over the Sourlands I headed north crossing the Raritan River a couple of times.
Some people have asked me if it gets boring when I ride for hours by myself. My answer is always no. For me riding by myself is very relaxing. There is usually some interesting things to see along the way, especially if I am exploring a new area or revisiting a place I had not been in a while. When you ride the roads on a bike things seem to slow down a little. You can heard the sounds of the animals running in the bushes along side the road, see the birds in the rivers or trees and just enjoy the scenery as it rolls by.
Riding by myself gives me a lot of time to think. During rides I have worked through some technical problems at work, planned some home improvement projects, and wondered why Jon Steward does better interviews on his fake news show than most of the real news anchors do (I'm not going to even mention the abomination that is Fox news).
My thoughts on this day, as I rode, turned to Howie who passed away this past Thursday. When I first started riding with the club it was him, Dennis, Don and a few others that really welcomed me into the club and made me feel like part of the group. I became a much better biker because of them and really started to enjoy the social aspect of the rides. That's when riding became fun.
I spent a lot of time on the ride thinking about all the conversations we had about biking, skiing, computers and life in general. I really enjoyed riding with Howie and have a lot of good memories. I hate the fact that I won't be able to enjoy his company any more.
When I got some where around Stanton I started to explore some new roads like Cole and Pinebark which were a little hilly but really nice. I ended up going past Solberg Airport and saw the Met life blimp. From there I headed back south along the Raritan again. By this time I was back in familiar territory and had my route all set for the way back.
That was until I went to cross the Griggstown Causeway. Which was totally flooded which meant an extra 4 or 5 miles back to my car. Nothing today worked out how I had expected or planned so this was just the order of the day. Although I love it when a plan comes together some days it can be just as much fun to roll with the punches.
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