This is the story of the Lying Bastard ride. Since it turns out I'm the lying bastard what is included below may be slightly exaggerated or totally imagined but it may have more truth in it than most are willing to admit. I have kept the names the same to embarrass the usual participants.
Here are the cast of characters that I had to deal with on this ride
First there is Jaunty Jim. Who always has a song in his heart. Just don't encourage him to sing it.
Then there is Laura Queen of the Hills Slugs
( Visual (Muppet) Approximation)
Of course we can't forget Dave the cheeky Brit
Winter (no show) Larry
Yes as always Larry said he would come to the ride but bailed at the last minute.
I'm actually happy that Larry didn't make it because the last time he and Jim were together on a ride they broke out into a medley of show tunes that required hours of death metal to get out of my head
Blake, Mike, Joe, and the rest of the insane bike posse were too ugly to include here.
The weather was perfect as it is on all rides I lead. Somehow I just know how to pick days a month ahead of time where there will be no chance of rain.
I first did this ride as part of looking for new routes for my Philadelphia book a few years ago. This is one of those rides that doesn't look bad on paper but when you ride it you find some hidden short steep hills and more rollers than expected that make it feel hillier. When I decided to change the start location to Frenchtown I wanted to make sure I kept the character of the ride the same. On the original ride we had a mile climb with a 10% grade to start then some rollers and then a very short (400 ft) but very steep (20%) grade that had most people falling or almost falling off their bikes. It was the hill where I earned my name.
So of course this ride started with a long tough uphill that was steeper than expected. It was also much longer than expected. And to try and make sure I could drop the
lying part of my name I posted the route on line so everybody would know what they were in for. Of course that itself is a lie because I did change
the real route to add a short loop to make it worst with out letting everyone know I added another small but very steep hill.
I added this extra loop for a few reasons.
First because I wanted to add a similar very short but steep hill to take the place of one people thought we were going to by pass as I promised the group a surprise (surprises are not always good).
Second I wanted to compare the accuracy of my Delorme mapping program to RidewithGPS. Delorme said the hill grade would be in the 15-19% range. RidewithGPS said 7-9% range. I has suspected that RidewithGPS always reported lower grades and elevation gains than reality so I'm sort of happy to report that Delorme was the most accurate and pretty close to reality. It means I can more of these hidden gems.
Third and most importantly this loop was totally unnecessary that confused Mr Garmin and added nothing to the ride but a painful hill. I through about doing the loop twice but did not want to send a certain few in the group into an uncontrollable OCD loop.
The result of all this was that by the time we got to the top of the Geigel Hill we already had well over 1000 feet of climbing and only 10 miles to show for it.
Laura being the drama queen she is just got off the bike and lay on the ground like she had fainted but none of us were buying it.
Dave (who was the one who dubbed me as the lying bastard) made his usual inferred character defamatory comments all the way up the climb. For some reason they don't sound like insults coming from him. Maybe its the accent.
The pay off for the climbing was that we now were at Lake Nockamixion and had a relatively flat ride as we headed pass the dam towards the Perkasie and our rest stop. We stopped at a deli in a shopping mall that has decent food.
Perkasie is a normal small town except for the fact that all the streets are named and laid out similar to central Philly. It also has a Manayunk like section that we had to ride through. The hills aren't as long but they are almost as steep.
From here we headed to the strange but nicest part of the ride. Its wooded with rolling hills, traffic free and even has a covered bridge. The strange part is we go through a area known as Rock Ridge (named for the town in Blazing Saddles) which has a couple of retirement homes some homeopathic spas and an out of place Greek temple.
Once we got around the lake we headed back towards Frenchtown on some roads we had not been on before. Although it was mostly downhill, with great views. we did manage to find a couple short but steep sections which had people calling out a shorten version of my name (i.e You Bastard!!!) The payoff was the last downhill to back to the Delaware. As its name implies Red Cliff Rd is a screaming downhill that we will be doing again. Then it was a short stretch on 32 and we were back.
The purpose of doing this ride is to go some place we don't normally go and try a few new roads. As always the ride ended up being harder than expected so I don't think I will loose my lying bastard title anytime soon and I'm OK with that. Although people complain and call me names they still come on a rides like this because it is always ends up being a stupid kind of fun. Sometimes the anticipation of a ride is much better than the actual ride itself but in this case the ride was a good as imagined. In fact it was so much fun we may do it again it Sept.
