The Frozen Bastard Ride

I didn't really expect a crowd since it was cold with possible snow flurries but they all showed up anyway. I had sent out an email late Friday to the usually suspects after trading some emails with Laura and Jim earlier in the week. I had to ride Saturday since I was busy on Sunday and I had decided to do the Lawrence Hopewell trail. I knew Laura would be coming since she was desperate for a ride after spending a couple weeks in England off the bike.

By Saturday morning I got replies from almost everybody and when I got to the starting point Dave, Joe, and Jim were already there. A few minutes later the other Jeff L surprised us by riding up followed by Laura who also road in about 5 minutes later.

With everybody showing up it felt like one of our normal summer rides expect for the fact that it was 31 degrees, we were all on mountain or cross bikes and we were riding through the woods on gravel instead of the roads.

The Lawrence Hopewell trail is well laid out trail and a good way to get some miles in the cold. Its a series of connected paved paths, gravel paths and roads that take you through Lawrence and Hopewell. You can see the trail map HERE.

We did a 20 mile loop starting at Princeton Pike just south of Province Line and then headed through Lawrenceville up to Rosedale Lake and Pennington before circling back through ETS. It was cold and didn't get much above freezing for the entire ride but once we got moving I was mostly warm.

Most of the trail is well maintained and it goes through a lot of the locale parks so it is somewhat scenic. The only issue is that the trail is a little mushy in areas and because of the recent snow and cold weather there was some ice we had to deal with.

Despite the cold and ice it was nice to have a ride with most of the regulars and hear them bitching and moaning about me about getting lost which I kinda did when we road around the roundabout at the hotel in ETS. I eventually got back on the trail and we made it back to the start where Laura distributed some chocolate from her trip. I don't plan to have any rides in the book for the winter but hopefully we can do some of these adhoc rides and get together as the weather permits.