Teamwork

One of the most important questions I need to answer every week is where am I going to ride and do I want to lead. I usually have a couple of ideas of where I wanted to go. This week I wanted to do a hilly ride but wasn't sure where. Laura emailed me to say she wanted to go to the Fuel Factory in Flemington. I had route from Rocky Hill that would have worked but Laura also wanted to visit Lower Creek Rd which had been fixed an repaved after the flood took out the road a couple of years ago. I didn't want to go over the Sourlands to Flemington then down to Lower Creek and back over a couple of hills to get back to Rocky Hill. It would have been too many miles and too much climbing for this early in the season. So the solution is to start from Prallsville Mill. 

 I told Laura that I would work on a route but was busy at work and had to spend a day at my fathers so by the time I started to come up with a route Laura already had sent me one. It would go straight up to the top of Federal Twist. If it was later in the season maybe but I don't have the legs to do that so I said a definite NO!

Here next try had us going up Warsaw which is one of the easier ways up the hill from the Delaware so I took that route and made a few changes to my preferred roads and listed the ride. 

On the day of the ride Jim got to Prallsville Mill first because he is always a lot early. He found that the parking lot was closed for a private event. He called me and I decided to move the start to Bulls Island which is just up the road. He stayed at Prallsville Mill until I got there and directed people to Bulls Island. When I got there a few minutes later Jim and I made a few phone calls to let people know of the new starting point. With out much trouble we were able to get all of the people on my ride to Bulls Island and only started the ride a few minutes late. 

We did this route which was hilly but about as easy as I could make it in the area we were riding. Even though I haven't done a lot of hills I didn't have a problem going up the hills. I was just a little slower than the rest of the people. The weather was almost perfect with bright sun and 60 degrees and for once there was not a lot of wind. 

Fuel Factory was busy and made a good stop. I used to the roads Laura suggested to get into and out of Flemington and it was we didn't run into the normal traffic we usually do so I will use these road again if we go back that way. 

On the way out of Flemington we went through a couple of neighborhood roads that were a little steep but quiet. For once on one of my rides there were no road closed or bridge out adventures. When we got to Lower Creek the road was nicely paved. I think they moved part of it farther away from the creek so that the next flood won't take it out. 

So although I led this ride I had some help from Laura and Jim to make sure we had a good ride.