jim's bikes & other business: mercer county juneteenth ride

Today was the third annual Juneteenth Freedom Day Ride, and the first (I think) out of Mercer Park, in support of (among other things) the Samuel McCoy III scholarship fund. They had routes of 35, 50, and 75 miles. I decided to do the 50 mile route (gimme a break: I'm 68 years old, and I'm leading club rides each of the next two days, and this route had over 2000' of climb). I sent around an email to some of The Usual Suspects to see if anybody was interested, and Bob N and Laura OLPH expressed some interest. They became my mini-team.

At the start:

Above in red, telling somebody where to go, is Doug Smarr, the coordinator of the event.

Bob N and I are early risers, and I missed the bit about the start time for the 50-miler being 9am, so we set a 7:30 start time (and we wondered why nobody was passing us -- no wonder, when we were an hour-plus ahead of 'em! Laura was gentle when she pointed out how I'd missed the instructions, despite her not being an early riser).

So we were first to the Bethel AME Church on Hollow Road, which was to be open for visits today. The caretaker was kind enough to let us in.

There was a wonderful story about a man associated with the church whose name was Trueheart. When Lindbergh was trying to buy up all of the local property, Trueheart refused to sell, and penned an eloquent letter explaining the importance of his home to his family. I love it that someone refused to sell to a man so powerful as Lindbergh was at the time.

(Laura pointed out that there were two hills in the Sourlands that were worse than they looked, and this route hit both of 'em.)

At the stop at Sourland Cycles.

(I worked at Sourland for about a month, a year or two ago, and it was not a great fit. Luckily, the staff there either didn't recognize me, or I successfully ditched 'em.)

The three of us decided to repair to the Boro Bean, down the street, for a somewhat better quality of empty calories. Some of the other riders started passing us.

As we were coming back through Pennington, we met another group of riders, and got to talking about other rides, and the Princeton FreeWheelers club. I started a speech about how the $35 dues is less than some of us spend at Starbucks in a month. Evidently I got heated; Bob rolled back to be sure I wasn't involved in a disagreement. On the contrary: there was a rider who apparently follows these blog posts, and appeared happy to meet me when he found who I was. I'm still all flustered about that.

Bob and I cut through the park to save a couple of dodgy left turns to finish the ride, and were able to witness another rider successfully avoid a "left hook" (a car, to his left, that without warning, turns right in front of him; it can be a dangerous experience). We rode along with the fellow for a while to ensure he had no ill effects from the close call, but he appeared fine.

At the end: