lying bastard 2023

 Tom never lets a barrier on a bridge out stand in his way.

I don't know how many years ago we did the first one, and I don't remember exactly why we call it that... but Tom H has been leading this ride, now yclept the "Lying Bastard" ride, for years. I suspect we first called it that because we suspected Tom of under-reporting the climb and difficulty, in the days before all of us had access to the elevation diagrams on RideWithGPS.

The elevation diagram for this ride looks like this:

So there's ups and downs, of course, but to me it looks like a general climb for mile after mile, until that long downhill at the end (and a piece of that final descent feels almost that close to vertical).

Tom calls us his "Insane Bike Posse", because even though we continually complain about his routes we keep coming out for 'em.

We start near the bridge in Frenchtown.

...and the first thing to do is cross the bridge.

The climbing starts soon after. Laura OLPH appears to be convinced that the hills in Pennsylvania are worse than the Sourlands, and she may be right, or it may be that we're just not used to them there. 

Tom is known for closed roads and bridges. I don't know where that bridge is from the top picture, but we've crossed it each year. In the past, there were concrete barriers we could ride around, but now there are piles of gravel, making the ride impossible. We made a team to pass the bikes over the barriers.

When I passed my bike to Peter G, he winced under the weight. "Now you know why I'm so slow," I said.

We stopped near the Lake Nockamixon Spillway Overlook:

We also stopped at the boat access.

I loved that guys mostly-spruce-and-cedar kayak.

 Because of the way the route works out we don't do a rest stop at a shop until about mile 34 (on this 44-mile ride). I needed it by the time we got there.

 No, I didn't get any pictures just before that woeful descent at the end; I was too terrified, and I think there was some gravitational lensing going on because of the pitch of the road. But I did raise my average speed by several points, although you couldn't tell by the low average posted on my ride page. 

We'll see what tomorrow's ride brings.