just what i wanted to do

Yeah, there haven't been a lot of ride updates. Weather hasn't cooperated, and when it has, real life has gotten in the way. The Excellent Wife (TEW) and I are moving from a town house in North Brunswick to an over-55 community in Monroe (it seems like a great move for us; we're excited, but it's stressful and time-consuming). And I went back to work as a favor to my old boss, who was great to me before I retired... but the job has eaten more of my schedule than I'd anticipated. 

So those are my excuses.

I had some time for a ride today... but my usual crew were doing a hilly ride, with the same route that I had such a bad time on in January. I'm not in the best shape I've ever been in (my weight's up, but I also find sometimes that I ride better when my weight's up, so who knows?), my performance is unreliable (sometimes I'm fast [for me], and sometimes I'm really not, and it's no fun to be the person who's falling off the back and making everybody wait)... and maybe I just don't really like hilly rides.

Several of my usual riding companions are going on a hilly trip late in the summer, and are training for that, and the scuttlebutt is that their rides are going to be increasingly hilly and demanding for the upcoming months. So maybe I'm looking for other rides.

But friend Tom H, who for various reasons isn't up for hilly rides either, reached out about a flatter ride with a friendly pace, and that sounded just the thing. Jack H decided to come, too.

Tom came up with a route from Etra Park that went 40 miles, over roads I don't usually ride on, that brought us close to my current town home in North Brunswick AND the new place (thanks, Tom; now I have some ideas on where to ride from the new home). Forty-ish miles, with only 1000' of climb or thereabouts. The wind was strong for some of it (notably in the last quarter; couldn't you have planned that better, Tom?), and we still came in at a pace in the mid-14's, which is reasonable for this guy who's pushin' 70 so hard it's starting to complain. It was just what I wanted to do.

We stopped at the James Brew, a coffee place in Jamesburg.

It's a shame it's so close to home; it's a pretty good stop. It's nothing on the Mendoker's that used to be in Jamesburg (the three storefronts they used to occupy are still empty (and they closed in, like, 2017, but we still remember them fondly), but this James Brew was friendly, with decent empty calories. I'm not the guy to ask about the quality of coffee (I really do like Dunkin' Donuts best, and that coffee is good, to me, that comes closest to DD), but I do intend to stop there again.

You can go check out the ride page.

(Sigh.) I gotta find some flat routes around here. I frequently say I can get lost in a bathroom, but I need to get some routes.