back to normal

 Above, Len C, whom I haven't seen in far too long.

Today I got back to leading a ride for the Princeton Free Wheelers, my bike club. This is only my sixth lead for the year, and I'm not gonna make my goal of forty leads... but I plead busy-ness: selling and buying the house, moving, the trip to Buffalo for the eclipse, the bike mechanics class.

Nonetheless, I had fifteen for my ride, and would have had more had I not limited the group. I had four cancellations, and for each cancellation, I had another rider register within an hour.

I've moved to Monroe, and I had thought to start a ride from one of the start locations near there... but when I looked up rides from Cranbury, I went to the club route library on RideWithGPS. I didn't make an exhaustive search, but of the routes I saw that were the right distance, either I couldn't figure out where the stop was supposed to be, or it was clear that the stop was at a location I didn't want to use, either because we are no longer welcome there, or because they haven't updated their stock or cleaned their facilities in any year that has a 2 as the first digit.

So I decided another visit to Sweet Gourmet was in order, and that meant one of my familiar routes out of the Claremont School. As I noted, there were enough takers that I guess it was a good idea.

And while we did bring it in at the appropriate pace (as you can see on the ride page), we were a strong group (including me, which has not been the case this year). We went easy on the hills, but some of us were crankin' when we were able to do so. It was a fun ride on a great day.

At the Sweet Gourmet:

And I've apparently decided that even carbon fiber bikes can be beautiful.

Yeah, it surprised me, too.

So I'm going to look for some routes that start closer to my new home... but in the meantime, there is apparently some interest in continuing those rides from Franklin. Or something.