ride to eric's favorite stop

 I knew yesterday (Saturday, August 16) was going to be busy. The Excellent Wife (TEW) and I were meeting friends in Manhattan for a visit to The Frick Collection (not The Frick Museum, for reasons we were unable to puzzle out). TEW and I don't drive in (or into) Manhattan, so this required the train from Princeton Junction, and then puzzling out the MTA's offerings for transport within Manhattan, with the ensuing time and mental energy investment.

I was gonna do a rant here about Frick, but what you really need to know about him was that he was insanely rich, and while he was as evil as modern billionaires, he had much better taste and style than that shown by the current crop. Not that the latter criterion is difficult, given the tackiness and stupidity of modern evil billionaires.)

In the evening, we went to the show of a very good Eagles cover band, at the clubhouse of our over-55 community. Even though the show was over before 9, it was a long day.

But I'd been contacted by Eric H, and agreed to do a club ride. I used to lead rides to an Italian bakery in Raritan, with which Eric is smitten, so he took one of my routes and agreed to lead the ride. ('Cause I sure didn't wanna lead!)

 Although the humidity was high, the temps were not at the start. We'd been complaining that none of us were in great shape, and we were looking forward to an easy ride, but Eric set a pace that was faster than I expected. It turned out his GPS device was misbehaving, and he realy had no idea what his pace was. As the ride progressed, we settled into a more comfortable (for us) pace. 

 Because of the GPS weirdness, Eric didn't have a great idea of the specifics of the route.  Those of us with GPS devices that were behaving took turns calling out the instructions.

You can see from the ride page that, after about mile 11, there are a couple of climbs. By the time we hit these, the weather had warmed up, and some of us found those climbs challenging (others did not, which may have been disheartening).

We stopped at the bakery for rest and sustenance.

 (The truth is, I really like to stop here. The bakery really is top-notch, and they have Arancia soft drinks... and the proprietor is always happy to see us. I'm a sucker for that.)

The return route does by the Duke mansion, and there's some dodgy maneuvering we have to do... but that's over in a mile or so. But with the heat and humidity, one of our number was suffering by the time we got to the end. We DID get to the end, though, without incident.

I'm going to have limited opportunities to ride in the upcoming weeks; I'm in for minor surgeries and will need recuperating time. I'm glad I got out today.