ECG Day 2: In The Footsteps of Ida

Note: This entry is for Wednesday, September 8

 I started my crash diet last night.  The plan is to lose, oh, ten pounds or so before we hit the Hills of Connecticut. Grilled chicken, steamed broccoli, and canned, mushed carrots were the order of the day.  “Would you like rolls or biscuits with that?” the waitress asked.  “Yes,” I answered, in a moment of weakness. Bill on the other hand, ordered the “All-Day Farmers Breakfast Platter.” I could see his eyes light up from behind the stack of hot cakes and bacon as several plates landed heavily on the table before him.

Today was supposed to be fairly easy - 60 miles, but most of it along the bucolic canal trails adjacent to the Delaware and Raritan rivers.  A mere jaunt. Turned into one of the hardest days we’ve ever done, without question.

It started out okay, if not a bit oddly.  A trio of American egrets played hopscotch with us up the Delaware canal for the first half mile or so, which was delightful, but litter and abandoned shopping carts hinted at a substantial homeless population nearby.  Up ahead, we could just make out young man with a shopping cart, stacked to the rafters with clothes, struggling to get across an active  rail line.  His cart was high-centered, and he was pacing up and down the railway, unsure of what to do.  Bill and I pulled up, and between the three of us we were able to muscle it over the tracks and send him on his way.  The remainder of the Delaware canal ride was pretty typical - a couple of dirt tracks through a green tunnel of vegetation - and we made good progress, admiring the occasional heron along the way.

We had just exited the trail and stepped foot onto the bridge crossing over into Trenton, New Jersey, when a wild-haired, flip-flopped guy came hollering up from behind, “Hey, I’m into this stuff, and I just saw your bags and everything, and I was just wondering where you are headed!”  Our first groupie. “Boston,” we said, “On the East Coast Greenway.”  He tipped his head back and held his chin. “Hmm... I’m just trying to think of the best way to get there,” he pondered, staring at the clouds.  “On a bike,” I desperately wanted to reply, but opted to be good. “Uh, that’s okay, we know where we’re headed.”  “Let’s see... you could... well, I know there’s a nice trail this side of the river that a lot of people ride,” he offered.  “Oh yeah? That’s interesting, thanks, but trust us, we know where we’re going. We have maps and everything.”  It quickly became obvious that this guy could talk all day if we let him, so we ended up having to abruptly take our leave, using the rainy weather forecast as our out.

It was the other side of Trenton on the Raritan canal where things went to pot.  The trail was rutted and covered in piles of loose sand and gravel. Bill and I both had the same thought at first - “Wow, New Jersey must really be hurting... I can’t believe they don’t maintain their state parks better than this. “  Our bikes clattered and rattled and slid sideways as we cranked our way through at a snail’s pace. Bill eventually hit on the idea that we could make better progress if we rode right through the vegetation.  It wasn’t long before the real picture dawned on me - those piles of sand and loose gravel weren’t “piles”, they were sedimentary bed forms. A substantial current of water had coursed right down this trail, stripping what had been a nicely packed surface and exposing the foundation below.  This was Hurricane Ida flood damage.

The further we rode, the worse it got. Trees were down,  blocking our way. Sections  of trail and roadway not just eroded but flat out gone.  Huge escarpments and deltas of deposition crossed the trail, forcing us to get off and walk. Our pace was miserable. Every inch jarred the teeth out of your sockets. My triceps ached and my palms blistered from clutching the handlebars so tightly.  If we made 5 mph,  we were doing good, and we had twenty miles of this to go. 

When we hit the mud is when we bailed out. All around us the vegetation was coated in dried mud, up to about eye level. The trail itself was thick with mud, but a truck had driven through, and we were able to navigate slowly down his tracks until we came to a bridge that hadn’t been obliterated or buried in flotsam.  Across we went onto the adjacent canal road, checking our maps to make sure it was going approximately where we needed to go.  We were in luck -it followed the canal most of the way.

You cannot believe what  a relief it was to get on that road, and see double digits on our speedometers again.  The road itself was covered in fine red clay, and as the cars passed, they’d kick up a cloud that you could taste in your mouth. We had to wander around for some extra miles, backtrack/reroute a few times,  implore Google for assistance more than once, but we eventually got to the end of the canal segment, and pointed ourselves toward the hotel, still some 10 miles away. 

At which point Bill got a flat tire.

There are so many stories from this day - more than I can fit in here - but here’s my favorite.  Bill fixed that tire in no time.  I was very impressed, and told him he was getting to be a stone cold pro at this.  “I even patched my other tube last night,” he added, proudly. Nice.  A little bit further down the road, I was asking him for a mileage check to see how far he thought it was to the hotel.  “I don’t know,” he said, “I put my wheel on backwards and now the odometer doesn’t work.”