(no subject)

My longterm biking goal has been to ride from home to Princeton, about a thirty mile trip. The advantages of that specific destination are that it's Princeton, it's a lovely town to spend a little time in, there's a near direct route that's almost entirely on the Delaware and Raritan Canal Trail, and there's a train station there that takes me nearly directly home, so I can go all out without having to save anything for the ride home. I've done a few rides over the past few years on the Canal Trail where I went about halfway to Princeton and then turned back. But I decided this weekend would be a good time to do the whole trip.

It wasn't entirely perfect, unfortunately. Ideally I would've done the ride yesterday, which would have given me a day to recover before going back to work, and also as I discovered last night, bikes are not allowed on NJ Transit trains on Memorial Day (I guess because they run less trains and the trains are therefore more full than normal weekends, so they don't want to take up the space). But my ISP scheduled yesterday morning to come replace my cable with fiber, so there went the whole morning (in point of fact they offered me an 8AM to 11AM window and then the installer arrived at 10:50AM) and so I decided to do it today.

It was a beautiful day. The first segment of the trail was closed as they continue to fix a spillway damaged in last year's flooding, but I bypassed it and got on the trail as soon as I could. The first couple hours (until about 10AM), the trail was pretty empty, but traffic picked up a bit as time passed. For half an hour or so I found myself behind a group biking trip of about twenty people. There were lots of pretty birds and butterflies and other wildlife. [Insert descriptions from someone more knowledgeable than me. I overheard the leader of the biking group saying that all the lovely white flowers in bloom were wild roses.]

I was only about six miles from Princeton (so about 25 miles into the trip) when my rear tire went flat! That was fun. Fortunately I had a spare inner tube, my portable pump, and all the wrenches and tools to change the tube. But the fifteen minutes of sitting while I fixed the tire gave my muscles time to tense up a little. I took it very easy the rest of the way, stopping for lunch overlooking Carnegie Lake before peddling through downtown Princeton and making my way to the train station. I parked my bike at the station and headed home. In a bit I'll drive down and pick it up.

I had a lot of fun! Now that I know I can do it, I want to do it again on a day where I actually can take my bike on the train. Also, now that I know I can do it, I feel more comfortable reaching out to friends in the Princeton area to see about meeting up when I make it.

Also I am now even more excited about my bicycle multifandom vid.