An epic fail of a bike ride

Sometimes a bike ride doesn’t go the way you want. This was one of them.

This was the plan: Get a campsite at Wharton State Forest in New Jersey and head out on bikes to find these “musical robots” made out of auto parts. (Don’t ask where I read about this, but it screamed bike destination.)

My first mistake: Letting Ride With GPS pick the route … and not objecting to the “unpaved” sections.

Uh, this is the Pine Barrens. The soil is sandy. Unpaved is really sandy. And soft. How did I not even think about this??

When we headed out, we were quickly on those “unpaved” roads. We rejected the first one, but we couldn’t avoid them all. We tried to pedal. Unclipped. I still fell once. I’ve got the bruise to prove it.

I became more cautious. If I was fishtailing, I walked. If there were big ruts from tire tracks, I walked. If it was just too sandy, I walked.

I walked a lot. So did someone with a gravel bike. Really, you probably need a fat-tire bike for this part. Maybe a mountain bike.

We finally ended up on the edge of a turf farm with worker housing that umm… no thanks. At least “unpaved” became firmer. Amazingly, no one questioned what we were doing biking through this turf farm, next to giant sprinkling machines that thankfully were turned off. Maybe they just figured we were crazy?

At any rate, I have now changed the default setting on my Ride With GPS route planner to paved. Until I want to go on a trail ride that my 28 mm tires can handle.

This wasn’t where the ride failed, though. Oh no, that was maybe another 10 miles later, south of Hammonton, after being back on real roads and, yes, waiting patiently for a gap in traffic to cross some highways. We were in a small neighborhood and Ride With GPS said the next bit would be 0.2 miles of unpaved. I figured OK, worse case I walk. Except we were staring at a “private property” sign. And there was no other way to skirt the lake. We’d need to backtrack across the highway, go parallel to it until we reached a traffic light, cross again and hope that the road we’d be on wouldn’t be too busy.

It was hot.

We bailed.

Yes, we backtracked across the highway, but then we headed toward Hammonton and food. And to realize now that we were just 15 minutes from our goal.

Oh, did I mention it was Monday? Things seem to shut in Hammonton on Mondays. Even the highly regarded (36th on this list) ice cream place I had my heart set on.

At least we realized it just before biking there.

We did find a cafe downtown that was open and got refreshed before heading back to the campsite. It was all good while we were on the road parallel to US 206, but at one point they merge. Thankfully there was a wide shoulder because 4 pm seems to be rush hour. Five miles of this. The bike gods stayed with us when it came time to turn left toward the campsite, giving us a moment of no traffic in both directions.

We still biked (and walked) more than 30 miles. The route? Deleted.

Monday got in the way one last time. We could only wade waded in warm Atsion Lake (Life guards are off on Mondays and Tuesdays!).

At least we found a Hammonton brewery that was open. This is New Jersey so breweries can only sell packaged snacks — but at least you can bring your own food.

Chicken from ShopRite (Bagliani’s Market, a classic Hammonton Italian grocery/deli, closes at 6 pm), beer from Three 3’s and a friendly conversation with an owner. A good end to a failed bike day.

Tuesday turns out better

Yes we are camping. So there’s still another day on the bike. For Tuesday, we picked a 25-mile ride from Tabernacle through the Pine Barrens — all road — that someone else created. (Our change: Park at Tabernacle’s municipal complex opposite Russo’s farm market.)

An interesting bit of Pine Barrens history — a rich man’s club created by an Italian aristocrat that lasted just four years before ending in foreclosure (was this a casualty of the Panic of 1907?). And then it burned.

We ended the adventure with a detour on the way home to to a highly regarded pizza place that I’ve been wanting to try. Crispy thin crust, tangy tomato sauce made fresh daily on a Trenton pie (cheese, then sauce) with “pinched” (no-casing) sausage — yum!

Only I forgot it’s Restaurant Week in Burlington County sand I could have gotten a free house-made dessert!

Another bike adventure: A bike ride for 3 ‘weird’ pizzas