Princeton

I’d never seen Princeton, NJ, and I’d always wanted to. As Mike and I left the New York area we had two choices on routes. The first had us following the Adventure Cycle Association strip maps that would take us into the boonies of western New Jersey to the Delaware River. Our option was to scratch the Princeton itch and go down the center of the state on numbered, secondary highways. Princeton won. Mike too had never seen the city, and since we had a family member in his senior year at the university, it was a slam dunk.

Midway through the day at a Baskin Robbins stop, we made reservations at a hotel in what we thought was Princeton. Well now, I’m here to tell you there’s Princeton/Princeton and there’s Princeton/Monmouth Junction, and the hotel was in the later. This we suspected when we looked at out GPS directions, which told us our destination was 17 miles away, and the road signs which told us the city was 12 miles.

As we approached the hotel, which turned out to be on six-lane US Highway 1 across from a covey of big box stores, we called to inquire about an on-site restaurant. The answer was no. So there we were at 7pm, after close to 50 miles of pedaling, outside at a Subway sandwich shop, eating dinner and listening to freeway noise.

The motel proved to be satisfactory, if poorly located, and required a five mile ride into town for a Starbucks the next morning. Serendipity is indeed a two way street.

To be continued