Wanted to do a longer ride this year, and I wanted to ride from home on a new route I drew up, a metric century (100 kilometers / 62 miles). I realized there were some tricky traffic areas on this route, so an early Sunday start seemed best. This being the last Sunday of the year, today was the day. I knew it would be cold (mid-20s to start), and it sure felt like it. This led to some surprises. When I rode around patches of ice on the Blackwood rail trail blacktop, I rode onto the grass but broke thru the icy crust and got my rims wet. When I next squeezed the brake levers, nothing happened. *urk* The brakes didn't work - my rims were iced over, and stayed that way for a while. Shortly thereafter I went to take a drink from my water bottle, but nothing came out. Again, iced over. Eventually, the temp did rise to a couple degrees above freezing, but not until after I went for my iced-over water bottle to ward off a charging dog (which didn't go beyond its property line, thankfully). Was on some roads with cool names: Breakneck, Bridgeton Pike, Commissioners, Lincoln, Whig Lane and good old, ye olde Kings Highway. Scared up a great blue heron in livestock country (Pilesgrove) on way-down Kings Highway (I like having a quiet freehub - no ratchet sounds when I coast). Stopped at a Gibbstown convenience store when my quads were hurting and my energy was flagging, and did something unusual - bought candy. Man, that Reese's Fast Break is one hell of a treat. I started to question whether my quads would last the whole ride, and they started to cramp when I got to Mount Ephraim, just a few miles from home, but standing out of the saddle and stretching kept things together. And all's well that ends well, as someone once said.