Our year began in Littleton, New Hampshire. Well, actually no -- our year began around the pellet stove at Meg's parents' house in Chittenango, New York. But our home was in Littleton, so at least we were figuratively there.

The year started with some gorgeous cross country skiing conditions:

But it wasn't long before we visited New York City. Thus began our darkest hours of 2025:

But we hadn't gone totally insane yet. I devoted myself fully to Littletonian things like bicycle maintenance:

...more cross country skiing:

...and expensive eggs:

We took some time to relax at our local haunts:

And I exploited the local trails to the utter maximum, even opting to cross country ski instead of downhill ski because prkr trails are just. that. good:

But I failed to see the (substantial!) value in our mountain home. So we visited NYC again to view some apartments to plan our next move:

There were some highlights of the spring, though. For instance, some very very good friends of ours got married:

And Meg's parents visited us in our lovely mountain home before we descended into the flatlands:

On a trail run, I saw a remarkably cute house right next to my favorite trail entrance removing some trees. I shrugged, thought "tree removal is why this town is going to the dogs", and moved on. I wonder who lives there now?

And then, like the fool that I am, I hopped on a train and moved to the big city:

Meg soon joined me in my massive monumentally boneheaded mistake. Good on her for sticking with me:

I soon adapted to working in office again, bicycle commuting across the Brooklyn Bridge and up the West Side bike path:

And before long we settled nicely into our tiny box in the sky:

Returning to Vermont in the Spring for a combined Kooky Pins birthday gathering was a nice highlight of the spring:

And Meg and I managed to find niches of fun in the big city:

We returned to upstate NY for my dad's wedding, though as per usual we entirely forgot to get a photo until we got home to Meg's parents':

And then it got hot in NYC. So we started to spend nights playing video games instead of venturing out into the sticky stank:

Smoke started to invade our lives even way south in the city:

We celebrated Meg's grandmother's 90th birthday:

Our top tier friends visited us down in the city:

Meg and I attempted to avoid melting (it didn't really work):

And then we came to our senses and visited Littleton again, this time as unbearable NYC tourists:

Before long, we came to our senses, took a victory lap in the city:

And of course continued playing an unhealthy amount of video games so we didn't have to venture out into the city, sweat through our clothes, and then deal with our abysmal always-full, always-broken, expensive, slow, unreliable, laundry room:

... and then viewed that remarkably cute house:

I briefly tried out a gig as home chef at our friend's household:

Things felt correct the moment we woke up to a blaze of autumn color:

And I felt amazing to once again share outdoor passions with new friends:

Before long, the leaves had fallen and the first whispers of winter worked their way through our draftiest door:

Late this year, an unexpected casualty rocked the household: my dear old Crossland CC1. I suspect the steam valve was damaged when our movers dropped the moving box during our rainy, hot, double parked, incredibly stressful move from the city. I explored alternative machines for a while, but I ultimately settled on Bill 2.0 because the Crossland CC1 is just that good, and incredibly cheap compared to the competition. To distinguish Bill 2.0 from OG Bill, I painted him before drafting him into service. It turned out OK, but I may have underestimated the ventilation requirements of spray paint in the basement/garage of a small home. But let's be honest, I wasn't really using those brain cells anyway:

We spent Thanksgiving at Meg's parents. When we returned to Littleton, our mountain home soon transformed into a winter wonderland. The first 3 weeks of December felt like living atop the Rocky Mountains, with blue skies, strong sun, deep cold, and some of the best cross country skiing I have ever experienced:

Just before christmas, a rain storm slapped the entire Northeast with enough rain to blow away all of our accumulated snowpack. So we headed back to central NY for the holidays:

We visited our (now happily married) Buffalonian friends and hung out with their new child:

Christmas week was a relaxing period of book reading around the pellet stove in our Christmas sweaters, with plenty of family visits sprinkled throughout:

So how did this year go?

Home

We took a chance on NYC. Our logic? We want to live someplace walkable. A small New England town has that to some degree. But obviously New York City is the most walkable place in the country, and it has in person tech jobs to boot. Turns out, we can't stand the climate of the big city, and even more importantly we have way too many mountain hobbies to live down in the flatlands. In person work is fine, but I'd rather work remotely and live where I want. A swing and a miss.

We bought a house. It was stressful, but it feels so good to have a home that we can improve, that can't be stolen out from under us by a landlord, and to no longer pay rent. Worth every single penny and every single iota of stress.

I'm glad to be back in Littleton for the long haul. This place is truly special.

Job stuff

I left a unique and challenging tech job at Raspberry Pi. That was a dumb move. But ultimately Raspberry Pi has a strong in-office culture, and being the odd man out, 5 hours removed, remote, was an awkward way to run the documentation org. I miss my coworkers at the Pi, and my Cambridge trips. But long term they're probably better off with an in-office writer who can keep better tabs on ongoing projects and releases. I helped hire my successor, and from what I've seen and heard, she seems to be doing a brilliant job. Better than me, even. So to some degree, things have worked out.

I tried a new job at a tech startup in NYC. It wasn't a good fit. The culture was all wrong for me, their management style was far too top-down, far too bureaucratic, and featured far too many decisionmakers for my comfort. It's hard enough having one picky boss who demands too much output and doesn't account for any onboarding. It's much harder having four bosses who simultaneously demand too much (conflicting) output, as well as a CEO who occasionally takes a sledgehammer to low-level PRs and who doesn't appreciate documentation in the first place. This year's career move was the most stressful of my entire life, and it was all due to inhuman management. Good riddance. It's taken me months to work through the anxiety and stress created by multiple awful bosses.

This year, I gave AI/LLMs an honest shot. For small one-off coding tasks, scripting really, it's fine. Nothing much better than stack overflow, but definitely helpful for generating ideas if you get stuck on a confusing error message or a weird malfunction. LLMs can write tests OK, from what I can tell. For writing? LLMs are a goddamn plague. Even the simplest docs page written by an AI will likely contain dozens of inaccuracies, oversights, and errors. Code samples will likely look correct, but malfunction if you copy/paste. And because AIs don't seem to understand abstraction in writing (consistently?), the structure is often... weird and obviously inhuman. Bluntly, they're a shitty tool for writing documentation. They write poorly. But they can sometimes help with docs infra, which is usually a massive pile of poorly written scripts anyway.

Home server

These days, I'm working for another tech startup, based out of Colorado, in the Identity space (think: authentication, authorization, login for short). Work/life balance seems good so far. I'm already making an impact on the documentation, shipping some long-stagnant updates to old and outdated documentation. I have plenty to wrap my head around, and I'm still learning. But learning is good. Learning keeps you sharp.

On a less professional note, I've done a lot of reading and home automation this year. See my book log for some information on the books I've read. I finally upgraded my home server from a Raspberry Pi 4 to a proper NAS, a terramaster 4-bay, 3-ssd enclosure with a high-efficiency intel n150 processor inside, passively cooled in a big aluminum block. It's better than the Pi for Jellyfin transcoding, but more of a sidegrade than I originally imagined. Honestly, the speed difference is negligible, and it might actually be a bit slower for Jellyfin browsing. But already feels nice to have 18TB of RAID1 HDD storage and 4TB of SSD storage for my music and movie collection. No more worrying about storage space! And I can always add two more HDDs and two more SSDs if I need more. I suspect this server will last me at least 10 years, maybe even 20.

I tried to update my aging Airport Extreme router to an OpenWRT One this year. Unfortunately, my WireGuard configuration never worked correctly for more than one device, and tweaking bridge settings to try to fix it ultimately broke and fully reset all settings on the router. Rats. So I switched back to my Airport Extreme. I'll try to switch back sometime soon, offloading Wireguard and ad-blocking to my home server. But my experience so far has not been particularly positive: for some reason, OpenWRT wi-fi performance, especially 2.4Ghz, is really, really bad. Like, worse than my 13 year old Airport Extreme bad. Latency is super high for no reason I can tell on 2.4Ghz, and buffer bloat is pretty awful unless you limit your connection to 80% of your ISP-provided speeds with SQM. Hopefully I'll figure out a way to eke out better performance eventually.

Looking forward

I have a few basic goals for the new year:

• hike more
• bike more
• read more
• learn to cook 5 new dishes
• improve the house, specifically the basement
• spend more time with friends in-person, especially those with young kids who can't travel easily
• learn 5 new skills (home repair is fine, even encouraged)
• use my phone, and doomscrolling in general, less. especially in bed before sleeping and before getting up in the morning
• relax. my life is not high stakes enough to stress much! i have it awfully good.

If you read the news, browse reddit, or spend much time on social media (or whatever we're supposed to call the shambling mound of suggested content, hot-take flame wars, and short-form video generative garbage that Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok have become), you might be fooled into thinking that life sucks these days. If you touch some grass, you might find that the world is as beautiful as it ever was, even if some people in Washington DC and San Francisco are acting like total shitheads. In the coming year, I plan to devote my precious thinking to friends, family, and fun. Because devoting any of our mental space to The Powers That Be is just not worth it as a little person who only makes small local impacts.

On Christmas Eve, I finished a reread of Cloud Atlas. I was once again struck by the closing line:

My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?

In college, I thought this line referred to collective action -- how, with enough grassroots effort, people can change the world. Something like the American Revolution or the Civil Rights movement. Get enough drops to do the right thing, and you can make things better.

These days, my interpretation is a bit different. I'm not interested in the ocean any more. I just want to spend my limited time on this planet with the drops that matter to me, doing things that I care about, making a positive impact on the drops around me. Sure, I can spend my time obsessing over the global movements of the ocean. But life is short. The ocean millions of drops away doesn't matter to me, as much as I want everyone to be happy and healthy. War will happen. Politicians will abuse, gaslight, and manipulate us plebeians.

I've found the drops that matter to me in that limitless ocean. Now I just have to do my best to help those drops.

Earlier this year, we moved to New York City. I wanted to try working in an office again. Both of us yearned for walkability, bikeability, more restaurants, more culture, easy access to music venues, and public transit. NYC is one of very few places in the USA where you can walk or bike to a tech sector job, we both lived there after college, and we both still had some friends in the area who we dearly miss. What could possibly go wrong?

Meg was wise enough to know that she loved our little community in Littleton. I was not so wise, and got caught up completely in the excitement of a move to a city with More Stuff. Leaving our friends, hobbies, and local haunts was gut-wrenching, but we ultimately executed the move and wound up in NYC in April.

The first month was fun. We moved right as NYC Spring sprang, so the change in weather was incredible. While Northern New England was still cold and brown, NYC was already warm, green, and blooming the first wave of Spring flowers. We reunited with old friends. We nostalgia toured our old haunts in Astoria, Manhattan, and Greenpoint. I started cycle commuting to the office 5 days a week. We rode our bikes around the new protected bike lanes that have sprung up mostly in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Meg returned to her favorite gym of all time; I started running on the East River again. NYC life was a big change of pace, not without its struggles, but we soon adapted to the fight-club-trader-joe's lifestyle and picked up right where we left off with long walks to breweries, parks, and restaurants.

Then Summer hit. Those warm temperatures turned to face-melting 100 degree highs for multiple days in a row. The humidity skyrocketed, then firmly lodged the dew point in the mid 70s. Nighttime temperatures rose to 'just a smidge beneath face melting'. The smells thickened into a miasma of rot and waste somewhere between cleaning a chicken coop, pumping out your septic tank, and forgetting a trash bag on your asphalt driveway for the entire summer. I saw dozens more flattened rats in the bicycle lane than I am comfortable disclosing (and I still wonder what exactly flattened the rats on the Brooklyn Bridge bike lane, which is completely separate from car lanes). It got so hot that we weren't comfortable biking anywhere any more. A few close calls with cars and poor infrastructure started to sully our enthusiasm for cycling in the city. We ran out of new coffee shops and breweries to explore within easy walking distance of our apartment. We took the train upstate a couple of times, enduring the anxiety of sporadic subway closures when you have a firm deadline to get on the last train out of the city, dealing with the fact that Moynihan train hall is an absolutely awful train boarding experience (why do they wait until the last 10 minutes before departure to tell you the platform?), and learning that apparently every single Amtrak train out of the city is fully booked these days (which, combined with the awful boarding experience, makes finding a two seats together for the 7 hour molasses-slow train ride upstate a desperate struggle very likely to end in failure).

By the end of July, we knew that we had made a mistake. Our will to do just about anything melted in the scorching, muggy NYC heat. We missed our Littleton friends. We missed leading run club at Wildbloom. We missed the incredible craft beer scene of Northern New England. We missed nights that actually cool to bearable temperatures. We found small things to love, like a movie day at Nighthawk Cinema, an open street in Park Slope, or a Bluegrass night in the backyard at Saturn Road in Cobble Hill. I kept up my commute over the Brooklyn Bridge and up the West Side of Manhattan, taking up showering as an utter necessity the minute I arrived in the office. We figured we'd hit the end of the honeymoon period and just needed to settle in and start our new life.

Then we visited our friends back in Littleton. Even in the muggy, buggy heat, we had an absolute blast riding our bikes, walking, and trail running on the town trails. We hiked, an activity we very much took for granted when we first lived in Littleton. I had forgotten how nice it can be to sit outdoors at a restaurant that isn't a hole-in-the-wall backyard or a hot slab of concrete on the side of the road. We biked a ton. We relaxed in backyards. We walked all over town. I biked even more. We socialized with local friends all week. We viewed a house out of morbid curiosity. Ultimately, it was just as hard to leave as that gut-wrenching feeling in April.

Then we returned to New York. Or, more accurately, we delayed returning to New York City by spending more time upstate with family. With each passing day, we found ourselves more reluctant to return to the city. Our apartment didn't feel like our oases in the concrete jungle, or even like our personal cozy outpost in the city that never sleeps; instead, it just felt like a soulless box in the sky. When we finally boarded the molasses-slow Amtrak train to the city, we just... weren't excited to do New York City things again. We couldn't help but plan our next escape from the city. And not just to upstate to visit family; to Northern New England, to see our friends, to do silly outdoor activities in the woods, to relax.

So we started passively watching the housing market in Littleton. We planned another visit around Labor Day.

As luck would have it, a decent house in a perfect location popped up a day before our visit.

We viewed the house. We bought it September 15, 2025. And now we're breaking our lease and moving in this Thursday, in just 6 days.

Ultimately, we learned a few lessons from this experience. I'm recording our thoughts here so that we don't stupidly forget these important lessons in the future:

• I am a fool and my judgment cannot be trusted. Meg's intuition was spot-on. My crazy scheme was not a good idea.

• Working remotely is an incredible blessing that we should appreciate more. Sure, it's isolating. Sure, it's weird to spend so much time alone in your house. But it's so much better than wasting hours of every week on a stressful commute into an office that probably has a worse desk, a worse kitchen, a worse bathroom, and air temperatures that fluctuate randomly thanks to poorly managed office HVAC. If you get lonely, go socialize after work. Call a friend on the phone and ask them about their life and their day. The office will not scratch that itch.

• Every place has highs and lows. Adapt. Learn. Evolve. If you have community, activities that you love, and a reasonable cost of living, you have a firm foundation to smooth out those highs and lows.

• No matter how cool an activity is, it's not worth much if you can't actually book a ticket. We constantly see interesting events in NYC that are completely booked out. And if an event doesn't sell advance tickets or offer some kind of pre-order pickup, you will wait in a line with seemingly every other New Yorker.

• I value cheap, deep hobbies with a long learning curve. NYC hobbies are not cheap. Because nearly everyone is a renter who moved to the city in the last couple of years, the learning curves of popular activities don't tend to be that long, either.

• There are plenty of breweries in New York. That doesn't mean there is a lot of good beer here. Small spaces, underpaid brewers, and incredibly high demand are a dangerous combination of brewing ingredients.

• Cars ruin cities. Pedestrians and bicycle riders are clearly a second thought in NYC, even with a few more bike lanes. Until this city gets rid of street parking in the busiest neighborhoods, widens sidewalks, and starts enforcing quality of life concerns with cars, like loud exhaust, aggressive honking, speeding, and double parking, NYC will continue to be ruined by cars. I am excited to return at some point if the City that Never Sleeps ever decides to wake up from its unsustainable and dangerous love affair with cars.

• You might think that 85 degrees in Littleton, New Hampshire is hot, so who cares if you have to deal with 95 degrees in New York City. You would be sorely, incredible, tragically wrong. There is a big difference between temperatures that sort of suck to run in and temperatures that literally make you turn around and go back into your apartment. There were many days in June, July, and August where I simply couldn't sit outside in a shady backyard in Cobble Hill. Completely still, sweating profusely, in the shade, with a cool drink. Some people can apparently still function at that temperature, even wearing a suit or jeans. I am not one of them.

• It sucks to see braindead MAGA propaganda in rural New Hampshire and Vermont. You know what's worse? Walking past ICE headquarters in lower Manhattan and seeing candlelit shrines, handmade missing person posters, and entire families being ushered into courtrooms like goddamn Muggles under Voldemort's Ministry of Magic. Absolutely soul-crushing.

• Kitchens and bathrooms need an external vent.

• It's weird when everyone knows you in a small town. You know what's even weirder? When nobody seems to know you exist in an entire city full of millions of people.

• Cars suck. But when you live in the USA, the land of car-dependent infrastructure, you know what sucks more? Not having a car.

• Amtrak sucks. Every year, as the infrastructure degrades, the prices rise, and social norms decay, it sucks more. I would not recommend relying on it as a core method of transportation.

• Shared laundry sucks. In-unit laundry is worth every penny, if only because you never have to wait on a machine and you can fit laundry comfortably into relaxing activities like watching movies and making dinner.

• Owning things is nice. You can improve them. You can maintain them. You can ignore them, if you so choose. Most importantly, it's your choice to do all of those things. The more common spaces you have to deal with in your life, and the more people who use those common spaces, the higher the chance of people who have vastly different values from you making those choices for you.

• Bugs are annoying. DEET is a much cheaper and easier fix than living someplace where sprawling human infrastructure has destroyed all insect life except for cockroaches, ants, and lanternflies.

• Cities are fun to visit, because they are full of cool, unique opportunities. They are less fun to live in, because they are full of a lot of other things that aren't cool or unique, but you still have to hear, smell, see, walk around, and otherwise futz with them.

• From filling in potholes, to removing downed tree branch, to picking up trash, to unclogging storm drains, to making the subway run on time, to every other responsibility a government has, NYC will screw it up. Except for tax collection. That, they're experts at.

• The tech scene in New York City is even more obsessed with fads like cryptocurrency and AI than the tech world in general. If you're at all skeptical of those fads, beware. Most in person tech jobs in the city deal exclusively with those fads, because that's where the startup funding focuses.

TL;DR: We made a mistake. That's easy. The harder part, once you realize that you made a mistake, is to admit it and get to work on fixing it. We're doing our best to do that by moving back to a place we love.

New York City isn't bad or evil or wrong. It's just not our preference any more. For those of you who haven't visited since covid: the city is no different from how it's always been. It's gentrifying. It's expensive. It's noisy. Like most places, 24/7 places have essentially disappeared since 2020, and prices have gone up 2-3x since 2015. But the city is essentially the same as it ever was, at least in my adult lifetime. It's still extremely safe. Lots of people walk. More people bike than ever before, though unfortunately most of them are using e-citibikes, and an awful lot of them are browsing social media on their phones as they ride.

NYC is great. But I'm over it. We have changed a lot since we last lived here in 2019. Time to return to our lives.

We began with a ride around Governor's Island:

Stopped for a cheeky pint at Three's Brewing on the island:

Once we realized the ferry ride (though beautiful) to our next destination, Roosevelt Island, would take longer than just biking up there up the Great Hipster Silk Route, we ditched the ferry, preferring the less-scenic, smellier, but more engaging route. Of course I didn't take any pictures of that route, but here's a picture of Roosevelt Island:

From there, we gave up on the "islands" theme of the day, since Randall's Island is a huge pain to reach from Astoria over the Triborough Bridge (for now). So instead we headed up the coast, visited Astoria Park (where you can at least look out at those islands), and then made our way inland to Singlecut OG:

After a pint and an afternoon meal, we made our way south through Astoria to Sunnyside, where we took a quick pit stop at Alewife Brewing:

Before long, we resumed our route on the Kosciuszko Bridge, which does indeed fulfill the promise of 'nicest bicycle lane in NYC':

Though I'm not sure I love the symbolism:

Eventually, we routed our way back through Brooklyn to a tasty burrito, which we brought home to enjoy. We forgot to put candles in it because we were really hungry, but you can use your imagination:

Of course, now that I'm older, I'm wise enough never to do that again.

On the seventh day of our journey, the sun returned.

We woke up at our cosy campsite in Greensboro and breathed a sigh of relief. I know it sounds silly, but knowing we had an entire day of riding before us with sunlight and no water pouring from the sky was a huge motivator.

We packed up the campsite, and set out for our first repeat business visit of the trip: Front Seat Coffee in Hardwick.

It's just too good a coffee shop, and Carol tipped us off about a brilliant pastry that they make better than just about anyone in Vermont: the Kwisatz Haderach Lisan al Gaib Chappa'ai, no, for real it's the Kouign-amann (pronouced 'Queen Aman'). Interestingly, we discovered that we've already had one before, at, of all places, Big Dave's of Conway, NH. And we very easily might have encountered one back in Denver, a city whose pastry scene is disproportionately dominated by Kouign-amann.

Anyway, it was delicious. If you ever find yourself at Front Seat, check it out. We got a ginger one; like all of their ginger menu items, it was the perfect blend of herbal and spicy.

After stocking up on fatty pastry calories and caffeine at Front Seat, we headed south, toward our next potential campsite, or possibly just home if we felt motivated or Vermont's crappy weekend campsite reservation policy got in our way. For reference, we booked every other campsite (save the primitive ones) weeks or months in advance. But we couldn't book a campsite for this night because Vermont State Parks requires a two-day reservation for weekends. And, despite being perhaps the most popular state in the country for bikepackers and bicycle tourists (just ask anyone who lives along the Gravel Growler route), Vermont State Parks still do not provide any kind of guaranteed walk-in no-parking sites for bicycle tourists. Because apparently nobody in the entire bureaucratic State Park chain understands that sometimes weather, mechanical failures, or simple distance prohibits bicycle riders from 'just finding somewhere else to stay'. Remember: when you don't need a parking spot, you can basically set up camp anywhere on a patch of 50 square feet of flat-ish grass. Not all campers need a picnic bench, or a fire ring, or any other amenities. Some of us just want to sleep!

We followed a lovely not-quite-class-4 road south from Hardwick to Cabot, rising gradually through the trees for hundreds of feet. Suddenly, we popped out of the trees and the road flattened out to classic smooth dirt. And wow! The views were pretty incredible. From this perspective, it was easy to tell why our first two days of riding were so brutal: all of the land south of Groton is nothing but hill after hill after hill after mountains. Truly some awfully lumpy country.

We descended down the hill in the blazing sunshine, only rerouting once due to an allegedly 'closed road' (is it actually closed? we may never know; there are a lot of abandoned dead 'road closed' signs in Vermont). And soon we entered the town of Cabot. Unfortunately Cabot is a lot less exciting than you New England cheese-lovers might imagine; I'm pretty sure Cabot Cheese Factory is the only business in operation there, making 'cheese factory tour' essentially the only activity you can do there. So we rode on, past the giant Cabot cheese trucks, past some highland cows, towards the lumps in the distance.

For lunch, we swung by an old favourite: the Marshfield Country Store, home of the [The Hot, Instagrammable, FOMO, Zoomer, Calzone, nearby Meg's Favourite Waterfall. This time, we only ordered a sub, and naturally picked up a four-pack of Alchemist's Heady Topper to-go. We did have to refrigerate that sandwich, after all! An older Vermont man complimented Meg's Brooks saddle; we bonded over a mutual love of desiccated animal carcasses.

After the Marshfield Country Store, the miles sped by incredibly quickly. Here, we rejoined the XVT trail (that we took at the beginning of the first day of our trip) at a point a little deeper into Vermont. From the south end of Groton State Forest almost all the way into Montpelier, the XVT follows, not a rail trail, but an old railroad bed. Which is basically the same idea, but it dates a few decades further back than the first US rail trails, and the state of Vermont has all-but given up maintaining it, and parts of it still allow car traffic for some bizarre reason.

But all of those details are mostly immaterial. What matters is that, despite the lumpiness of the terrain, the old railroad bed keeps grades at or below 3%. So we sped along at 10mph or more, way faster than our average speed on rolling dirt roads or singletrack, let alone crazy class 4 roads.

At one point, we were astonished to find a (fit and young-looking) guy driving a BMW SUV with Massachusetts plates down the trail at about 2mph. Followed by two off-leash dogs. He didn't acknowledge us in any way, let alone give us extra space or reign in his dogs. I can only assume he lost a bet, because walking your dogs on a beautiful day via car in Vermont is truly pathetic unless you actually have some kind of handicap.

A few miles into the old railroad bed ride, we stopped at a beautiful spot in the woods to split the first half of our lunch sandwich.

At this point, we agreed; instead of fighting Vermont's bureaucracy over staying in a campsite for only one night, we could just push on the remaining 40 miles into New Hampshire and sleep in our own bed. Even better, we didn't have a good option for dinner in Groton (it is a state forest, after all), so if we made it home, we could have dinner in our town, which actually has restaurants.

And so the race was on. We rolled along the old railroad bed at blistering, record speeds, determined to make it home to a warm bed before dark.

The rest of the old railroad bed in Groton was kind of weird. A couple of miles after our lunch spot, the flood damage was quite serious. It became immediately obvious why we didn't see any other bicycles on this trail: the ruts created by flooding were just too deep for most bikes. Fortunately our rigs are set up for class 4 roads, so we mostly rolled right through the damage. But in a few spots, even we had to walk or carry the bikes over several foot deep cracks in the earth. Crazy to see the difference from just two years ago, when the trail was full of people riding normal bicycles, including even a baby in a trailer pulled behind a bike.

We were even more intrigued when we came to a road crossing, and saw a 'trail closed' sign draped along the gate that blocks cars from using the trail. The sign faced opposite us, but we never saw any 'trail closed' sign when we entered the trail from the North end. So we kept cruising along the trail; if the state can't even bother to mark every entrance, and we're fully capable of riding down the trail, and we don't plan on suing the state if we get hurt, who cares?

We met only one other person on the whole trail: the guy who complimented Meg's Brooks saddle at the Marshfield Country Store! Turns out, his name is Jay (like the peak), he lives up in Burke, and he's a great conversationalist. We exchanged diner recommendations, and he got a hearty chuckle out of our name for the big-box store side of Littleton (Biggleton, if you're wondering). Jay, if you ever come across this post, I hope you had a lovely vintage boat ride down on Winnipesaukee. We hope to see you at the Coffee Pot in Littleton some random day; maybe we can convert you from the Littleton Diner.

After parting ways with Jay, we soon came to yet another camping area in Groton. This one actually uses the Old Railroad Bed as a road connector between campsite culs-de-sac, which has the pleasant side effect of ensuring repairs to the railroad bed from flood damage. We took advantage of the campsite bathroom, conveniently located right alongside the old railroad bed, and sped on, heading for the half-railroad-bed half-paved-road hybrid section of the XVT.

I feel ambivalent about this section. On one hand, the old railroad bed sections are really nice, and make up the majority of the ride. On the other hand: 302 is a truly awful road experience. The speed limit is 50, which means most cars go 60 in VT. The shoulder is large, but has a lot of random debris on it. And worst of all, it's loud as hell, because everyone drives huge trucks with poorly maintained mufflers. Fortunately, heading South on this section makes most of your ride downhill, toward the Connecticut River (which divides Vermont and New Hampshire). So at least we moved quickly.

We crossed into New Hampshire with the sun still high above the horizon. Only a few cars tried to murder us in the half mile of road between the border and the Ammonoosuc Rail Trail, so I consider us lucky. And then we found ourselves on a (vaguely uphill) 20 mile rail trail ride home. We didn't see any other bicyclists -- just a side-by-side (twice) and a father-daughter duo riding an ATV. We took one quick stop to eat the other half of our sandwich. We met a guy in Bath with a really cool house in an old rail station along the trail, who informed us that his pet caboose was celebrating its 100 year birthday this year.

Just as the sun slipped behind the mountains, we saw the lights of Biggleton and knew we were home. We cruised along the last couple of miles to Littleton, guided by our ever-present motion-powered dynamo lights, and immediately bumped into some friends crossing the pedestrian covered bridge into town.

A stop at Wildbloom, the best damn brewery in New Hampshire, followed by Schilling, the former best damn brewery in New Hampshire (but they have food), rounded out our trip, making this officially the Vermontshire Bicycle Beerpacking Route. The beer and food were well-deserved after a 60+ mile day with thousands of vertical feet of climbing, but catching up with our local friends was priceless.

Did you think the trip was over? Not quite! Check out part 8 for the epic epilogue to our tale.

On the eighth day, we rested. OK, I took a ride up to Linda's Lookout on a bunch of local black diamond town trails. And we went to Wildbloom again to catch up with friends (and hit up a local food truck before they close for the season). But we mostly rested.

But on the ninth day, we took our other bikes -- the touring ones -- over to East Burke, Vermont, for some dirt road (and unintentional class 4 road) riding. The weather was perfect, the skies were blue, the tourists were all heading home by early afternoon, and after a week of riding, we still hadn't flushed all of our bicycle riding needs out of our systems.

So we did a little loop on some dirt roads, singletrack, and class 4. We stopped by the Lyndonville Bagel Depot for breakfast. We grabbed some caffeine (and obligatory delicious donuts) at the best coffee place in the area, the Coffee Cabin (and learned that not only will they remain open all winter -- they're starting a basic diner in the same building as the Orange Rind!). I look forward to sampling Becky and Logan's take on the Crunch Wrap -- if their donuts and coffee are any indication, it'll be serious competition to the Crunch Wraps at Ranch Camp and Mad Taco in NYS.

We wound up on only one class 4 road. It was a blast.

Halfway through our ride, we enjoyed a rest stop at Dirt Church Brewing. A couple of beers, some food truck wings and fries later, we continued along.

We only hit one flood-destroyed bridge, which was easy to route around.

Only one dog approached us. Fortunately he was nice.

We finished up our ride -- and our 2024 Autumn holiday -- with a spectacular sunset at The Hub. Meg took some time to watercolor the view; I started work on some blog posts.

It was a very good day.

Conclusion

So, overall how did this trip go?

Some good, some bad. Our routing was a little ambitious, particularly for the first couple of days, considering we didn't build in any rest stops (because there weren't any!) and we were wild camping.

Wild camping went well. We found campsites each night. However, at the end of a long day of riding, a $30-40 campsite doesn't seem like a massive expense. And it's nice to know that you're unlikely to be disturbed by any animals or Creatures of the Night.

Our Moonshiners worked well, and except for Meg's (known, anticipated) brake pad issue, and my inadequately-tightened rack, nothing malfunctioned on us. But even though the Moonshiners are really fun rigs for singletrack and class 4, they feel like overkill on dirt and pavement, especially loaded. The 1x gearing is also just... not as easy as Meg's 3x touring bike setup. Throw a load on that, and some grades become really unpleasant to pedal up. I think we'll lean towards more touring-style trips in the future -- dirt roads, class 4, and light singletrack are fine! But pavement is an unfortunate necessity, and our touring bikes are just more fun across all of those different, essential surfaces. From now on, we'll reserve the Moonshiners for their strengths: day trips where we want to ride miles and miles of singletrack and dirt roads, overnighters on singletrack and class 4 roads, and of course all of our mountain biking. Because mountain biking is silly.

Weather is always unpredictable, but we got a pretty awful draw this trip. Easily our worst ever, with two days of serious rainfall totalling multiple inches across almost our entire route. I'm grateful that we didn't get soaked either of the first two days -- some of that class 4 would have been damn near impassible -- but two days in a row of rain really sucks. It definitely sours your spirits and detracts from the ride. That's probably a big part of why we didn't even try to stay a seventh night in Vermont; some of our gear was still wet, and we just wanted a warm, dry bed and a shower.

We had a lot of great social interaction this trip. Lots of chats with business owners, beertenders, campsite managers, other bikepackers, and locals. When I'm out on the bike, it's becoming increasingly easy to spontaneously chat with random people. I wish I was better at that skill in 'real life', but maybe this is a good way to practice.

Finally: I don't really understand how bikepacking works. Our other bikes are more like traditional touring rigs, even if we take them on a lot of rugged terrain. Touring rigs traditionally use panniers, which are easy to put on and take off. We both used smaller panniers for this trip, and -- as our initial gear struggles show -- we had a hard time trimming down our equipment to fit into those small containers. We didn't bring any of our cooking equipment. Sleeping supplies, water, and the bear bag took up at least 80% of our space. I suspect most bikepackers don't bother worrying about bears, but that feels irresponsible to me. And when autumn nightly lows can easily drop below freezing in Vermont, I'm not comfortable bringing my smaller summer sleeping bag. So I suspect most bikepackers omit a lot of safety gear for camping, bears (and critters like racoons), and get by with the smallest containers of water possible. Oh, and they probably don't bring many changes of clothes -- if they do, they're probably not bringing a full set of rain gear, or a change of shoes (Meg eliminated her sandals to save space even with our massive bags, by bikepacking standards). That doesn't even include all the equipment you need to fix issues with your bike, purify water, keep yourself warm at night, and batteries, headlamps, and more. God forbid you try to pack a book or a notebook.

All in all, I don't want to be a pack rat when it comes to my supplies. But our touring rigs are already pretty scant. It's hard to imagine responsibly packing much less than this. The only thing I could reasonably eliminate is water, but there are plenty of places where you'd have to pack more anyway because you don't have constant freshwater stream access like we have in Vermont.

So we'll probably plan a bike tour next, though I'm sure we'll route on some crazy terrain and bushwhack at some point. Maybe we'll do something on one of the Eurovelo routes. Perhaps we'll try Japan, or South Korea, or New Zealand. Maybe we'll finally get to Ireland. Or maybe we'll finally devote to a multi-month tour in the next few years. All I know is, we've really dialed in our preferences and abilities, and there's so much to look forward to.

On the sixth day of our journey, it rained again.

Despite our dry equipment under the lean-to, spirits were low. Given the intensity and length of the rain, we rerouted from our original sprawling dirt-and-class-4-road plans to instead use the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail. When it's insanely wet out, better to stick with the maintained options. Better yet, stick with the option that includes a coffee shop that makes some of the best pastries in Vermont.

So we headed downhill to the rail trail. Unfortunately, Meg soon realised that her front brake pad had finally worn down far enough, thanks to the grit and water of the past 24 hours, that it had lost almost all of its stopping power. Unfortunately, over the past few days, we had already done most of the adjustments that we could reasonably do with our multitool. Anything else would be really difficult (and not at all fun) in the rain. So we proceeded along the rail trail, Meg limping along with a single usable brake.

Several soggy miles later, we rolled into the village of Hardwick. Fortunately, on our way into town, we spotted a brand new bike shop: Riverside Cycles. We opted to skip the bike shop for the time being, preferring to warm up at Front Seat Coffee first. A few pastries and some espresso later, I took Meg's bike over to Riverside for a brake tune-up with some proper tools (and a roof). I am happy to report that they were incredibly friendly and capable. Despite not stocking compatible pads for Meg's weird Japanese brakes, they were able to dial the brakes in.

After successfully warming ourselves with pastries and coffee at Hardwick, we took the rail trail up to Greensboro Bend. It remained extremely rainy, but fortunately the rail trail makes the miles go by quickly.

At Greensboro Bend, we headed up a paved, but very quiet road to Greensboro. There, we stopped at the general store for some lunch, and headed down the road to our final Vermont Brewery: Hill Farmstead.

We relaxed at Hill for several hours, people watching and enjoying the vibes. Before long, the rain stopped. We grabbed some noms from the food truck (a lobster roll truck, of all things!).

At closing time, we picked up a four-pack of one of their many excellent beers, and headed over to our HipCamp: Broadfork Farmstead, for our third stay with Carol in the last five years.

We had an excellent chat with Carol when we arrived, special thanks to Carol for sharing all the insider details about the ongoing Greensboro Town Hall debate (in summary: certain folks in town don't want to use the old Town Hall for anything, let alone turn it into housing for middle class people; we all collectively felt that if you don't want the middle class to live in Town Hall, you should probably fix the zoning laws to allow people to live on less than twenty acres next to the town limits). We each took a refreshing outdoor hot shower, cleaned the worst of the muck off the bikes, petted some cows and goats, started a campfire, and relaxed in the last bits of -- get this! -- sun (!!) that peeked out from the clouds as the day waned.

We enjoyed our remaining snacks and Hill beers over the fire as darkness fell over the farm. The geese quieted their honks. The cows stopped mooing. The goats stopped being weirdos who stare at people from elevated surfaces.

We crawled into our tent and conked out, enjoying being dry, well fed, and warm, and even moreso looking forward to the promise of no rain in the next day's forecast.

Curious about the epic conclusion of the story? You can now find it in part 7.

For the first time ever, Meg made a video of our bikepacking exploits! Thanks for all the hard work recording, editing, and posting this.

If you like reading, check out the blog series.

On the fifth day of our journey, it rained.

Want to know how much? Go take a shower. Step out of it, but instead of drying yourself off, grab a fan, and plug it in pointing at yourself while you stand in front of your open refrigerator. Oh, and smear yourself with mud in every crevice to really simulate that gritty feel.

To get an idea of what biking in that is like, wear a raincoat and whatever other rain gear you own in the shower. Bring your bicycle in there as well, but don't forget to smear every part of it with mud, including the chain, handlebars, and derailleur. Then set your bicycle up with a trainer in your house in front of the open refrigerator with the fan going, and have someone slowly pour a bucket of ice cold water on you every 30 seconds.

Repeat that for 5 hours and you have our morning. Except you're missing the part where you need to navigate over rock gardens, through massive puddles, get slapped with brambles that are trying their darndest to overgrow the trail, and there's a little voice in your head worrying more and more that last year's floods might have permanently destroyed a part of the trail you're on (and nobody has bothered to report the state of it in the past year because nobody has even tried to ride this trail).

So it was kind of OK. It was sort of like the scene in the Chernobyl miniseries where a stubborn engineer measures 3.6 Roentgen of radiation leakage from the failing plant and claims "Not great, not terrible." Parts of the day sucked, but in retrospect, we made some pretty great memories. We ate some delicious burritos. We drank some tasty beers and tasty coffee. We managed to wake up dry and go to bed dry. We ate even more delicious grilled burritos. We even had a nice fire before bed!

... but that's getting ahead of ourselves. Back to the beginning.

Plop ploop plink plonk.

PLOP POP BLOOP blonk blink.

Bloppity bloopity poppity broopity plonk plink.

So sang the soaking wet tent rainfly as we lay under torrential rains, dreading stepping out of the tent and packing everything up wet. But eventually we gathered our courage, packed up camp, helped our elderly campsite neighbors hitch their (surprisingly light) teardrop camper to their car, wrapped ourselves in water-resistant layers, and got on the road.

Fortunately, our morning was almost entirely car-free. Unfortunately, this was one of our more rugged mornings: a ride up singletrack trails, through an abandoned farming community, and onto much-neglected class 4 roads to loop around the northern edge of Waterbury Reservoir and some particularly steep, landslide-prone terrain around Cotton Brook.

It turned out to be a fair amount of fun. A little cold and a little nervewracking. But hey, that's better than riding on the side of an interstate, which would be cold, nervewracking, and infinitely more dangerous.

So we pushed our way up through the winding singletrack, with only the squeaking of our brakes, the constant torrent of rainfall, and occasional splish-splashes of leaf-topped puddles as our soundtrack. We walked the bikes over a surprising amount of wooden bridges. And before long, we found ourselves at Ricker Farm, the transition from singletrack mountain bike trails to abandoned old road. An old laminated paper sign indicated that some trail was inaccessible, but we were pretty sure we remembered the same sign from last time. So we sped on, squeaking our mechanical brakes through the foggy, sopping wet forest. If you don't know what wet, squeaky, worn-over-days-of-class-4-road-and-not-totally-clean disc brakes sound like, let me describe it to you: it kind of sounds like you chained several mute clowns to your bicycle and you're dragging them along through the forest, and the only way they have to communicate their terror is through one of those classic squeaky clown noses.

So basically everything was going really well. We cruised (mostly up) the rolling hills until we reached the fabled 'turning point' where the road finally crosses Cotton Brook. As our wheels gradually turned north, then northeast, we held our breath, doubts clouding our minds:

• was that sign actually referring to this trail?
• are we going to have to turn around, wasting several more hours of cold wet riding to get right back to where we started today in Little River State Park -- before riding busier, unpleasant roads up to Stowe?
• are we idiots for following this road based off the 'passable' reports of a few internet randoms who claim to have ridden gravel bikes around the reservoir successfully?

Then we reached a giant hole where the Cotton Brook bridge used to be.

My dream was collapsing. The worst had surely come true: we'd just have to turn around, waste hours more of our time, and start again in Little River. My cold toes would remain this cold for hours more, and wind up subjected to the debris of paved roads to boot, before they could warm up in Stowe.

I was just about ready to give up and lie down on the ground in the forest. Even if Cotton Brook was a multiple foot deep whitewater rapid between twenty-foot walls of solid wet rock with no hope of getting a bike through it, I might have tried. The situation was dire.

But then I walked past the caution fencing, and poked my head up over the piles of dirt on the side of the hole-where-a-bridge-used-to-be.

And I saw a path, winding steeply down to the (not a whitewater rapid) Cotton Brook, and back up the other side. The dirt looked a bit loose, but no worse than what we're used to riding on class 4 roads. Maybe better, since some large equipment had clearly packed it down in the last few months.

So we took our bikes over the dirt hills, down the slope, through the brook (I provided Meg with a piggyback ride through the brook, since I wear sandals on these trips but she wears shoes), and up the opposite slope.

And then we rode our bikes (mostly downhill) to the town of Moscow, and along a dirt road right onto the bike paths of Stowe.

It was no more than an hour between our stream crossing and sitting down at the bar at Ranch Camp for a Crunch Wrap, some fried artichokes, and an A.M. Bowl. We warmed our cold feets and filled our empty bellies while chatting with a very friendly bartender, who recently returned to Stowe from Denver; Sarah, we wish you the best of luck!

We finished our lunch, and headed over to Stowe Cider for an obligatory cider flight. We both took the opportunity to dry ourselves off and change into some dryer clothes. And since Stowe Cider cranks the AC pretty strong, we then headed over to the nearby Woodland Baking and Coffee for some warm beverages and a slice of banana sesame bread.

Our spirits restored and our bellies full, we returned to Ranch Camp for a to-go burrito (for later grilling -- more on that later), and wound up chatting with one of the co-owners, Ryan, about our bikepacking adventures. He even took our picture and posted it to the Ranch Camp socials for some cred with the bikepacking community.

We took a quick stop at the beer shop in town for a to-go mixed four pack, and headed to our next campsite at Elmore State Park. Our route had a decent amount of climbing, but once we got off of VT 100, there was next to no traffic, dirt roads in surprisingly not-muddy conditions, and some gloriously spooky views of cows in the fog. Despite missing our first intended turn onto Elmore Mountain Road, our detour ended up being equally scenic and equally pleasant.

After a couple of hours of riding, we arrived at the park. The attendant, Bobby, was there and visibly excited about hosting bikepackers. As we headed to our reserved campsite, he mentioned that we might want to upgrade to a lean-to for the night. Stubborn idiots as we are, we said we were fine and moved along.

Then I tried to start a fire.

What felt like an hour of attempted firestarting later (who knows, maybe it was five minutes?), I looked at the forecast for that night and the next day.

Then I returned to the welcome center, upgraded us to a lean-to, and purchased a firestarter.

We picked up our fully-assembled (freestanding, fortunately) tent, carried it over to the lean-to, and I carted our supply of wood, branches, and twigs over to the lean-to in Meg's panniers, which fortunately feature dry-bags that can be removed (and, as it turns out, the dry bag holsters can fit about four pieces of split firewood each).

I re-assembled the fire, popped the firestarter in, and had a blaze raging in our fire ring within a minute.

We cracked some beers, grilled our burritos (note: if you try this, move your burritos to real aluminum foil -- not waxpaper-aluminum wrap liners -- before grilling; peeling the melted waxpaper off is not particularly fun), and soon retired to the lean-to. I set my head down on my pillow.

Plop ploop plink plonk.

PLOP POP BLOOP blonk blink.

Bloppity bloopity poppity broopity plonk plink.

So sang the roof of our lean-to as we lay under torrential rains, no longer dreading stepping out of the tent and packing everything up wet. Thanks for letting us upgrade, Bobby.

Curious about the rest of the story? You can now find it in part 6.

On the fourth day of our journey, we traveled up the mad river valley through a very steep, very beautiful set of mountain bike trails, the town of Waitsfield, our easiest (and funnest) class 4 road yet, into the village of Waterbury, and a (small amount) up the side of some nearby mountains to the scenic Little River State Park.

The skies were blue. The air was crisp (but quite warm in the sun). The leaves were yellowing before our very eyes. Conditions were damn near perfect for a bike ride.

We woke up to the soothing sounds of a steady stream of water tumbling down the rocks nearby our campsite. Strong sunlight provided the perfect means of drying out our rain fly. Despite packing up our tent rather quickly, we delayed leaving the campsite for quite some time; the pleasant kitchen area, an outhouse, and the warming rays of the sun were just a little too hard to leave.

But before long, we took advantage of the glorious weather and began our bike ride. A short stint down VT route 100 later, we turned onto Sugarbush Access Road, which we knew would be steep, but didn't realise would be very, very busy.

In fact, this road was so busy with the constant comings and goings of enormous trucks carrying heavy loads that we took the very first opportunity to turn onto some singletrack, sacrificing an easy journey upwards for an almost-mile-long uphill slog at 20-25% grades. But it was worth it for the peace and quiet of the trees. We questioned our decision a couple of times at particularly rough spots, but it was never long before the faint echoes of a giant truck engine braking or struggling its way up the hill made us grateful for the trail, the aptly named "Big Cranky".

Eventually, we made our way up to a ridgeline trail named "Plum Line" that took us along some ancient stone walls around some pretty massive sugarbushes.

Near Eurich Pond, we met a dog-walking amateur mycologist who seemed very impressed that we biked our way all the way up there with full bikepacking bags. We proceeded along the "Swell Hill" blue trail until we stumbled upon some trail maintenance. Fearing the worst, we asked if there was a way to get around: the guy driving the backhoe said we were totally fine to ride past, and even requested a photo of our bikepacking rigs that he could share with his parents, who've been looking to upgrade their setups.

A couple of wrong turns later, we found ourselves descending on some black trails when a strange noise started to come from my rear rack. Suddenly, the weighting skewed entirely off-center. We investigated to discover that the bolt and spacer on my rear rack and come completely loose and fallen off! Thankfully, Meg played a lot of I, Spy as a kid, so she found the parts incredibly quickly while I stumbled my way down the trail, blind as a bat. We replaced the parts, and then investigated the rest of the rack, only to discover that every bold on the entire rack had come extremely loose over the last few days. Guess we should have applied loctite. Anyway, we tightened up the bolts, then checked Meg's rack (the same model, but placed on the front of her bike instead of the rear). Her bolts were perfectly tight, so instead of blaming the rack manufacturer or lack of loctite, I must assume I did a poor job tightening.

After that, we felt highly motivated to go get some burritos in Waitsfield. We headed down more surprisingly steep, surprisingly rooty trails to link up with yet another set of trails, Enchanted Forest, where I assume the fun never stops. The first section of the trail, which crossed some swampland and power lines, was honestly pretty awful. It was just uphill enough that you had to pedal pretty hard the whole way, and just technical enough that you never really got in the groove of your ride. But once we hit the downhill, the riding was as bermy and flowy as I've ever seen it in Vermont. We just kept zooming downhill, pushing the endurance of our hands and cores to the max. But our desire for burritos was great enough to keep us motivated.

Eventually the trails dumped us out on a dirt road with yet more steep descent. From there, we only rode a half mile on some paved roads to reach our first destination of the day: The Mad Taco.

We gorged on some truly spectacular burritos (I highly recommend the Al Pastor; Meg highly recommends the Chile Colorado), then headed over to Lawson's Finest Liquids to hammer out the details of the rest of our route. At Lawson's, we were fortunate enough to stumble upon esteemed photographer and bikepacking router Thrashley, who was kind enough to suggest that we stick with our original route over a class 4 road instead of simplifying the route to ensure that we made it to Little River before dark.

I am pleased to report that our final route was both as excellent as Thrashley claimed and a wonderful way to add a maple creamee to our journey.

After descending down the class 4 road, we quickly found ourselves right in downtown Waterbury, where we headed straight to the Prohibition Pig, a surprisingly flood-resistant and unsurprisingly excellent brewpub. We enjoyed a light snack, nabbed some cans of beer across the street at The Taproom at Vermont Beer Collective (where the proprietor and I bonded over a mutual love for Okkervil River), and headed through a serious contender for "Vermont's most unpleasant roundabout" toward Little River.

The gradual climb up to Little River went quickly, but felt like it took ages as the sun slipped away. We stopped for a quick picture atop the nearby dam, and headed over to the welcome station. Unfortunately, 6:50PM is apparently too late for Vermont State Parks to staff their facilities, because the place was a complete ghost town. Fortunately, we were able to buy some wood via a nearby stand, but I was a little shocked that we managed to not see a single staff member the entire time we were at the park.

Our campsite at Little River was fine. The last time we stayed at Little River, we stayed in a really cozy nook on the "B" side. We basically couldn't see or hear anyway. This time, we stayed at a "non-prime" campsite on the "A" side because the "B" side was closed. We were a lot closer to our neighbours, and I consider us fortunate to have gotten quiet neighbors who let us sleep soundly.

We enjoyed a short campfire, set up the tent, and slept well. I only woke up once during the night, around midnight, to the sounds of much more rain arriving much earlier than originally forecast. Unfortunately, we would soon wake up to a similar surprise.

Curious about the rest of the story? You can now find it in part 5.

On the third day of our journey, we traveled through Northfield, Roxbury, and Warren, VT. Our day involved some general silliness in the hills around Warren, a stop at a lovely cafe, a stop at a lovely brewpub, a giant gap climb, and a couple of solid Vermont general stores.

After waking up early, we descended on dirt roads through the remainder of Roxbury State Forest. The air was crisp, the dirt was solidly packed, the leaves were yellow, and the grade was pleasant.

We happily zoomed through the miles until we reached our first (and only) class 4 road the the day. Unfortunately, this road was marked "ATVs ONLY" and "STAY ON THE TRAILS OR STAY HOME". We once again assumed that the (not government posted, on an official class 4 road) signs contained an implicit "except for ATBs, which are allowed on ALL TERRAIN", and continued on.

The first descent on the class 4 road was extremely steep, but fun -- the combination of heavy ATV tracks and runoff clearly contributed to a surface with a solid amount of slip. We continued along through a couple of intersections, not seeing any other traffic, until we reached a sharp left-hand turn.

After a couple hundred feet, I noticed we were now off course, so we returned to the turn to discover that the original class 4 road was blocked off and completely defunct, covered in the obvious detritus of years of neglect and disuse. So we turned back around, took the sharp left, and tried to see where it went. We were only a few hundred feet from the nearest road, with one stream in the way, so we figured the newer, maintained trail might eventually meet up. After a solid mile of riding across extremely rough terrain, the trail only traveled farther away from the road.

So we turned around, again, returned to the defunct class 4 road, and decided to bushwhack our way across the remaining few hundred feet of old roadbed to the nearby dirt road.

This turned out to be a bad idea. The road, as I mentioned before, was covered in downed trees, 10ish-year-old new trees, bushes, downed branches, and other undergrowth. Before long, even the original roadbed was difficult to make out among the ferns and grasses. And it wasn't long before we discovered the reason for the road's abandonment: an ancient, broken, concrete bridge.

Naturally, we didn't let that get in our way. We proceeded down the nearby slope, across the nearby stream, through a nearby bog, and up the adjacent very steep, very tall embankment of the dirt road. There weren't any difficulties at all. No blood was shed. No trespassing occurred. We didn't wind up covered in mud and muck, I never discovered just how cold that creek water was, and nobody groaned at all as they lugged a heavy, loaded steel bicycle up a roadside embankment. Nope. Definitely not. Everything was above the board and totally legal and normal.

Anyway, some time later, we found ourselves laying on the side of the nearby dirt road, covered in mud, muck, water, blood, debris, and pieces of plants. Before anyone noticed anything untoward, we hopped aboard our bicycles and rode downstream toward Northfield.

Perhaps two miles later, we found an exit from the ATV trails we were just on. Thirty seconds of unsettling and unhinged laughter later, we proceeded towards Northfield again.

We may have stopped a couple of times to clean ourselves and our bicycles.

A few miles later, we met up the with the main road into Northfield. A few miles after that, we cycled past Norwich University, and into town. Not long after that, we found ourselves cozied up at Carrier Roasting Company, enjoying a couple of excellent coffee beverages and a veritable horde of pastries.

After relaxing at Carrier, we headed over to the nearby Norwich University to explore and kill some time. We checked out the campus, appreciated the impressive local spooky season displays, lubed our drivetrains, finally threw out some of our trash, and headed back next door to Carrier to the highly anticipated Good Measure Brewing, where we enjoyed a hearty lunch.

At Good Measure, we had a lengthy chat with a horse enthusiast who, for the sake of anonymity, I'll refer to here as "Mr. Underhill". Mr. Underhill was the first of quite a few people who seemed genuinely interested in our trip, making this one of our most social tours ever. I especially enjoyed our conversations about how bike people and horse people really ought to get along better, since we all enjoy getting out on a saddle over rugged trails in the wilderness. And learning about various horse-riding events was fascinating.

After Good Measure, we booked it down the valley to our big climb of the day: Roxbury Gap. While this gap isn't quite as steep or as high as our previous VT tour nemesis, Lincoln Gap), we still reserve a healthy respect for any climb exceeding 1,000 vertical feet. We swung by the Roxbury Country Store for some electrolytes (gatorade and goldfish) and braced ourselves for a grueling ascent.

Turns out that this one wasn't too bad. It was steep at times, and the traffic turned out to be slightly more than we normally experience on VT dirt roads, but we made surprisingly good time cruising up the hill, and most drivers were really respectful. When we reached the top, we were genuinely surprised (and maybe even a bit disappointed) that we didn't have to climb another 500 feet.

The descent made it all worthwhile, though. We cruised through miles of absolutely pleasant, swooping roads with a gorgeous view of the Green Mountains and Sugarbush's ski trails, right to our penultimate stop of the day: the East Warren Market, a perfectly folksy old schoolhouse complete with tiny cemetery, an excellent wine and beer selection, and some seriously good looking sandwiches and burritos. There was a lot of local art as well, but we didn't bother with any this time -- our bikes are already heavy enough!

We nabbed a four pack of Alchemist and a couple of burritos, and headed down through Warren to reach our campsite for the night, a HipCamp that promised waterfalls, a fire ring, an outhouse, and a pizza oven. After two nights of wild camping, we were seriously hyped. Passing through Warren was a quaint as ever, and before we knew it, we turned down yet another dirt barely-a-road to reach our campsite. It turned out to be our favourite of the entire trip: a gorgeous spot, immaculately maintained, and even better, we were the only campers there that night.

We grilled our burritos and sipped our beers under the stars much later than our previous nights, and fell asleep to the dulcet tones of a large (but low-flow) exposed-rock waterfall.

I woke up a couple of times to hear some seriously dumb coyotes horsing around in the nearby forest; I know coyotes can sound scary when you're deep in the dark woods, but when you're cozy and safe, it's hard not to notice that they're basically a pack of children playing in the woods.

Curious about the rest of the story? You can now find it in part 4.

After a fitful sleep in the noisy forest, we woke up to a surprisingly warm morning with clouds so low I was surprised we didn't wake up in a cloud.

Before leaving the campsite, I enjoyed a hearty breakfast of peanut butter and trail mix wrapped within a flour tortilla. Perhaps not the healthiest breakfast option, but probably better than the honey buns (fun fact: a popular prison currency) provided by my elementary school breakfast cart. And when you're riding loaded bikes all day, it might even be justified.

We biked into (town), first on ATV trails and class 4 roads, then on a long, lovely dirt descent.

We stopped at the Chicken Wiggle Farm Stand, an establishment suspiciously bereft of both chickens and wiggles. However, the apples were massive, fresh, crisp, and delicious, and the miscellaneous snack collection was more than adequate. We added a pear-apple cider to our bag of holding, and soldiered up the first of many giant climbs of the day.

This hill started insanely steep, up a heavily forested cliffside, and gradually leveled out into farmland (that was still surprisingly steep). The journey continued uphill higher and higher.

For entertainment, we speculated about the nature of our upcoming Interstate 89 crossing: would it be a bridge? A tunnel? Perhaps a jump or a ferry? Or maybe more of a frogger situation? The speculation continued as we crested the hill and made our way into a nearby valley.

We briefly took a paved road to our first uphill class 4 of the day, but were met with a surprise: a highly informal "road closed" sign. As bicycle tourists, we assumed an implicit "to things other than ATBS, which naturally are capable of riding across ALL TERRAIN", kept calm, and carried on. We proceeded past a couple of houses, along a trail that only barely met the criteria for "rural driveway", and crossed a babbling brook via a shaky old bridge whose construction quality would have disgruntled even the most lackadaisical of highwaymen trolls. The road soon shot upwards a solid 15-20% grade, or maybe more when you accounted for the fact that about half of the road was missing due to runoff damage (presumably from the july 2023, december 2023, july 2024, or august 2024 flooding -- yes, we've had a rough relationship with water for the last couple of years). We half-rode, half-walked our bikes up the path, clipping a decent pace in case one of the nearby landowners took issue with our passing and tried to follow us up the road to tell us off. Fortunately, within a quarter mile or so, the runoff damage stopped, leaving us to content only with the average baby head rocks, treefall, potholes, and caterpillars one tends to find on your average class 4 road.

Once the runoff damage stopped, the road turned surprisingly rideable. Before we knew it, we found ourselves on a dirt road, queried for directions by a very confused CRV who took us for locals. The road continued a smidge uphill, past some slurry containers, through additional farms, beside an apple orchard, and -- much to the dismay of our betting arrangement -- across BOTH a bridge AND a tunnel to cross I-89. Even more surprisingly, the road crossing I-89 was dirt. Classic Vermont, defying even the most oddball infrastructure bet.

After our exciting crossing, we zoomed downhill on more finely packed dirt roads into the village of Braintree, which -- like many of the towns we passed through in day 1 and 2 -- had basically nothing going on.

So we headed up a hefty hill to our linner and drink destination for the day: bent hill brewery. This was probably the most brutal hill climb of our entire trip, featuring a relentless grade, a surprising amount of sun, sweltering heat, awfully large trucks, and empty stomachs. In the end, we made it to Bent Hill, an establishment of much renown, and enjoyed a hearty dinner of yellow curry, gnocchi, mushroom tacos, and several delicious beers.

The outdoor and indoor spaces were cute and well maintained, the bartender was friendly and curious about our trip, and the beer was of the highest quality. We left with completely full stomachs and hearts.

Unfortunately, our ride to our second primitive camping site wasn't the easiest. We backtracked up yet another very steep hill, then took a not-particularly-relaxing descent along dirt roads and class 4 roads.

I especially enjoyed our journey down a class 4 road that essentially no longer existed; the original road was clearly now a drainage ditch for runoff from the nearby forest (directly onto a dirt road that has obviously recently undergone a complete drainage renovation to deal with that runoff). Instead of riding on the road-turned-drainage ditch, we followed a (vaguely MTB blue) trail that followed the vague path of the original road across giant roots and rock gardens. Eventually, the trail returned us to the road, once things leveled off. We proceeded through a car, truck, and bus graveyard in the woods, past an actual graveyard, to finally empty us out onto an intersection with a main, paved road. At that point, I turned around to discover that the road we had just traveled down was very much marked Private, and that intruders were instructed to Beware of Dog. I humbly request that the owners post their warnings on both sides of their property if they wish intruders to respect their wishes.

From there, we endured a brief uphill climb into Roxbury State Forest, where we quickly and easily found a wild camping site that might have even been legal. We set up camp, enjoyed a simple snack, hung up the bear bag, and enjoyed a much quieter night of sleep.

Curious about the rest of the story? You can now find it in part 3.

Our journey begins at 12:01 AM, the day of our departure. We'd just finished up:

• wrangling all of our bags onto the bikes
• gear into the bags
• taking the bikes for a very basic 'shakedown cruise' on the local trails to test that nothing fell off and we hadn't put too much weight in the wrong places

Mind you, we sorted out plenty of gear and bags before the eleventh hour. After finishing up work on Friday, we figured we'd just attach the remaining bags (we configured the racks well in advance), put our gear into the bags, and hit up the local pub for dinner.

Unfortunately Meg's rack was mounted a little too high, rendering her (front-loaded) bike handling wildly unstable. Additionally, our setups wound up too small to fit either camp stove. We couldn't track down some of the extra-long voile straps we planned to use to secure the bear bag onto my rack, and the short ones weren't long enough to secure both the bear bag and the lock.

So I whipped up a pasta puttanesca-style mishmash of leftover CSA vegetables, Meg detached and reconfigured her rack, we eliminated all of the extra crap gear we didn't need, and we took the bikes for another test ride. Several hours passed -- nobody is quite sure how or why -- the sun set, and sometime around midnight, we felt cosy enough with our setups to hit the hay.

We got up around 7 AM, early enough to get a decent start on the day before the heat set in, but late enough to give us a decent night's rest. I whipped up some coffee, we finished off the rest of our bread, then we hit the road.

The rail trail from Littleton to the Vermont state border was as pretty (and uneventful) as always. Aside from two bicycle tourists in Littleton and an ATV in Lisbon, we didn't see anybody. After crossing the border, we were disappointed to find our favourite hole-in-the-wall breakfast spot, Hatchbox, closed on autumn break. But we trudged onward, slogging our way up the brief paved highway section of the XVT trail until we hit trails, then dirt, then class 4 road.

Along the way, we experienced one rude Prius honk, one possible coal rolling from a dumper lorry, and a whole lot of vertical climbing. Once we got away from the vehicle traffic, it was time to enjoy second breakfast. We popped a quick squat at a cute-ish creek on the side of the road, nommed away on some pop tarts and granola, and forgot all about the Bad Vibes.

A long downhill into a small town rose our spirits, helping us zoom our way uphill onto our first true class 4 road of the day. A helpful backhoe nudged off the trail to let us by; not 1000 feet later we found ourselves pushing the Moonshiners up a 20% grade of almost pure exposed rock, roots, and mud.

A truly ridiculous amount of time later, we reached the top of the climb. Fortunately, the way down looked significantly easier, so we sat down on one of the few non-posted property rocks, cracked a couple of beers, and assembled our first salami, cheese, jalapeño wraps of the journey.

Some relaxation, hydration, and libation later, we were ready to push on. This downhill lasted even longer than the first, bringing us all the way down to a hamlet containing a cute old church and an absurd number of power meters.

But our trials were not yet complete: once again, we pointed our Moonshiners up a pointy class 4 road. A group of heavily customised 4x4 trucks passed us, but it wasn't long before we caught up with them on the trails. One nice part of Vermont outdoor culture: even the 4x4 drivers tend to think ATBs are cool. They even complimented our dynamo headlights.

We almost reached the top of our penultimate climb when Meg's routing first led us astray. Instead of pointing us further down the only road in the area, I realised that our bike computer wanted us to proceed into the woods. Meg led a scouting mission through the weeds; initial reports indicated a clearly abandoned, but surprisingly well-kept roadbed. We made the silly mistake of trusting that things would stay that way.

As I'm sure you can imagine, the road lured us in using a couple of miles of flat, debris-free terrain. Then the 'road' essentially disappeared. We pushed on through some marsh, found the road again, and made it within 500 feet of an actual dirt road. Unfortunately, as any six blue whales stacked up end-to-end can tell you 500 feet is an awfully long distance across uncut forest undergrowth. Since I forgot to bring my machete on this trip, it was even worse. But, like any experienced world travelers, we prefer to look forward instead of lingering on the past, so we pushed our loaded steel ATBs straight through that forest and climbed up the roadside to the dirt road surface. I wish I could say that's the last time I'll use that sentence this trip, but alas; I cannot.

We continued along the dirt road until we came to yet another nonexistent road along the route; this time, the path led straight across a field. We surreptitiously scrutinized the sweeping stretches of soil, but didn't feel like bushwhacking across completely random forests and streams, so we circled back to another class 4 road that (supposedly) led into the state park where we planned to primitive camp.

Fortunately, this road existed, and was even (mostly) rideable. We dragged our sorry asses up the hill until we were 90% sure that we entered Washington State Forest. We hike-a-biked our way 200(ish) feet off of the very rough trail, set up the tent among some cairns, cracked a beer, ate some more salami cheese wraps, set up the bear bag, and spectated as night fell.

Before long, a side-by-side with a massive light bar and an ATV passed by on the trail, but other than that, we were entirely alone in the wilderness. We split a celebratory take 5 bar for dessert, brushed our teeth, and settled down for sleep.

Of course, that wasn't the end of our day. Because the forest was absolutely chock full of crunchy old leaves and dry twigs, we were on edge a huge chunk of the night. When you're completely blind in a dark, opaque tent under a rain fly, every crinkle of leaves falling sounds like a bear or a moose that's about to trample the tent. Every chitter sounds like a family of raccoons about to tear your bicycle to shreds. Every spooky unidentifiable crash sounds like a hash-slinging slasher on the verge of 'getting' you.

Fortunately, nearly 6000 feet of steep road climbing and 55 miles of riding was enough to knock us out despite the spooks. I woke up a couple of times in the night (or maybe I was just dreaming) to even crazier noises, but overall our camping site served us well. 7 stars out of 10 for the accommodation: the neighbours were noisy and the facilities were lacking, but I can forgive that since the price was right.

Stay tuned for our next episode, where we journey further into Vermont to Bent Hill Brewery and Roxbury State Forest for even more climbing, beers, and primitive camping.

Curious about the rest of the story? You can now find it in part 2.

Prefer not to read? Take a look at the video Meg made that summarises our entire journey in just a few minutes of screen time.

When we lived in Colorado, I thought mountain biking was ridiculous. A bunch of Lycra-clad crazies riding lifts to the top of giant mountains to try to zoom down as fast as possible on bermy trails that might as well be pavement? Driving up and down I-70 in bumper-to-bumper traffic to get to the mountain in the summer? Paying for a day pass just to ride your bike? What's the fun in that? I preferred dirt roads, touring bikes, and city riding, because to me, bicycling is all about having fun on your bike while using the bike as a means of travel. On trails, why not just hike and avoid the mechanical investment?

We moved to New England a few years ago, and I re-assessed. All of the (decent) local towns have extensive mountain biking networks. The land is mostly "loaned" to the networks by locals and maintained by community volunteers (or, in the fanciest towns, one or two underpaid professional mountain bike enthusiasts). The vast majority of trail systems aren't ski resorts, and don't have lifts, so folks actually have to "earn their turns" by riding up the hill. Many of the trail systems were built by volunteers, often decades ago, and could easily be confused with your average Appalachian hiking trail. Even the best trail networks often have just one zoomy, bermy trail where all of the Intense Fast Serious Mountain Biking lads hang out, lapping repeatedly to get the best Strava times. That leaves the rest of the network for the Not So Serious Not So Intense Not So Fast Biking folks.

So I tried trail running on our extensive town trails. I did a few rides out of Littleton to nearby towns and points of interest. I realised that there really isn't much bicycle riding to be done on rural New Hampshire roads. And what little there is, you have to share with giant trucks.

So I tried riding my touring bike (which is actually a 90s mountain bike) on the local trails. I found my way all the way up to the summit. Then I met some riders who looked at me like I was insane for riding a rigid 1x7 26" bicycle on a mountain biking trail in 2022.

I rode my bike home. I had a lot of fun. But I recognised a few things that day:

• mountain biking requires a swath of technical skills that I did not have in 2022
• everyone else thinks you need a $3000 full suspension carbon fiber bicycle to ride a bike around some rocks and roots up hills in the trees
• riding your bicycle in the woods seems kind of fun

So I did some research. I interrogated some innocent bicycle shop employees about the necessity of suspension. I learned about hardtails vs. full squish, and frame materials, and wheel sizes, and brake types, and enduro bikes, and trail bikes, and ...I kind of lost interest after that.

So I bought myself my first mountain bike. More money than I wanted to spend, but less than recommended. I got a steel hardtail that was marketed a little too hard at your average bikepacker-wannabee. The suspension fork was fine, though not top-of-the-line. The components were all pretty good, thanks to a pretty solid deal from a local bike shop owner.

That bike, Falkor, served me well for my first year in Littleton. I went from barely capable of riding down the simplest trails to descending some of the hardest blacks in my local network. But after all that time, something bothered me: I just didn't really give a shit about the suspension. Everyone insisted that it was irreplaceable. Folks would tell me about how they couldn't imagine riding even the most basic trails without it. But when I left my fork totally locked out on the stiffest setting possible, where the fork doesn't even move if you put all of your weight on it... it didn't really bother me. I often forgot to disable the lockout after enabling it on dirt roads to connect trails. I wondered, sometimes aloud, why everyone seemed convinced that suspension is The Only Way. Surely other people, more knowledgeable than me, had proven it somehow?

This curiosity culminated in a pilgrimage to the Mecca of Northeast weird woodsy rigid bike riding: Analog Cycles, in Poultney, Vermont.

My first visit, I took my hardtail, took a long ride around their class IV roads and mountain biking network, and camped at the shop's sugar shack. I gazed at the Moonshiner in awe, but only took it out for a very brief spin. Drop bars were foreign to me, and I already had a bike, anyway.

My second visit, I took a Tanglefoot Moonshiner for a test ride. I immediately started the fitting and parts selection process for my own Tanglefoot Moonshiner.

A year later, I sold my hardtail.

A year later, I wrote this post.

Design

The Tanglefoot Moonshiner is weird. Inspired by bikes from the late 1800s and early 1900s, very few modern bikes share its stack design and high bottom bracket. It's kind of a combination of the English roadster, a Team Fat Chance Yo Eddy, and a Salsa Cutthroat. The drop bars are lifted so high that you wind up sitting in a much more upright position than your average drop bar bike. You wind up spending most of your time in the drops, rather than on the hoods.

I can't speak about ride quality, tubing feel, and other highfalutin murky bicycle review concepts. I'll leave that to the bikepacking.com review. But I can speak to my own subjective experience: the Moonshiner is comfortable to ride, even for long stretches of time. It feels solid. It is certainly heavier than a lot of carbon mountain bikes out there, but it's not heavy enough to stop me from riding it up crazy hills all day long. The lightest mountain-trail capable bikes, like the rigid Salsa Cutthroat, weigh around 10kg. The Moonshiner clocks in at 13kg. So do pretty much all aluminum full suspension bikes. Carbon full suspension bikes tend to be a kg or two lighter. Those 3kg between a rigid steel bike and a rigid carbon bike could impact your times in a race, but they're a drop in the bucket compared to the weight of yourself and all of your bikepacking gear. Hell, a decent U-lock weighs in at around 2kgs, and I need to drag one of those along to prevent my bike from getting stolen in most parts of the world. The parts of a Moonshiner are all stronger, more repairable, and easily maintainable with a few basic tools at home. I'd rather take those benefits than trade them off for a couple of kgs that I won't even notice. So if you race, sure, feel free to complain about the weight of a steel bike. But in any other case, who cares about a 5% gain, at the cost of repairability and durability?

Parts

Pedals: they're orange. I try to smack them into things as little as possible. They're pretty easy to clean, and provide a massive sticky platform for my vans or bedrock sandals. If I have to bail on a particularly chunky section of trail, or I slip on a wet rock, I don't have to unclip to save myself. The anodisation has worn off in places, but is generally in good shape. 10/10, except when I manage to dig them into my shin, which fortunately happens rarely.

Cranks: My White Industries cranks are very nice. But it's annoying that you have to use a special bottom bracket tool to add and remove chainrings. Replacement chainrings are very pricey, and only come in aluminum. Very high torque spec, so much so that you almost certainly need a torque wrench. They look nice, they feel nice, but you should honestly just get a cheaper set of cranks unless you're totally married to White industries. They use 10mm self-tightening bolts and an inner 8mm to tighten the dust cap, which is a pretty smart design, because idiots like me won't get confused about tightening the dust cap but not getting to the self-tightening bolt itself. But you won't be tightening this on the trail because the torque spec is only barely reachable by human arms with a large allen key, let alone your multitool (which probably doesn't have a 10mm key anyway).

Saddle: I originally put a brooks saddle on this bike. Unfortunately, my bony ass is a weird shape, so it's not the ideal fit. And that created a lot of squeaking from my brooks. So I eventually got fed up with it and swapped my beautiful leather brooks saddle for a spare Terry Butterfly saddle we had laying around that Meg never ended up putting on her bike (ironically, in favor of... a Brooks saddle). I'd like to try a Brooks C17 at some point, but for now, the butterfly is fantastic. No saddle sores after super long rides, and totally water resistant? Sounds good to me.

Ultra Wide Drivetrain: It's partially my fault for skipping the expensive and somewhat gaudy-looking Garbaruk replacement derailleur cage (at first), but my shifting with my original SRAM Rival drivetrain never quite worked perfectly. This is the only bike I've ever had with serious, unsolvable, persistent shifting issues. And it would degrade over time, drifting depending on the day, cleanliness of the chain, and phase of the moon. I have fortunately since fixed the issue entirely by switching to a microSHIFT Sword drivetrain. That being said: I don't recommend speccing your Moonshiner with a Rival drivetrain, let alone exceeding the spec of the Rival derailleur the way that Analog likes to. SRAM is doing some pretty trashy things anyway, pushing more and more proprietary standards and raising their price points, so you might as well just avoid them altogether. microSHIFT seems like a great, small company that's doing a great job with affordable 9 and 10 speed non-electric gravel drivetrains, so take a look there first unless you truly need something at the top 1% of performance. Nobody needs to waste money on replacement wear parts for a SRAM drivetrain anymore, when microSHIFT performs well enough for 99% of bicycles.

Brakes: This is my first experience with Paul Klampers, and they are easily the best brakes I've ever used. Strong, reliant braking, easily tweaked to be as strong (or as gradual) as you prefer. Easy to adjust without a multitool!. Easy to replace the pads. Easy to clean. Easy to replace the wires. No hydraulic fluid to freeze up, spill everywhere, or bleed. And damn do they look sharp.

Cable Stops: I never thought I'd actually mention this in a review, but I seriously recommend Forager cable cherries. You'll never have to buy a brake cable ferrule again! They also look better than ferrules, and you can reuse them. Note: these require the tiniest, strangest-sized allen key you've ever seen, 1.5mm IIRC. And of course they're 1000x the price of ferrules. But at least you'll waste less metal when you replace cables!

Handlebars: My Moonshiner is a drop bar mountain bike. I've tried drop bars on traditional mountain bikes, and they aren't great. They're too low, so they wind up hurting my back and pushing way too much of my weight onto the front tire of the bike. That can be nice on climbs, but feels downright dangerous when you zoom downhill. The tall stack on the Moonshiner puts drop bars high. Really high. So high, you can comfortably hang out in the drops all the time. It takes some getting used to, but it's really really cozy. And you can always hop up onto the hoods or the top bar to change things up if you start to get sore. I could seriously ride this thing around all day. (I do!) Because this setup has a variety of comfortable hand positions, it's great for trips long and short, speeds fast and slow. Flat bars now feel cheap and awkward when I ride other mountain bikes.

Riding around on old-school New England trails has showed me another benefit of drop bars: drop bars, even flared gravel ones, are significantly narrower than modern mountain bike flat bars. On tight mountain bike trails built for smaller 90s bicycles, the trees have grown thicker over the decades, narrowing the trail. I've encountered trials that I literally could not ride on my hardtail because the trees are too tight for an 800mm handlebar. But the Moonshiner is thin enough to squeeze through with no problem.

Handlebar Tape: My Moonshiner originally used corduroy fabric bar tape. It felt great, looked great, but loses serious points for durability. As sweat and rain seeped in, parts of the tape turned black, wore down to lose their texture entirely, and started to separate and even became threadbare, exposing the underlying gel. I swapped the original tape out for some (Meg-wrapped -- thank you!) Brooks tape, and I couldn't be happier with it. I worry a little about what's in this tape, because it lasts forever. Over a year later, it still looks brand new. Some kind of radioactive material? Pure cancer-inducing plastic? But hey, at least I won't have to replace it any time soon.

Shifters and Brake Levers: My original SRAM Rival shifters and brake levers felt good. Solid texture, ergonomics, and materials. Upshifting was a mite tricky, since it shares a lever with downshifting -- push it to upshift, push it harder to downshift. It's easy to accidentally turn upshifts into downshifts on those levers on a mountain bike trail as you're zooming down (or crawling up) a trail. But it worked well overall. My replacement microSHIFT Sword shifters and brake levers use separate buttons for up and downshifts. The down one feels a little loose, but it's clearly an intentional part of the design, so I'll give it a pass. The hoods have a pleasing shape, if a bit bigger than the rival levers, but they overall serve me well and feel very comfortable on the trail. Full points to both sets of levers.

Stack and Stem: Most modern bikes use stems that position the handlebars at least a couple of inches in front of the stack. My Moonshiner uses a custom stem called the creemee stem which holds your handlebars right on top like a dollop of soft serve ice cream on a cone. It's hard to say how much the "zero reach" stem matters, but the handling on my moonshiner is superior to every other mountain bike I've ever ridden. I can whip my front wheel around extremely easily to dodge obstacles on the trail, cutting precise, surgical paths when I want to. And when I'm zooming down a hill, it doesn't feel too touchy. Is it the zero-reach? Is it the drop bars? All of that moonshine? I don't know, but it slaps.

Dynamo Lights: Not necessary. But it fills me with joy to think that if I ever need a front and rear light or a cell phone charge, all I have to do is flip a switch. It's nice for bikepacking. It makes me feel safer when I connect trails with roads, or ride to nearby trail systems from my home. It's comforting on rides around the winter solstice, when it sometimes feels like we don't have a sun at all. The Sinewave Beacon has served me well for years, providing more than enough light to ride as fast as I ever want to at night, first on my touring bike, now on my Moonshiner. My rear light is visible and reliant. And I even got to solder it all myself, learning a thing or two about electric wiring and coaxial connectors as I did it. If you have the means, I highly recommend it.

Paint: My Moonshiner's paint is noticeably easier to scuff and wear completely off than any other bike I've ever had. Just from using a front bag that pinned some cables to the head tube, I've managed to wear off a huge chunk of paint on the head tube all the way to raw steel. A section of the downtube has worn down to raw steel as well, presumably from a frame bag, though I've only put frame bags on the bike for a fraction of it's life. The drive-side chainstay and seatstay are scuffed to hell and back after a derailleur-breaking incident where I lacked a chain tool, so I had to dangle the chain and derailleur off of the frame for a mile back to my house. This frame may be for life, but this paint job? no way in hell is it going to last 29 years like the setup on my touring bike has, or even the 5 years that my bikepacking-oriented hardtail (used very similarly, only scratched from glacial errata strikes on the rear triangle) did.

Tires: My 3" Terevail Coronados are more than enough on mountain biking trails and class 4 roads, providing plenty of grip unless it's super wet out, and plenty of cushion on the rugged stuff. Big enough to provide some float, or grip, or something along those lines in mud puddles. I could probably go down to a 2.5" tire or so before I started to feel outclassed by local terrain. They feel a little big and clunky on the most boring terrain: roads and rail trails. But they're not as knobbly as some MTB tires, and without suspension, that stuff is bearable for a few miles. These tires are absolutely perfect for chonky Vermont dirt roads, providing the cushion you need to ride over hefty potholes and washboards. Also big enough to ride on fat tire groomed snow trails when conditions are optimal without sinking in at all. Beware: many trail networks require 3.5-3.7" tires, so it's up to you if you want to risk pissing anyone off. It's unlikely that anyone is going to take calipers out to measure your tire, but I've definitely gotten some looks from the most judgmental locals. In general, I don't think it's a big deal if I'm not sinking into the trail. But I'm also very cautious to not ride when we're cracking above the freezing point with groomed trails. When in doubt, don't be a jerk.

Wheel Stuff: My rear hub works well, and most importantly, is silent. My SON28 front dynamo hub is amazing and rock-solid, just like the one on my touring bike. Rims are rims. I have velocity blunts; they're aluminum, and quite wide. When you smack them into things, they sometimes dent, but are very unlikely to crack unless you get hit by a train or something, in which case you have much bigger problems. When they bend, you can bend them back, and everything works the same as it ever was. That's my aluminium rim sales pitch. Disclaimer: 'bending back' doesn't get things quite perfect enough when it comes to tubeless tires. For those, you should probably just go carbon and try not to be the idiot who cracks his rims. Personally, I don't find tubeless worthwhile. It's a lot of goo and a lot of pain when you want to swap tires, and I don't notice any improvement in ride quality. But if you live somewhere with a lot of cactus or goats head thorns or have a really mean cat with really sharp claws, I understand that it could be worthwhile.

Vibes

I really don't understand "stiff" vs "flexy" frames, how to tell the difference between different tubing, and how geometry influences your bicycle ride. I'm not sure anyone really does. But I can tell you that this bicycle is damn comfortable, even when you ride it over brutal roots, rocks, and anything else trail systems throw at you. Comparable to a full suspension bicycle in many ways, though you have to know how to ride it -- unlike a full-suspension bicycle, you can't just bomb right at any path you choose. You have to be a little more strategic. Anyway, my hands rarely ache, I never get any of those "vibration jitters" that I feel on aluminum bikes, it's light enough for me to pick up and carry over downed trees and through rivers pretty easily, and the frame hasn't cracked or rusted out yet. Score one for steel.

Enjoy my photo gallery of pretty Moonshiner pics below:

What is Moonshining?

Riding 365 days a year, on the same bike, on the same trails.

Using one bicycle to explore class IV roads in Vermont, connect mountain biking trail networks, go on bikepacking trips, and ride my local trails.

In 2024, Northern New England barely gets a month total of significant snow on the ground. Torrential downpours routinely render trail networks a series of loosely-connected mud puddles throughout the summer. I've never gone more than two weeks without hitting the local trails on a normal mountain bike. I ride in October, November, December, January, February, March, and April. I ride in the summer. I ride on snow. I ride through mud puddles. And the Moonshiner makes all of that fun.

To me, Moonshining is about two things:

• having fun on my bike
• DIY

Having a steel bike full of well-made components that will last me basically forever makes me happy. I enjoy learning how to maintain my bike. I don't care about suspension, or fragile carbon parts. I'm perfectly happy using mechanical brakes that I can tune in my own home and paying the 3kg weight cost of steel and aluminum parts. I don't race, and I don't care about speed. I think it's cool to support small, often USA-local brands that make really cool parts for bikes that you cannot get anywhere else (see: my dynamo light, my cranks, my rims, and my stem).

If that sounds reasonable to you, maybe you should visit Analog down in Poultney and take a Moonshiner (or a Hardtack, the Moonshiner's lighter little brother) for a spin. If that doesn't sound reasonable to you, ask your local bike shop about demoing carbon full-suspension bike. Different strokes for different folks; I'm just glad that folks like me finally have something cool and novel. Special thanks to James for making this awesome bicycle design happen, and of course to Analog for building this bike for me.

If you missed the previous post, you can find Part 7 here.

In this post, I reflect on what went well -- and what went not so well -- in our first big international bike tour. And to finish things off, I'll float some ideas about what might come next.

What went well?

We survived! That's a great place to start.

We spent a month on our bikes and walked away still wanting to ride the bikes and spend time with each other.

We never got bored; the pressure of riding your bike to a new place was an excellent motivator to get up every morning, successfully holding ennui at bay.

We developed great tans and not-so-great sandal tan lines.

We tried a ton of great food, beer, cider, and coffee.

My dynamo charger provided unlimited light when we needed it and enough power to keep my phone and our navigation unit fully charged, every day. If Meg equips Sully with a dynamo, we wouldn't ever need a charger.

We successfully packed up our bikes, bags, and supplies into boxes, brought them to another country, reassembled everything, rode for hundreds of miles into two other countries, then put everything back into boxes and brought it home. The only thing we damaged? My front fender, which kinda sucked anyway.

We routed (and repeatedly rerouted) successfully for hundreds of miles. We did plenty of advance planning, scoping out likely pubs, grocery stores, camping areas, coffee shops, and sights to see. But in the end we settled on a just-in-time strategy where we mapped out a major destination (usually a city) and routed our way there one day at a time to keep things manageable.

Our Garmin Edge 840 bike computer worked magnificently in tandem with maps Meg created with RidewithGPS on her phone. The display is always on, it doesn't consume much power, it shows you elevation profiles (for better or for worse), and generally keeps you off of your phone by always showing your next turn. But for the love of all that is holy you should turn the beeps off (or at least down!).

Flying into one airport and out of another is really expensive. We'd strongly prefer to do some kind of loop in the future when possible. One-way flights are an absolute ripoff and often end up more expensive than a two-way flight that includes the same one-way flight!

We worried a lot about time and stressed a lot about hitting milestones. In the future, we'll just go at a comfortable pace and take public transit to our end goal if we truly run out of time. But there's no sense rushing through cool areas because you know you have a lot of riding in the future!

We're glad we didn't bring cooking supplies for a touristy trip. It was nice to save the space in our bags, and we honestly enjoyed spending money at pubs and coffee shops since it was often the only money we spent each day.

We saw three foreign countries in a way I have never before experienced. When you're on a bike, you slow down and actually see the place you're visiting instead of teleporting around in a car.

I proved that Bristol is indeed a very cool city, and not just the product of rose-tinted college glasses. And we discovered that Glasgow and Hackney are also excellent urban areas. I'll refrain from ranting about how much better a medium-sized walkable city in the UK is than literally any car-dependent city in the USA.

And we did it all for a pretty affordable sticker price -- turns out accomodation is 90% of the cost of most vacations, and even when you pay for campsites, it comes out a lot cheaper than hotel rooms. We splurged on campsites, hotel rooms, beer, coffee, and food, but for a longer length tour we could cut 90% of that and travel internationally for... less than our average winter heating bill per month.

What went not-so-well?

We should have spent more time in Scotland, which was the prettiest, wildest, and most fun of the entire trip. This would have given us a lot more opportunities to wild camp, too. If I did this trip again, I'd probably bike up into the highlands at the beginning of the trip and trim some days from London.

We deviated a lot from our original route plan. I'm sure plenty of you could have expected this, but the definition of a "bikepacking route" varies a lot between countries. We've stitched together plenty of combined bikepacking and cycle touring routes in the USA, so we figured we could handle most portions of the GB Divide route, rerouting around the nastiest bits. Unfortunately, the route cuts through an awful lot of right-of-ways and bridle paths that just aren't rideable, even on a mountain bike. Too mushy, too overgrown, not fun. We wound up following the broad strokes of the GB Divide, but personally I think the people who designed it are kind of crazy. In the USA, we're "bikepacking people" because we enjoy dirt roads, abandoned roads, manageable singletrack, and anything else that keeps us off of main roads (and the giant scary cars that haunt them). In Europe, cars are less big, people are better at driving, and on-road bicycle paths are better, so we're much more in line with the average European bicycle tourer. Even the road-based bike routes around the UK often used railway paths, gravel roads, and forest roads -- exactly the kind of stuff folks in the USA tend to call bikepacking.

Wild camping is hard. In Scotland, it's legal, but takes some getting used to. In England, it's illegal and uncomfortable. Most bike tourers and bikepackers walk a fine legal grey area; they prefer camping in deserted places and leave no trace, but sometimes ask local residents or authorities for camping suggestions when in a pinch. We tried wild camping, but because it's nice to have peace of mind that someone isn't going to show up and kick you out, we wound up paying for campsites most of the time.

Booking a vehicle to transport you from a city to the airport is expensive and kind of shitty. I'd just rely on public transit next time, especially with a rail line to the airport. But that isn't an option everywhere, so it was good practice to try this out.

Where next?

For the next little while, we'll focus on shorter bike trips. Overnighters, day trips to explore national parks or particular pretty stretches of dirt roads, and long rides on our local trail systems. All of this keeps us in shape and scratches the "itch" of biking without the necessity of a monthlong vacation from work. We only managed a full month because I changed jobs and Meg earned a monthlong sabbatical after 3 years at her job (a program that has been discontinued since). But within the next couple of years I'm sure we'll start to feel the need for a longer trip. Here are a few of the ideas we're currently incubating:

Unsupported bikepacking in the USA -- off the grid, singletrack, just camping, cooking for ourselves, swimming in rivers, and appreciating nature. The Great Divide and the New York section of the Eastern Divide are high on our list.

Japan & South Korea have excellent bike infrastructure, well designed cities, polite drivers, a great climate, and are easily linked by ferry.

Real Europe™ is the OG of bicycle touring. We'd be happy doing a trip just about anywhere in Europe, though France, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway are at the top of my list since there's not as much of a language barrier as there can be in other places. There are some excellent multi-country routes along the Mediterranean that look beautiful and pretty affordable to boot.

The Scottish Highlands and the Hebridean Way, because we missed them on this trip. I travel to work in the UK semi-regularly now, so we could conceivably try this at some point after a work trip.

Thanks for reading along! We had a great time, and I hope this series of posts has helped you understand a tiny piece of why we love riding our bicycles so much. Maybe it's inspired you to try a longer bike ride yourself, or just to dig your old, neglected bicycle out of the garage and take it for a spin. You might be surprised at just how much fun you have on it.

If you missed the previous post, you can find Part 6 here.

In this post, we'll cover our experiences in Bristol, Bath, London, and our journeys between those cities.

The final leg of the journey takes place mostly in cities. We didn't want to risk missing our flight or scrambling at the last minute because of a flat tire or poor distance estimation skills, so we wound up arriving in Bistol with about a week to burn before our flight. There isn't that much distance between Bristol in London, so we had ample time to explore London and revisit all my old favorite haunts in Bristol, where I studied abroad back in uni.

As is tradition with the city portions of this trip, I'll leave out the finer details and instead leave you with some recommendations and highlights of each population center.

Our Bristol favourites included:

• The Scrandit has a small but mighty beverage selection of excellent local beers and ciders, but the real secret is the food made by a rotation of local pop-up chefs. I wish this place was not thousands of miles from my home because I would come here constantly if I lived in the area. I also love the fact that you can sit downstairs at the bar, upstairs at a small table, or upstairs at a single very large community table depending on how social you want to be.

• Coffee + Beer makes great coffee and pours great beer. In the same space. They source beans from some of the best roasters in the country and clearly source their pastries from some of the tastiest bakers in the city. Again, I wish this place was not thousands of miles from my home.

• The Cloakroom Cafe made a fantastic chai latte, but the real attraction is the location. Which used to be a toilet. But a British toilet so it's not nasty, it's actually cool. I'm not entirely sure how the antique bicycle hanging from the ceiling fits in with the theme but it certainly looked cool.

• Everyman Cinema reminded me of my favourite movie theatres: Nighthawk in Brooklyn and The Lyric in Fort Collins. For those of us who don't enjoy being treated like cattle and served deeply overpriced candy, popcorn, and soda while we watch a movie. We bought a couple of tickets to watch Barbie in a very old, very beautiful theatre on a cosy sofa. The tickets and a (nice, French) bottle of wine cost less than the last movie I saw in a crappy US theatre.

• The Viet Kitchen served up the largest bao buns I have ever set eyes upon in my entire life.

• Cabot Tower is free, fun to climb, and provides an amazing 360 degree view of the city.

• I'm not really a cocktail bar kind of person but Hyde & Co turned out to be a very fun speakeasy bar. As usual, the puzzles weren't really something you could "solve" without ordering half the menu, but the vibe was really unique and the service was extremely friendly.

• Not only did Baristas Coffee Collective make me an excellent latte, they also made me one of the greatest breakfast sandwiches I have ever eaten. Halloumi, avocado, perfectly fried eggs, and what my journal describes as "sourdough like a bouncy castle, but in a good way".

• New Cut Coffee made me a latte with one of those tea-like natural proccess coffees that could convince just about anyone that "fruit notes" aren't just made-up sommelier shit. That's enough to make the list, but the real standout was their banana walnut bread with espresso butter, a pastry so good I had to order a second piece.

• Grain Barge seems like a perfectly adequate pub-with-a-schtick (and unlike The Apple, another floating pub, they actually refrigerate their cider). But as a recovering sailor, I had a fantastic time watching sailboat races in the floating harbor for an afternoon over a couple of beverages.

• Crying Wolf makes a mean piña colada thanks to homemade coconut sherbet.

• Bristol Cathedral is a millenia old, entirely free, and full of interesting historical artifacts. I could have spent much more time here.

The local burrito was adequate, but I am disappointed to report that the local arcade bar altogether lacks charm. But Burlington, Vermont; Rochester, New York; Denver, Colorado; and Portland, Maine have set the bar really high for arcade bars. I also tried Wok to Walk, which turned out much better than I expected (but probably about as decent as you're imagining).

Before we knew it, our time was up in Bristol. We headed to Bath along the rail trail, whose antiquated website promises the following:

Each megabyte of a document will take around 1min 30secs to download on a 56kbps modem. For example, a 2MB file will take around 3mins to download on a 56kbps modem. For broadband users, downloads will take considerably less time.

Thoughtful and true. Thanks, Bristol & Bath railway path!

The rail trail turned out to be a very easy ride, full of runners, walkers, incredibly well-trained leashless dogs, and cyclists. But manners were generally very good, and instead of being annoying it turned out to be quite pleasant. The city thinned out, the luxury condos grew further and further apart, and before long we passed through the 0.3 mile Staple Hill Tunnel (which, despite online assurances, is not particularly well lit) and escaped into true countryside, surrounded by trees, cows, and fields.

After a brief navigation debate (fortunately, only a couple of cow gates and a public right-of-way separate the rail trail from The Bath Soft Cheese Co), we enjoyed for a high quality blue cheese toasty, my favorite rarebit of the trip, and a fresh-outta-the-cow chocolate milkshake. The milking parlor and cheese room are mostly for kids, but it was genuinely very cool to watch someone separate cheese curds.

We returned to the railway path, but it wasn't long before we reached Bath. So we stopped at Electric Bear Brewing to pad the day out a bit. And before we knew it, we were in Bath. We walked around, checked out historic buildings, parks, snacked on some local food and drink, and prepared for London. Bath is full of neat buildings, but when you measure it up to thriving cities like Bristol and London, it's a bit touristy.

The next morning, we got up, headed to the train station, and boarded a train to London. Unfortunately, despite making a bike reservation, the bike spaces were occupied. So we loitered in the handicap zone of the train with our bikes until the jerks who didn't have reservations left the train. Not the most fun way to travel, but better than riding through shoddy suburban bike infrastructure. And we had some lovely chat with other folks on the train.

Before long, we were at the end destination of our trip: London. But we weren't done biking. For our first night in the city, we planned to stay far north of the city centre -- near Tottenham. So we enjoyed a quick cheesy snack in Hyde Park, then embarked on our Great London Bike Ride, which took us past all of the big touristy things without fighting our way through massive crowds.

We cruised past Buckingham Palace, to Parliament, past Big Ben, along the Thames across from the London Eye, over to the City of London, London Bridge, Tower Bridge, and the Tower of London. And that's just the old stuff. The bike infrastructure was incredible: that entire ride only required us to stop a single time, and make one or two turns. The bike lane was fully separated from both vehicle traffic and the sidewalk, and it was painted blue and well marked to make it obvious for folks who haven't biked it before.

After checking out the usual tourist attractions at a much more reasonable speed, we headed north towards Tottenham, up through Hackney. It wasn't long before we were out of the hustle and bustle of the city centre, casually riding along a canal through a residential neighborhood. And that's where Meg got her first flat of the ride thanks to a giant nail in the path.

Fortunately, we were extremely prepared, and fixed it in three minutes flat with one of several spare tubes and the bike pump I lugged in a pannier for the entire trip. The rest of our journey went smoothly, so we dropped our bikes off at the hotel and explored the neighborhood.

Most of our time in London was spent in and around Hackney, the Brooklyn of London. Special thanks to my friend Dan for hanging out with us for a few days of London shenanigans.

I won't bother recommending much in the city centre, but I think a lot of visitors overlook Hackey, so I wanted to highlight some places that are a little further off the beaten path (and some staples that I think are actually worthwhile):

• Balfe's Bikes supplied us with a couple of bike boxes to bring our bikes home -- THANK YOU!

• Bike Maniac is exactly the hero we needed when my multitool and arms did not provide enough torque to remove our pedals (an essential part of packing your bike up into a box). 10/10 pedal wrench loan, and a very cool guy in general.

• We wandered into the Museum of the Home and wound up pleasantly surprised by their selection of living rooms through the ages.

• Weino BIB provided great wine, great olives, and a chill place to hang out.

• The second level of every double decker bus in London (except the shitty tourist ones) turned out to be a great way to get around. On the second level, you can almost trick yourself that you're on a competent mode of public transportation (a train).

• Table 13 made great coffee. I wish we'd found them during their wine shop and dinner hours.

• Mikos Gyros makes for excellent guilty pleasure Greek street food.

• The National Gallery, like many state-run museums in London, is free. You'll recognize a lot of paintings. The building itself is gorgeous. If I had to visit just one museum in London, it would be this one. (yes, this is a subtle dig at Tate because I can't bear to look at modern art for more than 10 minutes at a stretch)

• We stumbled upon Violet Cakes when I carried our bike boxes a couple of miles around london. Solid coffee, better baked goods.

• Hackney Church Brew Co makes good beer under a train line. Though I don't recommend ordering food here; we went on a not-that-busy night and it took them almost 2 hours to bring us our orders.

• Batch Baby made a high quality toasty in a 60s retro setting. Excellent place to finish a book series and watch the neighborhood wake up.

• e5 bakehouse makes exquisite bread and top-tier coffee.

• My Neighbors the Dumplings, despite the strange name, made the best dim sum I've ever had. Though admittedly I have not had that much dim sum. But Meg has had a lot more and she thought it was high quality, too.

• Victoria Park is gorgeous. It's a park.

• The Dusty Knuckle became a breakfast staple thanks to their signature feta honey fennel bun. All of their baked goods were extremely good -- except for the toast, which was unevenly toasted. Relieving to discover that they're not good at everything because goddamn was that feta honey fennel bun delicious.

Our final day arrived all too soon. We considered taking the tube with our bike boxes, but the trip from Hackney to Heathrow required a couple of transfers and nothing is simple when a couple of 50lb bike boxes are involved. So we booked a van (whose driver only stole some of our money when he didn't make change) and revelled in the shame of private internal combustion engine transportation to the airport. Next time I will take public transport.

But this isn't the end of my GB Bike tour blog series. In Part 8, I'll reflect on what went right (and what went wrong!) across the entire journey. And I'll leave you with some hopes and dreams for what Meg and I might do next.

If you missed the previous post, you can find Part 5 here.

In this post, we'll travel from some tiny horses we met in Wales all the way back into England, to Bristol. We found the bicycle infrastructure between Cardiff and Bristol... wanting, though we were pleased to discover a very large bicycle path on a very large bridge. More on that later.

Our journey resumes right at the top of a brutal hill. Our heroes, Nate and Meg, were almost without hope. Their bicycles were squeaking. Their legs were aching. Their palms were sweaty. Mom's spaghetti. Wait, no, that's not right. We just stumbled upon some very cute tiny horses, had a quick snack, and drank some water.

Then it turned out we were at the top of a very long uphill, so we cruised downhill through a very pleasant breeze, with some great views of the Brecon Beacons, to lunch at the Brecon Tap. We had a refreshing pint, a life-replenishing pie, and something that the menu called a salad that I'm not sure legally conforms to that description. But it was all very tasty, and the rest was much needed. Then we popped over to a Costa Coffee for a caffeine pick-me-up and a quick phone charge while we scouted out a campsite.

We found a decent campsite with prominent quiet hours and a lot of impressive-sounding awards. A short shopping trip to the co-op for local cider, then a couple hours of easy mild uphill riding later, we arrived at our campsite with plenty of time to spare before sunset.

We showered, set up the tent, enjoyed a refreshing beverage, and passed out due to lack of sleep well before the sun went down. I am happy to report that the quiet hours were absolutely followed, though it probably helped that we camped as far away from other people as possible after the previous night's trauma.

The next day, we woke up early -- I'm pretty sure our tent was fully packed up and we were riding out of the camping area before the sun had a chance to peek over the horizon. Our ride continued similarly to the previous afternoon's ride, and felt very easy after getting an adequate night's sleep. The hills were foggy, the hedges continued to need a good trimming, but the traffic was nonexistent and the skies above the fog were as blue as can be.

Before long, we wound up at a dam on a mountain lake with some very impressive views. We crossed the dam and found ourselves riding on a rail trail. Huzzah! For those who don't know, rail trails are the best way to cross a range of mountains by bike. The grade usually can't exceed 3%, which can be grueling if you're stuck riding that way for hours, but is much much easier than the 20% grades we typically see on unmaintained mountain roads designed for cars or horses.

We pushed our way up the rail trail in record time, and before we knew it we were at the highest point of our day's ride. Hours ahead of our hoped schedule, well before noon. And we spotted a trailhead for a hike that we strongly suspected we could see the top of. With the strength of a good night's sleep and an unexpectedly easy climb coursing through our veins, we locked up the bikes and started our first UK hike.

It turned out to be beautiful. But I'm fairly certain I'm one of very few people who has ever completed that hike wearing sandals. If only because a lot of sheep roam the Beacons, and they leave behind a lot of shit. When wearing sandals, you really have to watch your step. But it was very worth it for the views at the top of Bwlch y Ddwyallt.

So we completed our surprise hike, saw some waterfalls, chatted with some folks near the top, took a picture, and then climbed back down. All in all, the surprise hike took up just one hour of our time.

The trailhead was located on a paved road that seems to be the only way over the peak of the pass (seems like the railroad used to use a tunnel that has been abandoned for decades), but we only ended up riding on pavement for a mile or so before we found a windy gravel route that seemed to roughly parallel the paved downhill route. So of course we took a risk and rode the gravel trail. It turned out to be brilliant, with some really cool views of burns with tiny waterfalls and bright red rock formations.

We crossed another neat stone dam, then wound up on yet another rail trail. We sped downhill with hope in our hearts and plenty of energy for whatever challenges might pop up next.

We were not entirely mentally prepared for what, for the number of times it appears on road signs in Wales, seems to be the unofficial state motto: gwyriad. AKA diversion. Or for you Americans out there, detour. For the rest of the ride to Cardiff, I'm pretty sure we rode nothing but diversions. There was some kind of massive bridge construction taking place in the next town, with a deeply convoluted path to a pedestrian bridge that only cost us 30 minutes of stress. Special thanks to the shirtless man drinking a beer in his front yard who provided surprisingly comprehensive and completely correct instructions to get to the rail trail from a section of town where the diversion just... ended. And what was the town called? Pant. It was really pants.

Slowly but surely, we made our way through a combination of diversions and functional rail trail bits all the way to Cardiff. My favorite section of the trail featured 25% grades, an unmarked intersection, and not one, but two heavily graffitied tunnels under a motorway that, naturally, only had steps. Fortunately, we were only aggressively passed by a couple of dirt bikes on the trail.

Once we made it to the outskirts of Cardiff, the city's infrastructure kicked in and bicycle travel was really easy. Just kidding; we got even more confused. Special points to the bike paths that go through the middle of a cloverleaf motorway interchange in Pantmawr; while I'm fairly certain it technically counts as bicycle infrastructure, because we were able to get through it, I also suspect it's the first infrastructure I've ever seen that qualifies as both malicious compliance and hostile architecture.

Anyway, we finally made our way into Cardiff a bit before sunset, and managed to find an absolutely amazing place for dinner: Matsudai Ramen. Absolutely perfect ramen and karage chicken. We bopped around town, checked out the castle, walked around in the park, got immediately very bored with the soulless mall-like downtown, and eventually ended the evening in a very cute wine bar called Nighthawks with some very cute art of the silly gargoyles on the nearby castle. But one afternoon in Cardiff was enough; we shortened our hotel stay to a single night, and decided to spend more time in Bristol, instead.

Our travel to Bristol started off strong, with a visit to Sparrow Coffee House. Unfortunately there wasn't a decent place to lock up our bikes, but the employees were very accomodating of our desire to sit right at the window, by the door, with eyes on our locked-together bicycles at all times. The coffee was excellent and the pastries were both fresh and well-made. A fine coffee shop.

Unfortunately the "bike route" we followed out of Cardiff was a truly pathetic example of failed urban infrastructure. We fought our way over broken sidewalks, through gutter "bike lanes" full of trash, onto sharrows on the side of 4-lane highways, and past many, many fast food drive thrus full of hungry, distracted people with poor visibility. Eventually, the horrors petered out into sidewalkless business parks and we made it to the heavily irrigated flatlands surrounding Newport, which a placard informed us are actually extremely interesting and known as the Gwent Levels.

In the flatlands, the bike route got a little safer, but somehow less interesting. We passed through a few sad, publess towns, and past a lot of farmland and farmhouses that looked suspiciously similar to the poorly tended rural landscapes of Central NY. It's all very flat, very rural, and very full of ditches, which distribute water collected in 2000-year-old "reens" built by Roman military engineers. Much like Central NY, the placards and wikipedia entries are much more interesting than the experience.

But we didn't stay in the flatlands forever. Between Cardiff and Bristol lies two distinct obstacles: the city of Newport and the very large estuary of the River Severn. The city of Newport turned out to be a brutal obstacle, forcing us to reroute against traffic on a nonexistent sidewalk along a very busy road to cross the River Usk over an alternate bridge because the bridge on the route is kind of crazy and we honestly couldn't tell if it was operational. Fortunately, the alternate bridge had an adequate bicycle lane and we managed to cross the river.

So we eventually made it through Newport, passed through more flatlands on the way to Caldicot, passed through even more flatlands on the way to Hardwick, and made mincemeat of the supposedly fiercer obstacle thanks to the help of the Wye and Severn Bridges. It was both the best and only 3 miles of bridge walkway bike riding I have ever done. The view was truly spectacular. And of course it was deeply pleasing to find a giant bridge that connects two countries that has a large and entirely adequate bicycle and pedestrian lane. The Queensboro Bridge in NYC should be ashamed of itself.

We entered England via the bridge and were immediately trapped in Aust. I'm not even kidding: the only way into and out of the town was motorway. The road (and the rest of bicycle route 4) south of town was completely closed for a construction project. So Meg and I stopped at a pub in Aust to figure things out. But only after we crossed 4 lanes of incredibly fast, incredibly loud, incredibly scary highway traffic a few times trying to figure out just how on earth to get out of the area.

So we stopped for a pint and a pie, to figure things out. And we couldn't. We kept looking around on our maps, trying to find an alternate path. But nothing worked, and everything that did eventually led back to the same closed bicycle route and road. As far as I can tell, Aust is either purgatory or somehow linked to the Bermuda Triangle. We followed detour signs, and they seemed to just lead in a goddamned circle. We tried a tiny side road, but it ended in a locked gate by an entirely different motorway. We headed back into town, prepared to buy a house and settle down in Aust for good, because there was no way we were heading back to Wales. And that's when Meg saw it: an alternate pedestrian route using right-of-ways through fields. Clearly not exactly what we wanted, but we didn't have much choice. So we set out into the fields.

The pedestrian route started tame enough, with a pleasant walk on a canal path or sorts alongside a drainage ditch. Then, we managed to take a wrong turn, continuing down the canal path until it dead ended. And we realized that the actual route, indicated on the map back in the town center, walked us right through a ton of tall grass in a giant cow pie-strewn field, on a footpath that only arguably existed. So we did that. Through close to a dozen fields. Past the cow pies, into the tall grass, through the spiky weeds, over many a blackberry-thorn-surrounded-cattle gate (that were usually the circular kind, too small for the bikes, even without our bags, so I got a serious upper body workout). Sometimes there were bridges. We occasionally met some cows (thankfully no bulls). And then, after at least an hour of bushwhacking, we popped out a cattle gate right into a churchyard. Thankfully the churchyard gate was unlocked, so we ate a celebratory digestive and hopped back on the bikes for the final stretch to Bristol.

The rest of the ride to Bristol was quite nice. We found ourselves on a mixture of brand new cycleways, very quiet backroads, and several cycleways that used to be roads but were now entirely closed to car traffic. We passed a motorway and what looked like an Amazon warehouse, hopped on a bike lane on a somewhat busy (but slow moving) urban road, and wham, we found ourselves in Durdham and Clifton Downs, suddenly in the walkable core of Bristol. Since the Downs are at the top of one of the largest hills in the city, we enjoyed a speedy and scenic downhill ride into the city centre and stumbled upon the brand new and very impressive Bahn Wagon eatery for a quick bite. Once we took a second to adjust to being in a city (instead of surrounded by cows in a field with no people in sight), we dropped the bikes off at a hotel and started exploring the city.

Thanks for reading! Tune in next time to find out our favorite parts of Bristol, our ride to Bath, and the thrilling conclusion to our journey in London.

When I get around to posting it, you can find Part 7 here.

If you missed the previous post, you can find Part 4 here.

In this post, we'll travel from Manchester, England to some tiny horses we met in Wales. We took a bit of a shortcut from Manchester to Wales, but all is fair in love and stroads.

Our next chapter begins in Manchester. We arrived here after a harrowing morning on the Rochdale Canal, where we only narrowly escaped the dastardly clutches of Canadian Geese (how do they get to the UK, anyway?). But, never fear: we quickly checked into our hotel room, ditched the bikes, and set to exploring Manchester.

Manchester was a fun time. I'm not really sure how to blog about walking around a major city, since things happen in much less time, mud, and sweat than they do in the countryside. So I'll be kind of lazy about it and just list a few of our favorite stops:

• Pelican Beer Bar had a nice chill atmosphere with a few too many Edison bulbs. Their excellent draft list brought us back a second time.
• North Star Piccadilly is a generic hip city coffee shop, but one that made an A+ sourdough waffle and a couple of great coffee drinks. A very welcome change from the parade of mediocre coffees we'd endured for the previous couple of days.
• The wine at KERB was nothing short of excellent. The olives were exactly the light, delicious snack we needed to recharge on our rest day. And the servers were some of the friendliest people we met the entire trip. I wish I could go back here without flying all the way to England!

A special shoutout to Black Sheep Coffee, who have apparently replaced their entire ordering experience (and the baristas who rang you up) with tablets. Super efficient, except for the fact that the (presumably understaffed) baristas have to make everyone's food and drink AND help people order on the tablets because the POS is, well, a POS. So do yourself a favor and, if you ever consider going to a Black Sheep Coffee... just don't.

Anyway, we wined and dined and pied our way around Manchester for a day. The next day, we got up bright and early to continue our bicycle journey. Unlike the brutally small elevators in Edinburgh and Glasgow, this one was large enough for both of the bikes (and both of us) to ride down at the same time.

Our ride into Manchester helped make a tough decision: we did not feel like bicycling out of Manchester. Riding into the city wasn't great. But crawling back out for a full day through dozens of miles of sprawling suburbs, fighting our way through stroads and parking lots to find a non-chain place for dinner, then scraping the bottom of the barrel to find a mediocre place to camp in one day's biking distance of the city? Not our cup of tea. And there was a very hilly section devoid of decent pubs and campsites immediately after that. So we made the judgment call to fast-forward to the best part of Wales with the help of a train.

The train journey was surprisingly good. Manchester Picadilly station was just a couple of blocks from our hotel room, and had plenty of space for the bikes while we waited for our train. The ride was less than 4 hours total, with just one transfer in Shrewsbury. Totally adequate facilities to park our bikes in the bike storage; I didn't even have to remove one of my panniers! The whole journey went smoothly, except for a couple weird interactions with characters aboard the train. But that mostly just gave us something to laugh about afterward.

Unfortunately, the train reservation system in the UK is far from a perfect one, for a couple of reasons. For one, you have to call on the phone to make the reservation. There is no way to make the reservation at the same time as your book your ticket unless you book it all on the phone, a painful, lengthy and arduous process (when was the last time you read your credit card information out loud to someone?). But the bigger problem... is that nobody polices the bicycle storage section. Sometimes it's shared with handicap and large luggage storage. But there's one big problem: if you show up with a bike reservation, you have to put your bike somewhere. Immediately. And if anyone else decides to use the bike storage, whether or not they have a right to it, there's very little you can do about it, encumbered by a train and your luggage, with other passengers squeezing by you and mumbling obscenities under their breath at you.

Fortunately that wouldn't be a problem this time (stay tuned for more on that). We made it to Machynlleth (Mack-in-leth, roughly), Wales, at the correct time, all in one piece, without any mumbled obscenities. Then we hopped right on the bikes and headed over to lunch. And what a lunch! I can honestly say that I expected very little from Y Llew Coch - Mach (The Red Lion Machynlleth Town). Meg and I just wanted a pint and maybe a snack before we picked up supplies and headed over to our campsite. But the owner turned out to be super friendly and the food was absolutely fantastic. The best stir fry and katsu I've ever had in the UK.

From the Red Lion, we headed over to the local co-op for snacks, cheese, and other supplies, narrowly missing their insane 4PM Sunday closing time. We filled all available gaps in our bags with snacks, then took a very scenic road over to our campsite. Meg and I both appreciated seeing a golf course where the sheep pitch in to trim the grass.

We then rested and relaxed for the rest of the day at my absolute favorite campsite of the entire trip: Llwyn Lodgings. Beautiful views, only one other camper (who we had a great conversation with), and some of the nicest bathroom facilities of the entire journey. No marked campsites, with no access for vehicles, keeping out the loud partying camping crowd. Plenty of outlets to charge your phone and battery banks from. A spacious and clean sink to wash items in. A nice big gazebo to prep your food and relax in. I would very much like to return to try the local bakery's sourdough pizza, which they make on only the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of the month. It's always satisfying to find such a nice place on a bike tour, but it's even better when it's better priced than most campsites! To make matters even better, we had blue skies and a very comfortable temperature for most of the day. It wasn't until the sun set that the rain started.

We woke up the next morning to find slugs. And water. And more slugs. And more water. Meg was not enthused. But I was feeling sprightly, so I packed up the tent and our sleeping gear, only barely convincing Meg to get out before I rolled the tent up.

The first 10 miles were brutally uphill. And the rain was absolutely pouring down on us. But the road was quiet, and the views were good, and our rain jackets held up perfectly. We looked like dorks, and we didn't go fast. But it was brilliant.

And before we knew it, we were over the mountain pass, heading downhill. We stopped to take pictures at a scenic spot, and saw our first bikepacker of the trip (probably doing the GB Divide Grand Depart, which started around the same time we did). As I've come to expect from the hardo bikepacker crowd, they didn't have time (or energy) to say hello, wave, or acknowledge us in any way. But that's OK, I prefer bicycle tourers anyway. On the bright side, the rain let up.

The day slipped by in a blur of cute tiny stone towns, rolling hills, giant trees, gianter hills, green, brief rain showers, and gorgeous mountain views. I kept taking my rain jacket on and off, oscillating between "too hot" and "that cloud looks awfully dark". We met a couple of groups of cycle tourers going the opposite direction, and stopped for a nice chat with both groups. I wished good luck to the group who planned on going all the way up to Bangor: they had a lot of steep riding through Snowdonia before they reached their destination. We stopped every once in a while for snacks to keep ourselves going; trailheads provided an abundant source of beautiful views, picnic tables, bathroom facilities, and informational placards to keep us entertained.

Before long, it was time for lunch. Or maybe brunch. We stopped at the Lost ARC in Rhayader for coffee and a Welsh rarebit. The bread and red onion marmalade jam were top tier. But I was disappointed to learn that the town of Rhayader has nothing to do with my favorite Camel album.

The pub in town seemed a good spot to scope out camping and dinner opportunities, so we took the hit and ordered a pint. Fueled up with coffee, beer, and food, we continued along to Builth Wells. We finally hit the "offroad" bits the other cycle tourers had warned us about. They turned out to be brilliant fun.

The landscape shifted from rocky mountains and grass to tall trees, enormous ferns, and raging rivers. And we started to see sheep with long, fluffy tails. We fought our way up a lot of uphill slopes, but were eventually rewarded with a speedy downhill ride into town.

And then it turned out that we did a crappy job of scoping out dinner and camping spots over a pint.

Dinner was disappointing. Almost every restaurant in town was closed, so we ended up eating at a pub that looked like the evil offspring of a central NY diner and an Applebee's. The beer was bad, the decor was tasteless, and the service was slow. But the bartender was friendly enough and, once our food arrived, it turned out to be slightly above average. We'll write it off as a win.

The camping situation was sneakier. We chose a combined camping and glamping facility a little bit out of town. We showed up, found our campsite, and things seemed awesome. There were other bicycle tourers there! They had a lot of cute fairy lights up around the campsites so you could get up and walk around at night without a torch. The common area had games, plugs to charge at, bathrooms with free showers, toilets with water, an air hocket table, a kitchen, and apparently a pool. They even sold a few goods from local merchants, including a very cute handmade frog made from local wool that I snuck into my bag as a Meg gift at a later date.

We set up our tent, charged our devices, showered, ate some dinner, had a beer, and socialised with a very nice family traveling around the country on holiday. It was lovely. Then the sun went down, we washed up, and returned to our campsite. I read my book a bit, and finally started to get sleepy. And then the loudest, most obnoxious group of campers crawled back from whatever hellhole they spawned from. They started a fire (loudly). They let their dogs run all over the campsite, including right up to the edge of our tent. They dug wine and liquor bottles out of their tents. And they generally kept anyone else in the tent camping area from sleeping at all for the next 4 or 5 hours.

As someone who doesn't enjoy confrontation, particularly with drunk people, I put passive noise cancelling headphones in and tried to sleep. I think I slept a little. But eventually around 1AM some hero came by and asked them to quiet down, so they went to the common area to socialise instead. I think I managed another 30 minutes of sleep before they returned at 3AM to annoy us some more.

Lesson learned: quiet hours are very, very, very important. And even more important? Enforcement of quiet hours.

Around 7AM we woke up from our crappy night of sleep. We packed up and politely escaped from conversation with the Impolites, who seemed unhealthily interested in our marital status. We headed down into town for a crappy gas station 'cappucino' and a couple of bap sandwiches. Then we rode along a very large road that was thankfully pretty empty for a few miles. Being on such a busy road, we discovered a valuable way to increase our speed on the bikes: fear. There were a lot of hedges that somebody really ought to trim on the sides of the road. The landscape filled with more and more trees. We stopped in a boring touristy town with a really awful ice cream shop, and ended up getting ice cream anyway because... well, where else were we going to go for ice cream?

The humidity rose. Our spirits fell. The hills kept on going. We were really tired. We climbed a ginormous hill that took forever because we had no energy left, even with the ice cream fueling us. Hope was dwindling. We couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. And then we found tiny horses! And honestly, tiny horses kinda make everything alright.

Thanks for reading! Tune in next time to find out about our journey south to Cardiff and our escape from Wales back to England.

When I get around to posting it, you can find Part 6 here.

If you missed the previous post, you can find Part 3 here.

In this post, we'll ramble around the countryside of England in the vague vicinity of Northumberland and the Yorkshire Dales. This leg of the journey begins at Sycamore Gap in Hadrian's Wall and finishes in Manchester.

Our journey began with a speedy couple of miles downhill to the village of Haltwhistle, self-proclaimed "center of Britain." Haltwhistle was a wonderful first stop of the day thanks to the excellent flat white, tea, and breakfast sandwiches at Brew Bar. My only regret: it was still too early in the day to try their draft list!

We departed Haltwhistle not by road, but by rail trail. Specifically, the South Tyne Trail. There were an awful lot of livestock gates, but the grade was easy, the views were beautiful, and the trail was largely in decent shape. Sadly, you can no longer ride your bike over the very long, very high viaduct (without lugging your bike up a very rough hill, at least) because an old rail station at one end of the viaduct is now a private home, blocking the easiest graded access to the viaduct. This not only deprives bicyclists of a lovely view, but also forces riders onto a series of steeply graded, narrow roads shared with cars. But hey, at least you get a nice view of the viaduct from the giant hill you're forced to climb.

We continued down the rail trail, across old rail bridges and over many a sheep field, until we reached Alston, "England's highest market town". After a quick quiche at the local bakery and a quick pint at the local pub, we headed up a huge hill and found ourselves ascending Hartside Pass, which peaks at 1904 feet with sweeping views of the surrounding countryside and the distant Lake District. The road was long, somewhat busy, and windy, but there's something special about the feeling of climbing a massive pass.

At the top of the pass, we met some other (exhausted looking, despite a much leaner kit of supplies) bicyclists. They were taking a much shorter (but still very lovely looking) route called the Sea to Summit, and provided us with one of the first pictures of just Meg and myself from the entire trip! As usual, they were intrigued by our alt bars, our steel bikes, and the fact that I'm using a drivetrain that isn't exactly intended for touring. We had a lovely chat, snagged some pics of the views, and then headed down a long, relaxing, well-earned downhill.

But we don't optimize for smooth downhills for long -- they get boring! Soon we switched onto a windy dirt road chock full of loose gravel and puddles not quite deep enough to swallow our bicycles. The Lake District towered in the distance, the only sun-draped mountains in an otherwise mundane, cloudy sprawl of farmland. The views had us strongly considering a spot reroute into the Lake District, but we had a more important immediate goal: finding a campsite. We ended up camping at a caravan park in Dufton a convenient 3 minute walk from The Stag, one of the finest local pubs I've ever had dinner at. Our mushroom pasta and chicken risotto were speedily prepared and absolutely delicious. We had a couple of post-dinner pints at the pub, then headed back to the campsite, where we started a tradition we would follow at many campsites for the rest of the trip: closing out the night drinking a pint and chatting with a stranger who just couldn't get over how cool bicycle touring is. We had such a nice time chatting that we were (lightly) chastised by another stranger that our conversation was too loud after dark!

We woke up early in the morning, thanks to the obnoxious population of local birds. We quickly packed up and headed to breakfast in the small town of Appleby-in-Westmorland. Unfortunately, we had the worst breakfast experience of my life at the Eden River Cafe, whose Facebook page I've linked because their official site appears to be full of viruses. The service was incredibly slow. They forgot our drinks, even though that was the only thing we ordered for the first 20 minutes in the shop. The fire alarm kept going off. The food was oversalted, yet tasteless. We somehow wasted more than an hour and an absurd amount of money for a couple of eggs, sausages, and some canned beans. But at least we got food and plenty of motivation to ride on for the day towards a better lunch.

The morning was hot, humid, and stank of manure. Lots of ups and downs on tiny little country roads. A cute waterfall. Steep grades in both directions, But we eventually climbed our way out of the humid low country into a breeze. There, on the top of a plateau, surrounded by sheep and rocks, we enjoyed a much tastier second breakfast of granola bars. Then one of my rim brake pads fell off; fortunately, Meg has super vision and super hearing, so she heard it fall off and spotted it within a minute. We re-attached the pad, I thanked Meg for her incredible detective skills, and we continued on towards lunch.

Our journey towards food took us down a gorgeous valley that has thankfully not been totally ruined by the nearby A683 motorway. We passed quaint little farms, said hi to plenty of sheep, zoomed our way down (and then back up) some well-designed roads, and generally had a lovely time. This area had some of the loveliest views of our whole trip: brilliant blue skies, rolling green not-quite-mountain hills, and a sun that was a little too warm at times.

Once we reached Sedbergh, we had lunch at the Dalesman Country Inn. This place made one of the greatest hand pies Meg has ever eaten, and a great selection of pints.

We walked around the very cute town to find some post-lunch ice cream, then headed to the local co-op for snacks and supplies. A quick jaunt through the lovely boarding school grounds in the center of town wasn't enough to cool us down, so we made a quick stop at the River Rawthey to pour water over our heads.

After Sedbergh, the day got even hotter. So when we passed Sedbergh Golf Club, we couldn't pass up the opportunity for a(nother) pint. The deck turned out to be a lovely place to cool down and prepare ourselves for the upcoming massive ascent.

The next hill was big. But the views were beautiful. We climbed. We thought were were almost done.

Then we climbed some more. Eventually we reached Gastack Beck Waterfall, a very cool natural waterfall into a stone swimming hole, where we briefly stopped for another cooldown.

And then we climbed some more. But eventually we reached the top, and the descent was nothing short of glorious. A long downhill later, we grabbed a surprisingly fancy, but reasonably-priced dinner at the Marton Arms, then set up camp at Meadow Falls, where we struck up conversation with a Timothy Dalton-lookalike bicycle touring enthusiast before bed. When James Bond recommends touring the Welsh Borders, you ought to do it.

We woke up to stormy skies, but I was strongly motivated by the day's breakfast option: Seasons Bakery. They made a fantastic breakfast sandwich, and their coffee was exactly as adequate as I expected from a place that makes amazing bread. Their sausage rolls kept us going for most of the day!

It wasn't long before we found ourselves in Yorkshire Dales National Park, which was beautiful but quite windy. Meg had a wonderful scone at 3 Peaks Cycles in Settle, but I was a little disappointed that the gearhead working the counter couldn't give me a dab of grease to fix up my brakes. Fortunately, I didn't need my brakes much on the massive 15% grade hill right out of town.

It was here that we noticed a change in driver behaviour: so far in our journey, cars really hadn't bothered us at all. But starting in Settle, we started to see too many cars, going too fast. But the roads weren't any bigger than before, so drivers started to feel entitled to pass us even when it wasn't 100% safe. And for some reason even the scenic spots were covered in trash. And the motorcyclists, instead of giving a friendly wave, started to heckle us and tell us to "get one of these" (I strongly considered repeating the same advice when we passed him going downhill 10 minutes later while he was stuck sweating in leathers in traffic). But, despite the rude drivers, we slowly wound our way across the hills to our destination for the day: Hepton Bridge.

I won't say much about Hepton Bridge. We went to a nice chippy. It was largely full of drunk young people. Riding our bikes into town felt a lot like the establishing shots of Tortuga in Pirates of the Caribbean. But we ended up finding a decent campsite at Old Chamber Camping just 500 feet of ascent on 20% graded cobblestone above town. The showers were adequate. The quiet hours were kinda sorta followed. The views were beautiful. The midges weren't too annoying. Our beer and digestives were even better. And the distance dulled the sounds of drunken revelry emanating from the valley below.

This leg of our journey wraps up with a bike ride down most of the length of the Rochdale Canal into downtown Manchester. There were a lot of cobblestones, locks, weird street crossings, odd diversions, trash, cider-drinking miscreants, geese, cramped bridges, canal boats, and confused pedestrian dog owners. We started in a cute rural valley, made our way through a series of small farming towns in rolling countryside, and eventually made it all the way into strip mall hell. And then we pushed our way through the wasteland into the centre of Manchester, which turned out to be clean, cute, and interesting.

Thanks for reading! Join us next time to learn about our journey in Wales.

When I get around to posting it, you can find Part 5 here.

If you missed the previous post, you can find Part 2 here.

In this post, I'll cover our journey from the English border to Hadrian's Wall. Did you think Hadrian's Wall was located on the border with England? You thought wrong! Enjoy a bunch of words and photos proving just how much land exists between those two things.

We resume our journey at the England-Scotland border: an unassuming field and a sign indicating the border from each direction along a quiet, narrow country lane. We stopped briefly for photos, and continued on our way toward Kielder Forest. We initially thought we'd have to ride on the side of a large but completely empty rural road, but after stopping by a scenic view of the nearby reservoir, we discovered that the national cycle route actually follows a dirt path along the side of the water. Excited at the notion of escaping the (nonexistent) cars and seeing more of the reservoir, we quickly rerouted and followed the path.

The Lakeside Way turned out to be a very pleasant experience. It largely keeps its distance from the water, so it is by no means flat -- I was very surprised at how much time I spent in my lowest gear during this section of the ride. But the views were nice, there wasn't much foot or cycle traffic out, we seized an opportunity for a snack and a half pint along the way, and we overall had a very pleasant time. A few sections of the path, routed through old forest, made for particularly zoomy downhills. I only have one criticism: the signage, while quaint and artsy, is very poor for actually routing yourself along the path.

We ended up at quite a few intersections where vague signage confused us, we stopped, debated, and then proceeded with our gut instinct; ultimately, we would have been better off without most of the signs.

After the reservoir, we took a brief but scenic ride over the dam, then routed onto a "closed" road. Knowing just how contextual that "closed" sign can be in the UK -- and having no option other than following the cycleway to the next town -- we proceeded along a very pleasant, barely maintained (but perfectly adequate for bikes) dirt path. I am happy to report that it was not closed at all, and we shortly found ourselves enjoying a coffee at Falstone Tearooms, a historic schoolhouse that has been wonderfully restored into a cute little cafe. I am also happy to report that we had a more pleasant experience than the students in the 1700s in this building, who looked downright grim in the informational photos along the wall.

After Falstone, the cycleway took us through my favorite series of valleys and ridges yet. There was a lot of up and a lot of down, but the roads were built such that our downhill speed frequently zoomed us up (most of) the subsequent uphill.

The day got sunnier and sunnier as we rode past many, many cows in the low valley.

Finally, we made our way up a very steep, very long, very treeless, very sheep-filled hill. The breeze picked up, and refreshed us enough to push on.

One memorable curve required us to navigate between a large number of cows who seemed especially interested in bicycles; I am happy to report that they were happy to observe us and did not request to ride the bicycles or otherwise interact with them directly.

We soon started passing a lot of significant stone walls. It was at this point that I realized that, despite reading a great deal about it in history books, I didn't actually know what Hadrian's Wall looks like beyond "ancient stone wall."

I was soon distracted by a lovely stretch of gravel road on cycleway 68 that I could easily have mistaken for a Vermont Category 4 road. At moments like this, I felt very fortunate that our bicycles both sport 2" tires!

Now at a pretty high altitude, and with considerably less up and downhill to deal with, we made our way past wall after wall. I took photos of several, thinking "if it is Hadrian's Wall, I don't want to not take a photo." But in the end, we passed one of the most scenic spots in the entire span of Hadrian's Wall, near Crag Lough and the Sycamore Gap (note: this is now the Sycamore Gap Stump). It was beautiful and fortunately very obviously Hadrian's Wall.

There were still a few hours left in the day, but we decided to stop at a convenient place to eat: Twice Brewed, which was awfully expensive but serviceable. We stopped just down the road at Winshields for camping, and I am happy to report that their field only had a few midges, the bathrooms were both clean and ample, and the kitchen could have saved us a lot of money if we wanted to feed ourselves.

Naturally, I biked over to Twice Brewed while Meg set up the tent for some cans of quality beer. We enjoyed some beverages while a fellow from Bristol, a lady from Birmingham, and a lady from Amsterdam (who speaks 7 languages!) tried to convince us that carrying bags on your back somehow makes sense when God clearly made bicycles to save us from that kind of pain.

We chatted the last of the daylight away, and fell asleep on a clear, chilly night with a great view of the stars and a front-row seat to the local Sheep Baa Symphony. Our highly nutritious breakfast the next day was well-earned.

When I get around to posting it, you can find Part 4 here.

If you missed the previous post, you can find Part 1 here.

In this post, I'll cover our journey from Glasgow, Scotland, to the English border across quite a few miles of breathtaking, sheep-filled Scotland countryside.

After the serious upper body workout of moving two fully loaded bicycles down 3 flights of stairs in our hotel, I was rewarded with a well-steamed flat white and a very filling (and unexpectably photogenic) breakfast burrito at Spitfire Espresso.

After loading up with breakfast, we backtracked east on cycle route 75 out of the city centre, then turned south on cycle route 74 to start making our way up through the hills and high country into England. We cycled on, spurred by fantastic weather and increasingly lumpy landscapes.

We saw a weird building.

We stumbled upon a very cute farmers market, and picked up a collection of savory pies (haggis, steak, curry chicken, and mushroom) to keep us fueled on the route.

We stopped for a pie break next to a very cool gazebo with a gorgeous view of a defunct rail bridge.

We debated stopping for milk at a fully automated milk dispenser... but decided we didn't know what we'd do with a giant, heavy glass bottle.

We fueled up with calorie-dense necessities and snacks, since we decided not to bring our cooking equipment on this trip to save weight.

We (politely!) passed some horses on the cycle path.

We creatively dealt with roadwork and diversions.

We spotted a tiny horse.

Before long, we deviated from the cycle route toward Biggar, following Bikepacking.com's "Great British Divide" route. This was our second, and perhaps most major mistake of the entire trip: trusting the creator of that route.

Meg enjoyed her first glass of cold Tennents. Unfortunately the tasty-looking Cross Keys Kitchen was shut down, but we ended up going to the Crown Inn instead. The classic pub fare of fish & chips and a katsu curry didn't disappoint.

The GB Divide started out fine, maybe better: after Biggar, we wound our way through the most beautiful valley yet, with sweeping views of rivers, sheep, mountains, sheep, hills, sheep, and sheep. There were next to no cars on the road, a small number of cute farmhouses, and hopes were high. But we soon turned down (or up?) a path that our bike computer called an "alley" but that I would generously call a "driveway to a random farmer's house." The path didn't really continue; instead, a meandering sheep path continued into a very overgrown sheep field whose 20% grades resembled the sides of the Great Pyramid of Khufu. On the plus side, it wasn't very muddy, so the only substance smeared on our sandaled feet was sheep poop. Better than horse poop, in my experience.

On the minus side, the trail quickly petered out, and we found ourselves pushing our bikes uphill through tall grass, thorny weeds, and occasional stream crossings with only the general direction provided by the bike computer as a guide. All of that would have been fine, if not for the flies. The infernal flies. Have you ever had flies attempt to enter every orifice of your body simultaneously (mouth, eyes, ears, they're crafty creatures)? Have you ever so many flies cling to your bicycle helmet and every bead of sweat on your body that you could feel their weight? Have you ever had so many flies cling to your body that other flies were forced to circle your head like flights waiting to land at an overloaded airport runway? Me neither, because the experience was so miserable I've blocked out the trauma.

But the flies and bushwacking couldn't last forever. After what felt like years (but likely didn't last more than 20 minutes at our pace), we passed through a gate. To give you an idea of what happened to the flies, I'll point you to the end of the flying keys scene from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

What awaited us on the other side of the gate? What used to be a forest.

And was now... half a forest. Clearly something was amiss. With the sun slowly setting behind us, we descended through the gravel forestry roads only to discover, facing away from us, a series of signs warning passerby of the DANGER and IMMINENT DEATH and FALLING TREES that inevitably awaited anyone stupid enough to ignore the signs. Of course, there weren't any signs on the gate we passed through. Or perhaps we missed the signs while zooming downhill to lose the few flies that continued to cling to us after the gate. Anyway, we decided that we didn't want to wild camp in the IMMINENT DEATH zone, so we proceeded further downhill to find a wild camping site.

Unfortunately, the route downhill led through some mud that I can only compare to the Fire Swamp quicksand from Princess Bride. Exhausted, our GB Divide dreams in tatters, an even bigger climb through an even steeper sheep field first thing on our route in the morning, we decided to make camp on the side of the gravel forestry road. I am happy to report that there were just enough nonpoisonous plants to clean the muck and mud from my feet before bed (but not enough to clean the deep muck from Meg's riding shoes). It wasn't the sexiest campsite, but it was both legal and free.

We awoke from fitful sleep (for Meg -- I slept like a rock) early the next morning, anxious to reroute away from the dreaded GB divide "paths". Fortunately, before continuing straight up the side of a steep, unmarked, sheep-covered mountain, our path crossed a cycle route. That cycle route connected in just a few miles to a town named Peebles -- a town our friend Allison had already recommended as a cute mountain town worth stopping in if you get the chance. We'd had enough of offroading in Scotland, and had already been more than impressed by the cycle routes in the UK, so we decided to reroute to Peebles, grab breakfast, and do some more extensive rerouting to avoid the GB Divide's creative "shortcuts" through fly-infested sheep fields. After all, if you can't ride your bike on the shortcuts, what's the point? We loved the cycle routes already, and they weren't those boring shoulder-of-the-highway routes you're stuck with in most of the US: instead, these routes weaved their way through the centers of towns, over ancient bridges, along rail paths, gravel roads, 'dead roads' closed to cars, and occasionally through residential culs-de-sac. They were plenty interesting, very safe, and even had some offroad segments to keep things interesting.

Along the way to Peebles, the morning dew and a nearby stream provided perfect opportunities to clean (most of) the mud and metaphorical bad decisions off of our feet, shoes, sandals, and bicycles.

Along the way, we appreciated the mushrooms and wild rabbits of the moors.

And so, at a Costa Coffee in Peebles, we made the decision to route ourselves along traditional cycle routes, instead of the GB Divide.

!!! BIKE RANT BEGIN !!!

One last word I'd like to have on the GB Divide: it seems like a really cool route. For a mountain bike. Unfortunately, the GB Divide description on bikepacking.com says the following:

You’ll want a setup that rolls well but can handle the rough stuff… an adventure/gravel bike with 700c x 40mm tyres would be ideal

We can reassure you that most of the route is rideable but you will be pushing the bike from time to time

40mm tires are not ideal; both of our setups use tires over 2" (51mm) and we felt underbiked on the offroad bits. I would also argue that a giant steep field with no proper marked path isn't close to "rideable" and barely qualifies as "pushing the bike". And one final word: two of the most attractive sections of the trail -- riding over the Lambley Viaduct and riding over the Wayfarer's Traverse aren't even rideable anymore. And the Viaduct hasn't been thru-rideable since 2004. So the title image of the entire route is a lie, because Miles climbed up that viaduct for a photo, then back down to route around the closed viaduct.

We've done some intense routes and roads in Vermont, but there is a difference between "type 2 fun" riding on category 4 roads and singletrack and... cutting your way through unrideable countryside. Kudos to folks who enjoy the latter, but it seems we prefer the former. Fortunately, the UK's National Cycle Network is both ubiquitous and much better designed than the maligned US equivalent.

!!! BIKE RANT OVER !!!

From Peebles, we whizzed our way along a cycle route and rail trail to Interleithen, where we stopped at No1 Peebles Road for coffee and (you guessed it) a breakfast burrito.

The coffee (a perfectly executed flat white and a long black) was excellent; the breakfast burrito was even better. And it was made from haggis, inadvertently checking the box of "try local food staples." From Interleithen, we made the choice to deviate from the cycle route network on a (heavily bicycle trafficked) backroad through sheep fields. The result? A nicely paced, not-too-steep uphill incline with gorgeous views, a pleasant breeze, plenty of sheep, and opportunities to wash our feet and bicycles in a mountain stream.

Our day proceeded swimmingly. The backroads we routed along turned out to be beautiful and incredibly low traffic.

We continued routing along quiet back roads until we reached Hawick, a town I'm pretty sure hides a terrible secret. It was very pretty, there were workers out literally masoning bricks onto pedestrian bridges as we rode through, and there were plenty of parks and businesses. But it was one of those unfortunate towns where every single business, without fail, kind of sucked. Nothing abysmally bad, just a lot of mediocrity. So many children in the park that it was a little stressful. But the museum in the park did have a nice bathroom, so it wasn't all a loss.

After Hawick, we got a taste of some of the worst roads of our entire route. They weren't bad or especially dangerous, just a little faster and busier than we liked (which, I suppose, goes to show just how good most of the cycleways were on our route). Fortunately, we soon passed a farm absolutely crawling with hundreds of fresh outta the womb piglets, and all of the sins of the busy road were forgotten.

Soon we broke out of the trees and found ourselves yet again on an empty sheep road. A farmer (and his trusty dog) herded hundreds of sheep through the very same field we were passing through.

Eventually we made it to our campsite: a simple, but cheap and quiet caravan park. Next door, we found the Horse & Hound pub, where we enjoyed steak & ale pie, a chickpea & sweet potato curry, finished off with a fantastic sticky toffee pudding. With a bathroom nearby and conducive conditions for sleep, we both woke up rested and ready for another day of biking.

The next morning, we traveled up some steep (but quiet) roads through yet more stunning hills. At the top, a parking area (with special accommodation for camper vans) offered a nice opportunity for a snack break.

But the best part was the descent: at least 5 miles of long, rolling, relaxing downhill, and next to no traffic.

After the big descent, we wound through some more low (but treeless) valleys, one of which had a bit more traffic -- including a driver who seemed determined to kill both us and the oncoming motorcycle in the opposite lane. I guess they were in a hurry. But the traffic quickly evaporated and we had a nice chat with a farmer and his very excited farmdog, who repeatedly jumped off the back of his ATV, flopped onto the ground, approached us, and then got scared and ran away. Sad that we didn't get to enjoy any pats, but at least Peg was a cute dog, and her owner was very intrigued by our bicycle tour.

Then we entered a stand of trees, and when we emerged back into fields... we were in England! We were stunned to discover that even on a random backroad, England and Scotland have bothered to build substantial signs for photo ops.

Tune in next time to find out what happens once we leave Scotland and enter Her Majesty's realm. Will we be imprisoned in the Tower of London? Will the surveillance state get us down? Will infrastructure continue to impress us? You'll have to read on to find out.

When I get around to posting it, you can find Part 3 here.

In this post, I'll cover our journey from Syracuse, NY, where we boxed up our bikes and hopped on a plane, to Edinburgh, Scotland, where we unboxed our bikes and rode right out of the airport to our hotel, to Glasgow, Scotland, where an old friend saved us a lot of time and effort by showing us around the city.

Our story begins on a brutally rainy Sunday. We drove through sheets of torrential rain to Mello Vello, the excellent local bike shop in Syracuse. Our car ended up parked in a large (temporary) pond due to the intensity of the rain. We sprinted through the pouring rain, and the employees produced our prize: two massive bike boxes, just under the airline's limit for total bicycle checked "bag" size. Then we stalled for a solid half hour, wandering around the bike shop, buying some small items, praying for the rain to abate.

Unfortunately it did not. But after a lot of swearing and unloading and loading and wet cardboard and breaking down one box, we ended up with two bicycle boxes in the back of our Crosstrek. We headed home, and started the exciting process of disassembling the bikes and arranging the parts and 90% of our camping supplies, clothes and equipment into boxes below United's 70lb maximum weight limit. After lots of swearing and unloading and loading, we ended up with two loaded bike boxes vaguely likely to make it to the UK in the hold of a plane.

The next step: getting to the airport. Thanks to the (enormous) size of Melo Velo's boxes, we ended up using two cars to ferry the two of us along with two bicycle boxes to the airport. Special thanks to Meg's parents for volunteering to give us a ride! Despite a lot of worrying and finger-crossing on my part, the United front desk attendant coolly and calmly accepted our boxes for the (not entirely unreasonable) hefty sum of United's old bicycle box policy, which waives the oversize box fee, but still charges extra for luggage over 50lb. Fair is fair, we paid the troll toll and found our way to an airport bar to calm our nerves with a refreshing beverage. We eventually watched them load our bicycles into a tiny tiny United Express plane (there was also finger-crossing and worrying involved as we prayed the boxes would actually fit into the hold), then boarded ourselves in a timely fashion. What seemed like 5 minutes later, we descended to Washington DC's Dulles airport.

Dulles airport was more interesting than anticipated. First, we enjoyed the spacious and clean Concourse A. Then we rode the mobile lounge to Concourse C. Unfortunately, Concourse C (and the other side of the same terminal, Concourse D) was a goddamned garbage fire. Narrow, tiny, claustrophobic aisles. Not nearly enough space for the passengers at each gate. Spooky, flickery, surprisingly dark 90s fluorescent lighting. A downright awful selection of food vendors. Fortunately, it was only a couple of hours before we escaped on our flight to Edinburgh, where we lucked out and got a whole 3 seat block to ourselves. Score!

One long international flight, a mediocre dinner, a decent movie, and a mediocre breakfast later, we emerged from our pressurized cocoon into Edinburgh airport. Customs was a surprisingly speedy ordeal, with a quick line and a fully computerized passport scan. Unfortunately, Meg didn't end up with a passport stamp, so her passport still appears naked. Sorry about that! Then we waited at the baggage carousel for our bicycle boxes.

We assumed our bicycle boxes would take a long time to show up in the baggage pickup area; after all, they're overweight, oversized luggage. But I didn't bargain on the fact that the Union Cycliste Internationale 2023 World Championship was taking place in Glasgow just a couple of days after our arrival in Edinburgh. The two cities are only 60 miles apart, and EDI is the cheaper, more popular airport. So you can imagine my surprise when both our flight and the adjacent flight in baggage claim had a LOT of bicycle boxes and bags. Easily the most I've ever seen on a single flight -- imagine the ski baggage on a flight to Aspen in January. And of course most of those boxes and bags don't quite fit on the luggage carousel, so they all jammed up at the end of the carousel where it wraps around back to the staff-only portion of the airport. So I ended up playing the good samaritan, unloading dozens of bicycle boxes and bags trapped at the end of the carousel.

Eventually our boxes showed up, and we escorted (read: hideously dragged to the point of structural failure) our boxes to a forgotten corner of the departures section of the airport. There, we assembled the bikes and I monkeyed with my brakes for a good half hour until we were back to a semi-functional state. And then we were off on our brief 10 mile bike ride into Edinburgh.

The ride started out a bit rough: we were both tired and somewhat sleepy, and not yet used to riding on the left-hand side of the road. So we walked our bikes out of the airport loop and across the first roundabout. But we quickly got the hang of the infrastructure and within a mile we were whizzing our way down the shared bicycle/pedestrian path along the side of the motorway. With our (relatively) new bicycle computer as a guide, we zoomed through culs-de-sac, along bike paths, and sometimes down bike lanes until we reached Edinburgh city centre. We only got stuck at one point where the Water of Leith path appears to turn into a pedestrian trail (via a long staircase, what a statement!) near the city centre. And in all fairness, we saw an even more confused French bicycle tourist at the same spot, so it's not a unique point of confusion.

The Edinburgh city centre was a hell of a sight to behold. A massive castle, stadium, and an ancient cathedral loom over a sprawling park and meat-packed pedestrian strip with significant bus, bicycle, and tram traffic. Bicycle hipsters much cooler than us cruise around comfortably without a care in the world for the bicyclist's eternal nemesis: embedded tram tracks. We (nervously) tailed those hipsters until we turned down a side road to access our hotel. The hotel turned out to be located on an entirely pedestrianised road: for this, I award Edinburgh 17 UKpoints. (Stay tuned to find out which UK city earns the most UKpoints.)

Once we arrived at the hotel, it turned out that we had to wait 30 minutes to avoid paying the early checkin fee. Since we're miserly and enjoy adult beverages, we spent the £10 early checkin fee on a couple of pints at the hotel bar, and killed the 30 minutes staring at our bicycles -- which were parked in the lobby -- and strategising about where to walk for dinner.

Our room turned out to be quite snug, but very clean and well-finished. We especially appreciated Premier Inn's signature purple light bar on the bed's headboard, a feature we enjoyed in all but two of the hotel rooms we utilized during our trip. Once we got the bikes secured and a post-international-flight shower in, we set out across Edinburgh for the first city exploration of the trip.

First stop: the castle! Edinburgh castle is... well, it's a castle. Meg's first real castle (Boldt Castle doesn't count). We walked around. Lots of people asked us to attend their free comedy shows, thanks to the soon-to-begin Fringe Festival.

There were a lot of food carts; we should have stopped at one. We walked around some more. Took lots of pictures of old buildings, cute pedestrianised spaces, and even older buildings. Cobblestone streets. Pedestrian plazas. Pedestrian bridges. Oversized, ancient trees. Cute stone buildings. Lots and lots of tourist trap businesses.

It wasn't long before we got hungry enough to steer toward the first pub of the trip: Cloisters Bar. We began our food & drink journey with a cider, a cask pour, and Mediterranean loaded fries. When those proved worthwhile, we decided to sample the UK staples of bangers & mash and fish & chips, along with some 'high risk, high reward' pints. We also realised that the kitchen is in the basement and sends food orders up using a dumbwaiter. I give serious props to Cloisters Bar for creative reuse of a historic building, great food, chill atmosphere, and a smashing tap list.

After Cloisters Bar, we were ready for a walk around town. So we walked back through the castle, observed a remarkable volume of buses carting across town (the purpose of dozens of empty buses remains a mystery; this phenomena attracts study from bus experts across the world), checked out some of the parks -- and pristine park bathrooms -- and eventually made our way to another very local-looking pub. Unfortunately our travel fatigue had finally caught up with us and the combination of revelry sounds emanating from within and opaque Scottish accents spooked us from trying out Kay's Bar. I'm sure it's an excellent little spot, so please send me a review the next time you're in Edinburgh so we can vicariously experience this missed opportunity.

After striking out at Kay's Bar, we wandered around the aptly-named Comely Bank neighbourhood and promptly gravitated to one of the cutest wine bars I've ever visited: Good Brothers Wine Cellars. I enjoyed the juiciest, tastiest Pinot Noir I've ever had, and Meg sampled their collection of European Reislings (conclusion: nearly as refreshing as the finest the Finger Lakes has to offer, and quite affordable in the UK). Their cheese (a central European Manchego) did not disappoint, either. After some tasty wine, we were ready to turn in for the night, so we headed back to our hotel.

Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to rest for long before the fire alarm went off in the building and we were forced to evacuate. Since the alarm didn't seem likely to turn off any time soon, we headed to the nearest pub, and made our first major mistake of the trip: stepping inside the vile tourist trap that is Element. Let me summarise this repulsive institution with a few bullet points to keep things brief:

• TARTAN CHAIRS BECAUSE WE'RE IN SCOTLAND RIGHT?
• dreadful tap list of the most sugary ciders, because tourists don't want to drink anything authentic
• underpaid local artist singing exclusively American top 100 songs from the 90s to keep the Boomers happy
• surprisingly competent staff
• a functional bathroom

I would award Element 2.5 out of 5 stars. The 1/2 star is entirely thanks to the underpaid local artist, who really did the best job he possibly could with his audience.

Almost one drink later (Inches cider isn't worth finishing), we headed back to the hotel to rest for the night. On our way, we spotted the lights from a musical performance up in the hilltop stadium -- a very impressive sight, projected onto the adjacent castle. But a different light show awaited us back in our hotel room: the purple glow of our Premier headboard.

We rose early the next morning, knowing we had almost 70 miles of biking between us and Glasgow. We took the Water of Leith path back out of the city, a decision which unfortunately deprived us of a sample of the Edinburgh coffee scene, since the only coffee cart on the path was closed when we passed it. But the path was overall an excellent way to ride out of the city: no street crossings, a beautiful river and, for a stretch, a beautiful canal. There was even a (slightly sketchily narrow) section on an aqueduct.

But even in a country with decent bike infrastructure, maintenance happens, and we eventually reached a section of the path that was under construction. A quick reroute through a residential neighbourhood later, we were back on the path. We rode over bridges underneath viaducts, a number of pedestrian bridges -- some very very old, some new -- and a number of "dead roads" that have been demoted to mere bike paths as we slowly meandered our way from Scotland's East coast to the West coast.

My personal favourite section was quite close to the Glasgow-Edinburgh light rail, a nice stretch of very wide, well-paved bike path with sweeping views of cows, sheep, and some breathtaking lakes and cliffs. We picked up a couple of toasties in a small town about halfway between the cities, and enjoyed them on what used to be a sidewalk next to one of the aforementioned "dead roads". There were an absurd number of blackberries on the path, but we only tried a couple each because it's not usually a good idea to eat random plants on the side of the road in foreign countries.

As seems to be the usual case in the UK, the bike path made it very difficult to determine when we were "in Glasgow". We just kind of pedalled along the river, through trees and hedges, until at some point we popped out smack dab in the middle of the city centre. From there, our ride was incredibly easy, because the UCI 2023 World Cup was happening the very next day, which shut down basically all streets in the city centre. We checked into our hotel (slightly more spacious than the last Premier Inn, but the elevator literally couldn't fit either of our bikes -- thank goodness we were only on the 2nd (American 3rd) floor!) and met up with our old friend Allison for a (couple of) pints and dinner.

The next day was a full day of exploring Glasgow. We began the day at Barras Market (unfortunately, we couldn't find any souvenirs light enough to haul over the next 800 miles of Great Britain bicycling) and enjoyed a (couple of) great coffees at Us V Them. We checked out the UCI BMX competition from afar, then we headed over to OUTLIER for another coffee and perhaps the best focaccia Meg has ever tasted (This focaccia earns Glasgow 9 UKpoints). As we got closer and closer to the road racing circuit in town, it became more and more obvious that half the patrons at every business were UCI World Cup competitors; if the matching lycra country uniforms weren't enough to tip us off, the giant piles of carbon road bikes outside of every establishment confirmed our suspicions.

The rest of the day, we bopped around town. We watched some of the road race. We visited the local parks. We investigated a pub with very unique digs. We walked along the river Clyde. We saw the botanic gardens. We ogled the abandoned subway stations of Glasgow. We rode the very cute, very short, very circular Glasgow Subway (the incredibly short, also circular traincar shape earns Glasgow an additional 6 UKpoints). And we even got to do a tiny bit of unloaded bicycle riding around the greater Glasgow area. Thanks for showing us around, Allison!

In what seemed like the blink of an eye, we were back in our hotel, readying the bikes for our next great adventure: our bike ride to England. We loved our time in the two largest cities in Scotland (I'm not sure we ever fully adapted to the accents), but we both felt ready to ride our bikes many miles into the hills and pitch a tent on scenic right to roam land. Tune in next time to find out the ups and downs (and subsequent ups, downs, and ups, and downs -- Great Britain is very hilly) of our wildest segment of the trip.

When I get around to posting it, you can find Part 2 here.

My starting point for the ride was hardly inspiring: a somewhat-wider-than-usual patch of shoulder, smack in between a disused railroad track, a major two-lane highway, and Interstate 91. Fortunately, all I had to do was ride up a single (not that big) hill and I ended up on a cozy little dirt road, wending its way between farms in the St. Johnsbury hills.

The ride began slow; it seems the area around St. Johnsbury is unusually lumpy, even by Vermont standards. No mountains (yet), but lots and lots of hills. It felt like something in between the Shire and rural England, which I suppose is just a decent description of Vermont.

But despite the hills, the ride was lovely. Very few cars, and those I did see invariably waved and said hello as they passed me. The temperatures rose from the low to mid 60s, made extremely comfortable (even a bit warm!) by the constant sunshine. Fluffy white clouds straight out of a child's sketchbook occasionally made me appreciate the sunshine even more. As my ride rose in altitude, the buds on the trees appeared to move back in time: from fully leafed-out, to somewhat coyly peeking out, all the way back to "just a bud." The ride's color palette was a mix of obnoxiously emerald grass, vivid golden dandelions, and the electric green of not-quite-leaves buds.

After my relaxing backroads ride, I eventually made it to Wheelock Road, the major thoroughfare of my ride. I was a bit concerned that the road would be busy on a Saturday morning, but fortunately it's still a dirt road (though a very smoothly textured, packed one). I ended up seeing seven or eight cars on my 7 mile ride on Wheellck.

After Wheelock, I headed back onto the back roads. After a beautiful ride through a Christmas tree farm with a view of Stowe (which you can apparently see from literally everywhere in the NEK), I ended up at a crossroads.

On the left, the road appeared to continue into someone's driveway. On the right, an ATV trail, so barely maintained that grass sprouted straight out of the centerline. Naturally, the ATV trail was my route. So I proceeded along a delightful stretch of something I really appreciate about Vermont: class IV roads.

The road varied between "ATV trail" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." Road quality held steady until I found myself fording a minor creekbed. I pulled myself out of the creekbed, mounted my bike... and my GPS informed me I was off track. Apparently I should have turned left about 20 feet back.

"What!?!?!" I exclaimed, uttering no profanities and speaking out loud to myself in a totally non-crazy way.

I checked the map, and confirmed the worst: the creekbed was my turn.

And then I found myself Moonshining my way down the creekbed, alternating between riding on the slightly-too-soft creek edge (which would frequently crumble into the creek itself) and just cruising straight down the creek itself (which was sometimes a decent surface, and sometimes a boggy mess of quicksand).

Brilliant Vermont stuff. Eventually I made it past a house (how the owners access it in the winter, I'd love to know), and the "road that's actually a creek" deteriorated into "creekbed winding its way through a grassy meadow." I snapped an obligatory pic for the blog and continued.

After that, the grassy meadow deteriorated into "wider creekbed of exclusively quicksand" which nearly ate my entire bicycle front end. A few dicey jumps over pools later, I made it to my final major obstacle: a collection of downed trees right over the largest muddy pool yet. So I picked up Bill and hiked my way into the woods. Fortunately I was wearing sandals, which made the mud comparatively easy to clean off my feet.

After the Muddy Tree Basin boss fight, the road quickly recovered back to "actually a dirt road". One vestige of the creekbed remained: a slight trickle of water down the right side of the road. So I did what any reasonable mud-streaked individual would do: I accelerated downhill at full speed right through the water, washing as much mud as possible off of my drivetrain, my frame, my tires, and my face. The temperature was approaching 70, the sun was bright, and I'd just hiked my bicycle through the woods, so I didn't mind a quick shower.

After that, it was just a couple of miles up to Hill Farmstead, where Meg promised to meet me. So I did what any reasonable person would do: I hung out at Hill Farmstead for about 3 hours, sipping amazing beer and reading a book, until Meg arrived with lunch and exciting tales of the Meg-Lyneé National Golf Championship.

• Vermont's new Lamoille Valley Rail Trail (LVRT) (note: a rail trail that is almost, but not quite entirely unlike complete)
• our bikepacking bag setups on the Moonshiners

Day 1: St. J to Stowe (there)

Our day began with an early morning ride to Saint Johnsbury. We woke, we coffeed, we snacked, and before long we were off to our starting point: the furthest eastern point on the entire Lamoille Valley Rail Trail.

The morning was a bit chilly to start -- chilly enough to make me almost regret wearing my new Bedrock Sandals -- but the scenery was beautiful and the sun was warm. Within a few miles, the exercise and UV rays had me rolling up my sleeves.

We cruised our way uphill past Danville, past Joe's Pond, and up towards Greensboro Bend on the rail trail. In Walden, we encountered our first "trail closed" signs... but decided to go ahead anyways for some investigation.

As it turns out, the "sinkhole" that's shut down that section of trail is about the size of a pothole. Anyone who thinks we need to shut down the trail for safety purposes is clearly unaware of how dangerous riding on the road is. Bah, humbug.

Near East Hardwick, we cheated: we chopped off the tip of a bend in the trail to get to breakfast in Hardwick sooner. In our defense, we were hungry, and the coffee shop only makes a limited number of breakfast burritos and donuts every weekend.

Breakfast at Front Seat Coffee in Hardwick was as brilliant as always. I even lucked out enough to get the very last burrito, conveniently made with a gluten free wrap! It's like it was made just for me.

After Hardwick, we hopped back on the trail and headed to Morrisville. Lots of new sections of trail here: some good, some bad.

The good: miles and miles of trail stretching through beautiful forests. Occasional cows. Ferns popping up out of the ground. Trillium rearing their beautiful magenta heads up above the podzol.

The bad: a stretch of trail currently shut down while Vermont DOT awaits a bridge inspection. I assure you that the section of VT-15 we had to ride instead was... much, much more dangerous than riding on a recently-restored trestle bridge that has stood for over 100 years. Bah, humbug.

The section of trail after the bridge is one of the few that deviates from the old rail route, and the surfacing is not quite up to par with the rest of the trail. Fortunately on the Moonshiners that's not an issue, but I hope the planned resurfacing happens soon for the sake of all the skinny tire folks out there.

Before long, we found ourselves in Morrisville, where it is surprisingly difficult to find food. We first stopped at Lost Nation Brewing, located right on the rail trail past town, where the single working employee just could not keep up with the dozens of bicycle riders fueling up. We took mercy on him and rerouted to Black Cap Espresso for a breakfast sandwich... which was also somehow overwhelmed with bicycle traffic, and only had one employee working. So we ended up buying lunch wraps and a 4-pack of Heady Topper at the co-op. Shoutout to the two other cool bikes who shared the patio with us: a Surly and some custom raw steel bike that I should have asked about. We ate our wraps and headed out of town to split a beer in a scenic graveyard (since the co-op doesn't allow you to drink a beer on their patio). After our wild Morrisville adventure, we only had a dozen-ish miles of dirt and singletrack to go before we made it to Stowe.

The dirt roads were steep, but brilliant. The singletrack was downright awesome: we've never ridden those trails before because they aren't part of any larger network, but they're a really cool way to connect dirt roads in the Stowe area.

It wasn't long before the singletrack dumped us out onto the Stowe recreation trail, which took us straight downtown, where our hotel room beckoned. A little bit of bike room confusion later (what exactly are all of those wires for?), and we were off to Ranch Camp for some burritos and beers.

Then a quick dip in the hotel pool. I can't pass up a chance at a heated outdoor pool, after all.

Then we headed over to Lower Bar, a surprisingly local-oriented establishment for a bougie town like Stowe. A great taplist, fair beer pricing, speedy service, and literally the largest plate of loaded nachos either of us has ever seen. Seriously, I'm pretty sure it was an entire family pack of tortilla chips and a whole bag of shredded cheese. Exactly what we needed after a long day of biking.

Our bellies full and our legs tired, we turned in for the night to prepare for a morning of even more singletrack.

Day 2: Cady Hill Trails, Stowe to St. J (and back again)

On day 2, we didn't stop to rest. Instead, we started with the hardest miles of riding yet: Cady Hill Trails, a small-but-delightful singletrack network behind Ranch Camp. We had but one goal: riding Florence, Cady Hill's premier zoomy, bermed, racy MTB trail. As I've said before: mountain biking is silly. But riding our Moonshiners on a trail like Florence is delightful. They zoom. They bounce. They fast. And you get some very weird looks from the jersey-wearing folks riding crabon bikes with electric shifters and clipless shoes.

After burning some calories shredding the gnar, we grabbed a quick breakfast at a coffee shop in town (apparently very popular with highly irresponsible dog owners, coincidentally also a great nutshell description of Stowe), checked out of our hotel, and slowly ground our way up a very steep road on the east side of town to head back to Saint J.

Our very steep road swiftly turned into a windy dirt road with sweeping views of Mount Mansfield. And then evolved into a rutted muddy road (my favorite) weaving its way through tight trees, with the occasional sick view. And then turned into a snakey, up-and-down dirt ridge road with occasional cemetery stops (for enjoying Heady Toppers), cows, and more sweeping views. It was lovely.

But it wasn't all fun and games; soon, we returned to reality in Morrisville (a land known for its unaffordable housing and resulting lack of service workers). Fortunately, we didn't stop this time. We hopped right on the rail trail and made our way towards our lunner (or dinch) stop: Positive Pies in Hardwick.

The trek between Morrisville and Hardwick was quick on day 1. But it was even quicker on day 2. Our only significant stops? Enjoying a Heady Topper on a rock face (great breeze and a great view) and the crazy, random happenstance of running into my brother on the rail trail near Wolcott. Worth it for some insider tips on picking fiddleheads.

After our stops, we had one major obstacle to overcome: the Fisher Covered Railroad Bridge. A bridge doesn't seem like an obstacle, you say? Isn't that a person on the bridge in the Wikipedia article? Well, it's currently an obstacle, because when Vermont decided to restore the bridge as part of the rail trail, they opted to park a bunch of construction equipment inside of the bridge to prevent anyone from crossing it before it officially opens. Normally I'd respect their decision to err on the side of caution: after all, you don't want your bridge to collapse soon after you open it. But in this case the alternative is riding on the side of a 50mph highway that looks like this. We already tried that route on the way to Stowe. And seeing as I'd rather break a silly law than end up crushed to death between a guardrail and an F-250, you can figure out how we proceeded.

One definitely-not-trespassing-with-a-horizontal-bicycle-held-over-my-head-hijink later, we made it to Hardwick, where we enjoyed:

• a quick spin on the local singletrack trails
• some forest exercise equipment
• a couple of fantastic beers
• a very tasty gluten free pizza
• an awkward exchange with the pizza place landlord who does not like bicycles leaning against concrete walls on her definitely-looks-public property patio

Fortunately we were able to move our bikes across town to a bike rack (and our butts into the restaurant to avoid any more unnecessary anti-bike aggression).

Dirt Roads > Rail Trails (But I Still <3 Rail Trails)

After Hardwick, all we had left was a long downhill on the rail trail. This time, we didn't cheat -- we rode all the way up to Greensboro Bend on the rail trail, all the way back down (including the closed "sinkhole" section), to Joe's Pond, and finally on to St. Johnsbury.

The way was long, and honestly sort of boring. Rail trails are really nice for a break from car traffic, but after a few hours they can get a little monotonous. I still love 'em -- they make routing SO much easier. But I'm not sure I could ride a rail trail exclusively for any weekend ride. I just love dirt and singletrack too much. So I guess it's a good thing that we got Moonshiners.

The skies grew grey. The sun started to set. The not-quite-summer night chill set in. We got hungry. But we didn't have to deal with any cars, and our cache of Sour Patch Kids kept us rolling. On the last stretch from Joe's Pond to St. Johnsbury, we averaged close to 20 mph -- quite a bit better than our usual leisurely 10mph (ish) pace. I chalk it up to the candy sugar high.

We finished up the ride around 8PM -- not bad for a ride across half a US state, with thousands of feet of elevation gain and plenty of breaks. We picked up a selection of St. Johnsbury's finest Deluxe Crunch Wraps and Doritos Locos Tacos (an amenity we simply don't have in small town Littleton, NH), then headed home to aloe our sunburns and rest our achy legs.

Thanks to several days of unexpected 80+ degree heat, mud season has been postponed. The snow is (almost) all gone, the roads are clear, the trails are bone dry, and the skies are vivid blue. This weekend, we celebrated the amazing weather and the anniversary in style.

Saturday

Our weekend started with a crazy idea: what if we biked our skis to Cannon Mountain? It's only 10 miles away, after all. How bad could it be?

Turns out, with enough straps, elbow grease, time, and sweat, not that bad.

Because the day was so hot, we each needed only our boots, a light jacket, a ski helmet, a pair of gloves, and our skis or snowboard. No need for multiple layers, a facemask, or goggles when it's 70 out! The boots and small gear all fit into our panniers nicely. We both opted to wear our ski helmets in lieu of a bike helmet, which turned out fine, if a bit dorky looking and very sweaty.

My skis are very old, very short, and very dented. I put a few voile straps on my rack and top tube, and voila! A fully operational ski transportation machine. Somehow I didn't even hit my knees on the skis.

Meg's snowboard was a bit tougher. Turns out, there wasn't a good way to attach it lengthwise. Instead, we let the bindings stabilize the board on top of Meg's rack and panniers. A little wide, but... New Hampshire state law says you should give bikes "3 feet when the passing vehicle is traveling at 30 miles per hour or less and one extra foot for every 10 MPH over 30 miles per hour" anyway. Makes me wonder if I should strap a snowboard to my bicycle all the time just to reinforce how much distance you should actually provide human beings who choose to get around on a bike.

Sort-of-early at 7AM on Saturday, we got up and hauled the bikes out into the already-intense sunny heat.

We cruised through town and up the first (and steepest) hill on our way to Cannon, up Old Franconia Road. After a long time hauling up the hill in low gear, we enjoyed an amazing downhill ride all the way down into Franconia.

Sadly, our planned breakfast & coffee stop was closed for "spring break." I wonder where they went to enjoy spring that was nicer than here this weekend?

After Franconia, we had another long ascent at 10%+ grades up to Cannon. It was long. It was tough. It was hot. We drank a lot of water. But in the end, we made it.

At Cannon, the end-of-season celebration was very much in session by the time we arrived. The deck was packed, folks were enjoying end-of-season "enhanced" bloody marys, and the snow conditions were actually remarkable. As long as you avoided patches of exposed earth and the occasional river, the rest of the snow was soft and incredibly fun to ski. And of course it's always brilliant to zoom around on skis when it's 80 degrees and sunny.

We zoomed around the top of the mountain for a while, then popped into the 4000' peak lodge for a beer, some fries, and some chicken fingers. Many packets of ketchup later, we emerged to loop the lower Zoomer lift area until our legs felt like they'd fall off. At that point, we pulled the plug on skiing to ensure we could actually make it home on our bikes.

The ride home was much, much easier than the ride to the mountain. The ride from Cannon to Franconia, which was a solid hour uphill, took around five minutes downhill.

A pit stop at Iron Furnace Brewing, fine supplier of pulled pork loaded nachos, gave us the fuel we needed to face the next hill.

The hill between Littleton and Franconia is much more gradual on the way to Littleton, so it was less of a grueling climb and more of a chill (but sweaty) ride. We even stopped at the world-famous Bethlehem Spring to top off our water bottles.

After that, it was a quick zoom downhill into Littleton. We showered off the sweat, road dirt, and snow residue, then walked down the street to Schilling for a couple of well-earned pints and a soft pretzel.

Sunday

Because we don't want to be accused of repeating ourselves, we started Sunday riding our new(ish) Tanglefoot Moonshiners.

The trails are (finally!) snow free and almost completely dry, so it was time to do our favorite loop on the local Parker trail system: a ride directly to the summit at Linda's Lookout, then a long swoopy technical ride downhill back home.

We got up slightly later, maybe 8AM, and cruised our way up the mountain. It was also hot. But the skies were blue, no bugs were out (yet!), and the breeze was good. The views and Linda's Lookout were as phenomenal as always.

And the ride down was as much fun as I've had on a mountain bike trail... well, since we skiied down it a couple of months ago. A beautiful day for a ride.

After biking, we headed over to Reklis Brewing for breakfast and a well-deserved pint. Phenomenal again.

After breakfast, back to the slopes.

The snow was even better than Saturday, the sun was strong, the skies were blue, and we just kept looping our favorite trails over and over again.

We both hit a ton of (small) jumps and sped down the runs in record time. The vibes were great, too -- lots of Hawaiian shirts and a really relaxed energy overall. It felt like we were some of the worst skiiers on the slopes, which is certainly saying something compared to your average ski weekend.

After skiing our hearts out for Cannon's closing day, we relaxed in the yard with some books, some brews, and some steaks on the charcoal grill.

Happy first anniversary to our pad in Littleton. This weekend made us feel truly grateful to live where we do.

Snow. Rain. Hail. Blue skies. Cold. Mud. Huge puddles. Ice. Sleet. Maple syrup. Incredibly hard category 4 vermont "roads" covered in ice, hardpack, slate, and god knows what else. Relaxing vermont dirt roads. Cozy bendy creeks swollen with thawing snow. Sugar shacks. And of course, a whole lotta sick bikes. And I mean the kind of sick bikes that you won't find anywhere else: tanglefoots, crusts, fat bikes built for touring, retrofitted 90s mountain bikes, and a whole lot more.

Because that sounds incredibly sane and completely reasonable, Meg and I decided on it for our first group bike ride event. And our first big ride of 2023. Toad Hall-y sane.

Getting to the Start

We wake up very, very early. But, like Christmas as a kid; I was already awake before the 4:20 (heh) alarm. Before long we've fueled up with some coffee and light breakfast, and we're on the long, dark road to Poultney, VT, home to Analog's former-sugar-shack HQ.

Dawn breaks over the Green Mountains after a quick stop at the most curated gas station bathroom in the world in Castleton (mood lighting! ultra-cushy toilet paper! running water!). Thankfully, it's a hell of a lot warmer and less snowy here than it is back in Littleton. A brief drive later, we're in Poultney.

Out of the car and onto the bikes. As we ride to East Poultney (the true Analog HQ location, obfuscated to throw Big Bikes' Spooks off the scent), more and more bikes show up on the road and next to slightly-outdoorsy cars, adjacent to pretty-outdoorsy-in-an-unusual-way people. You won't find many North Face pullovers or Specialized bikes here. These folks troll the planet for the nichest, most intentional manufacturers around to get the very best equipment for their needs. Bottle cages from some dude in Durango? Check. Hoodies that you can only buy in Leadville? Check. Bags made by a half dozen people in rural Arizona? Check.

And the obsession doesn't end with the material: Tinkering with your own chain slack every other day because it's fun? Check. Nerding out over which tires have the best feel on cat 4 roads, but the lowest rolling resistance on pavement? Check. Esoteric disagreements about the merits of internal drivetrains? You know it.

Analog HQ

The dual campfires crack and flicker in the early morning cold. The bicyclists keep their distance from the fire: sure, it's warm. But you don't want to get too adjusted to that heat right before the Fifth Season. The bicycles gleam and glisten in a million different ways, the combined product of a million different geniuses, leaning against every decent-sized maple in the sugarbush.

A moderately-bearded man dressed "Vermont sharp" in wellies, a flannel, cords, and a green Vermont Barn Coat climbs onto a bench. He clears his throat and, surprisingly soft-spoken, announces that the time has come for the Fifth Season. Racers should prepare for their ride-starting bog march, hunting drink (bottom-barrel bourbon, maple syrup, and "spices") and donut/apple-on-a-string eating contest. Riders should form a tunnel to the bog and first sugar shack to cheer the racers on.

Race Start

Precisely 10 minutes later, the race begins with the boom of a shotgun. The racers hit the bog and eat off of a string. Some purchase gallons of maple syrup; turns out, a single gallon balances our multiple hours of riding time in the race times. As James says: this race is stupid. If you try to win this race, you're stupid.

It's a blast. Cowbells ring. Racers fall in the mud. Racers eat donuts and apples off a string. Racers fall in the mud again. And that's all before they untangle their bikes from the mess at the sugar shack and actually start the ride.

Today we Ride

Soon after, the ride begins. It isn't long before we hit our first dirt road. And not long after that, our first hike-a-bike up a snowy, icey category 4 road. And not long after that, our first sugar shack, complete with complimentary maple cotton candy, bourbon barrel-aged maple syrup, and maple candies for the road.

The Grind

Back to the dirt road-cat 4 road grind. We zoom through icy puddles. We haul the bikes over softening late-season snow. To keep up the pace, we ride through narrow canyons of snow, bottomed with inches of cold mud. Meg zooms so fast through the ice and snow and mud that I struggle to keep up. It starts to snow. It's beautiful.

After a long haul over a pass, we arrive at a stunning scene: a tiny one-room cabin by a small lake, with a merrily crackling campfire, a bucket full of "the substance" (strongly suspected to be bud heavy, sap, and the occasional rogue spruce tip), and a wood stove boiling a small batch of sap.

A golden retriever endlessly zooms through the crowd of riders, begging for pats.

The ride pauses here for a while. It's not so bad, sipping the substance by the fire and watching the snow gently fall on the lake.

Creative Re-routing

The next pass is snowed out by the sea of flakes coming down around us. But it's no worry. We route back over the last pass (easier the second time) to reach our reward of maple syrup jello shots, beef stew, sap-boiled hot dogs, and maple syrup pineapple upside-down cake. There's hail. There's mud. There's ice. There's rain. There's snow. But everyone is in good spirits. We truck on, and before long, we're back at Analog HQ, sipping hot toddies and snacking on leftover breakfast burritos. Turns out the race winner bought something like 4 gallons of syrup at the first sugar shack and trucked it 60 miles over mountain passes and snow and ice and puddles back to analog HQ. (support local business!)

The ride was challenging, but with everyone doing it together, it never felt overwhelming. Even when the weather got sketch, I knew we could handle things. Our new bikes (coincidentally, Tanglefoot Moonshiners, which Analog Cycles makes) were incredibly fun. Truly the perfect bike for the ride: no suspension to slow you down on uphills, chonky tires for the mud and snow, an incredibly low bottom gear to conquer even the steepest hills, and high zero-reach drop bars to hang out in (a non-athletic cozy upright position) for basically the whole ride.

I'm sure we could have managed the ride on our touring bikes, or even our mountain bikes (soon to be liquidated, replaced by the Moonshiners). But thanks to our new bikes, we had a great time. It's nice to have bikes that feel cozy for all-day riding even on suboptimal terrain, and when you're soaked to the bone with ice water and muck.

Recap

So back to the original question: what is the Fifth Season?

It's fun.

October, November... December... Bonus Mountain Biking!

Remember how mountain biking is silly? Well, here's an update.

Yes, mountain biking is still silly. People spend far too much money on ridiculous carbon frames, dual and triple and quadruple suspension monstrosities, obsess over "shredding" hills and setting record times and doing drops and jumps and many other very silly things.

BUT if you avoid the greatest silliness -- the electric shifters, the disposable carbon frames, the very-likely-to-break-your-arm jumps and drops, the insane upgrade train, it turns out that riding a bicycle around beautiful woods in beautiful mountains in beautiful country is... well, beautiful. It's nice to be away from cars and noise. It's technically challenging, even if you aren't doing anything crazy. And notably, it's free and there are no lines.

Anyway, this season for mountain biking just kept going and going... and going. I expected to get some mountain biking in during October. I was hoping to get at least one ride in during November. I didn't expect at all that we'd get such fantastic conditions -- warm weather, not too much mud, barely any snow -- almost all the way until Christmas. Sure, that didn't bode well for the ski season (as you'll see below). But I clocked a LOT of late season after-work rides and even the occasional lunch ride in December. We rode through the foliage, until all the foliage fell, past all the foliage turning trails slippery as hell, all the way until the foliage blew off the trails and we could actually ride dicey trails again. I even got to try out a tiny bit of snow riding on my chonky mountain bike tires.

Ski Season... When? Where? What? Who am I?

Yeah, it goes without saying that ski season sucked this year. We got our first skiing of the season in in December: Cannon's opening day was rainy, and it was fun for a few days to just be out on the mountain, shredding the gnar again. Soon enough, the holidays distracted from the awful conditions.

January was bleak as hell: a tiny bit of snow, then frigid cold, occasional rain, but just dark and dreary and cold. February finally brought some snow. But not enough for great skiing.

For all of January and most of February, the only real way to enjoy being outside was trail running and walks around town.

Finally, the end of February brought the first truly lasting snowfall. Since then, conditions have been pretty good, if often "east coast icy."

But I am continually amazed at just how many people want to ski around here even when conditions SUCK. We got three or four truly great ski days in this year, when you could cruise all over the mountain, carve fresh powder, and go as fast as you want without worrying about hitting a massive ice patch or a rock. We got three or four decent days where you couldn't hit glades or anything super challenging, but the conditions were fun on groomed trails. And we saw a lot of days where after a handful of runs Meg and I were happy to go grab lunch. (My favorite memory: after bagging a couple of runs on a particularly icy day, a father and daughter arriving at Cannon, fresh from Massachusetts, and asking, "Is there something wrong on the mountain?" I just told him I was hungry and lived local enough to ski any day before work.)

Unfortunately, conditions aren't the only problem: there's also the problem of crowds. When you get a true powder day (and you don't have to work), living 15 minutes from the nearest mountain is great -- you can drive slowly and safely to the mountain and basically get the whole place to yourself. But almost every weekend, especially when terrain is limited, can easily become a nightmare of 10+ minute lines at every lift and massive crowds at every chokepoint. I could bear the lines alone. But the line etiquette (I've seen more folks "saving spots" in lines for friends this year than ever before, or cutting past other people because... reasons?) and the trail etiquette (be aware of other people; don't cut people off; don't hog the entire trail, especially if you're slow; don't stop IN THE MIDDLE OF A BLIND CORNER OR CHOKEPOINT to take a picture and shoot the shit with your friends) have become so bad that any level of crowding quickly turns many mountains into Not a Good Time. And I won't even go into the havok that Epic and Ikon passes have wrought on the ski industry itself, the insane state of day pass prices, or the housing issues destroying the already-unpleasant living conditions of ski hill employees. It becomes harder and harder every year to justify propping up this industry in any way, even if you stick to independent resorts like we do.

We've considered backcountry skiing as a solution to this: either walking up ski hills out-of-hours to get a run in before or after normal hours, or hiking up a smattering of known ski spots around New England (including our mountain biking trails!) to earn ungroomed turns. Unfortunately backcountry gear is VERY expensive for a VERY short season. And Cannon doesn't allow you to hike up before they start lifts... at 9AM. So while I'm keeping my eyes out for deals, I'm not convinced yet.

Fortunately, once the snow fell substantially in Littleton itself, we discovered another activity that partially replaces downhill skiing...

A Surprisingly Interesting Place to Cross Country Ski

Some of you may think of boring, cold drudgery when you hear the phrase "cross country skiing." I've never felt that way, maybe because I love being outside in the snow, or because I go a little faster than most when I cross country ski, or because I tend to bring a beer. It turns out that the PRKR trails right here in Littleton are a fantastic place to cross country ski.

There's daily grooming. The base layer sticks around for a while. Trails are tighter and have a bit more incline than your average cross country ski trail, but it turns out that keeps things fun and interesting. It's a great way to get a cardio workout, skiing all the way to the overlook at the top of Parker Mountain. There are lots of trails, and they're all absolutely beautiful in the winter. Peace, quiet, nature. Need I say more?

Disclaimer: Meg may think I'm slightly crazy for going down steep trails on cross country skis. That's OK.

Bikes Bikes Bikes

Of course, after three subsequent days of 50 degree temperatures, it looks like our one month "winter" is finally winding down. On one hand: wow, was that a short winter. I expected way colder and snowier conditions up here in the White Mountains. But it was a mild winter for the whole Northeast, and at least we still got some decent winter sports in.

But what I'm really excited about is the new bikes we picked up last week. Last year, we took a chance on mountain biking. As I already mentioned, I enjoyed it a lot -- even more than I expected. But I'm not sold on the utility of suspension, carbon, and many other fancy modern "innovations" for folks who want to rip downhill as fast as possible and do jumps. I prefer a bike I can comfortably ride on all day, that's as cozy on dirt roads and broken pavement as it is on a singletrack trail, and that's built so well, I don't think I could break it. For that reason, Meg and I picked up Tanglefoot Moonshiners from James at Analog Cycles.

They've been brilliant so far. We're still settling into them -- we have a 100 mile tuneup coming up soon, Meg's still waiting on her Sinewave Beacon 2, and I've still got to wire up my rear dynamo light. But we've already taken Bill and Wheezie up to Reklis Brewing in Bethlehem twice, out for a mud ride, and for a spin on the causeway trail in Burlington. Once the snow and mud settles out on the PRKR trails and Kingdom Trails, I'm excited to try them on a Moonshiner -- we had a great time at the Slate Valley Trails with demo Moonshiners, so I know they're capable. Stay tuned for updates on mountain, gravel, and bikepacking trips once we have these bikes figured out!

Wrap-up

Our first winter in New England. For those who thought we couldn't handle the cold: you should see how low I keep my thermostat at night. For those who thought we were crazy for living anywhere but a big city: you should see how many steps I get per day, and ask me a bit about my hobbies. For those who told me there would be a lot of snow: I wish you were right.

Winter was nice here, though I hope we get an actually snowy winter again some year soon. I love the fact that Littleton has four distinct seasons, and that you actually get snow that hangs around (sometimes) -- something I never experienced in NYC or Denver. But I'm excited for the spring now. The dirt (mud for now) roads. Exploring new trails. New bikepacking trips. The sort-of-complete-now-I-think Lamoille Valley Rail Trail. The farmer's market. Long days in the sun with great bikes and great beers and great friends.

If you're trying to read these in backwards order (who am I to judge?), check out part 6 here:

• Day 6 (Morrisville to Greensboro)

If you somehow missed my post for day 1, check it out here:

• Day 1 (Littleton to Marshfield)

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Our final day of the trip. It's hard to believe we've been living in a tent, off of bikes, with no source of transportation other than our own legs, for a full week. The rain sounds heavy as we lay in our sleeping bags, hoping for bluer skies. But when I open up the tent, it turns out to be a mere sprinkle.

It takes us a bit longer than usual to pack up the camping supplies, mostly because of the impressive collection of slugs and spiders sheltering under our rain guard. But the rain lets up just long enough to get the tent packed away without too much extra water (or slug) weight.

We pick up our bear bag from Carol's shed, and say goodbye to our gracious host. She asks if we plan to take the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail, but Vermont Transportation has been radio silent on the "late summer 2022" trail building progress. So we respond with a resounding "maybe."

First Brekky

We head downhill for breakfast and coffee at Greensboro's general store, Wiley's Store. After barely 100 meters on the road, the rain cranks up to 11. Fortunately the ride isn't far, so we park the bikes under an eave and sample the coffee, breakfast sandwich, donuts, and banana bread. The food is as excellent as you'd expect at a Vermont general store. And they sell Hill Farmstead bottles, a pleasant surprise.

The onslaught of rain continues, even after we respectfully drink an entire coffee and eat an entire donut. After a few minutes of continuing rain, we decide that with 60 miles of riding to Littleton, we should get on the road. So we set out towards Greensboro Bend.

Surprise Rail Trail!

The traffic is light. The rain is heavy. But spirits are high. As we cruise into Greensboro Bend, we notice an entrance to the rail trail. And surprisingly, the "closed" signs are face down on the road. Score! We hop on the rail trail with mild hesitation. Surely Vermont Transportation would announce if the rail trail was open?

As it turns out, they might not. We take the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail for most of the day. At every road crossing, I expected to see "closed" signs on the next stretch of trail... but that never happened. Some stretches of trail were a bit rough. None of them were as rough as the Ammonoosuc Rail Trail near Littleton. Overall, it was almost entirely graded, finished, and bridged over every obstacle. There was one giant dip in the trail under construction, with a giant backhoe parked at one end.

It turned out to be really fun on loaded bikes, and we got enough momentum going down one side to get all the way up the other side.

This Rail Trail Keeps Going Wowowowow

Before long, the sun comes out, and the world starts to warm up. We cruise along the sometimes-rough, sometimes-finished rail trail to Joe's Pond. But we finally run out of luck: near Harrington Hill, at a road crossing, we spot grading machines on the trail ahead, laying down smooth dirt/gravel surface. It's great to see Vermont building the rail trail, but slightly inconvenient that they're doing it at the same time that we'd like to be using the rail trail.

But it turns out to not be much of an obstacle. We take a quick detour down a dirt side road, but the next intersection is also blocked -- it looks like this grading process is a multi-hour ordeal, with multiple machines passing over the path multiple times.

So we continue on, and detour on 15 for a hot second, before finally rejoining the trail on Channel Road.

From there, the (finished) (preexisting) trail between Joe's Pond and St. Johnsbury is fantastic. We see a few people out on the trail for morning dog walks, bike rides, and runs. But it's overall just a beautiful orangey crisp haze.

Second and Third Brekky in St. Jay's

Once we hit St. Johnsbury, it's time for second breakfast and lunch at the Cosmic Cup Cafe. This place slaps! My breakfast burrito is so good, I ordered a third breakfast -- a breakfast-themed poutine complete with sunny-side-up eggs. Meg's pan baguette with lox was allegedly good, but I wouldn't know -- by the time I thought to ask for a bite, she'd already finished it! My latte is much better than I expected, but Meg claims her "Kingdom Fog" -- a London Fog with maple -- takes the cake. Fortunately, St. Johnsbury is so close to our favorite mountain bike trails, and on the way to so many people we know, that we're likely to return soon.

After second and third breakfast, it's time for a beer! We hop over to Kingdom Taproom and nab some Hill Farmstead tap beer, because yesterday just wasn't quite enough. Last time we visited, we liked their outdoor space on the street. It's nice to finally check out their extremely cozy basement taproom, which feels straight out of an old English pub. I'm excited to visit again after a long day of skiing at Jay Peak in the dead cold of winter.

I enjoy my first nitrogenated Hill Farmstead beer, which fits right in with the clouds that start to cover that warm mid-morning sun. Meg has some other hippy-dippie local Vermont beverage, which was allegedly good. She drank it quickly enough that I didn't get to try it, though.

Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood

From St. Johnsbury, we have a choice. We can either cut across the hills and cruise directly to Littleton, or follow the river and ride a few extra miles to keep our hill ascents to a minimum.

We choose to be lazy and follow the river.

The Vermont dirt roads on our route turn out great. Much of our route parallels a railroad, which kept the grades relaxing. The roads are smooth, pleasing dirt. The cows and sheep and goats are cute. The foliage and views continue to gobsmack me around every corner. Traffic is nonexistent. We cruise under and above the highway at least three times, often spotting beautiful waterfalls in the highway median that I never knew existed, despite driving this highway countless times.

We eventually make it to two bodies of water that separate Vermont and New Hampshire near Littleton: Comerford and Moore Reservoirs. For the most part, the great dirt roads continue, though we can tell that near the border New Hampshire starts to leak in: more and more stretches of crumbling pavement appear, a poor substitute for the smooth, concrete-like dirt we've grown used to in Vermont.

We cross Moore reservoir on a relatively busy paved road, and it becomes immediately clear that we've entered New Hampshire. The roads expand, the cars get faster, and a gloom sets in, blocking out the last traces of sunlight in the sky. The wind whips up, and faint raindrops begin pooling on my glasses. A lone, haunting wolf howls in the distance. No wait, a wolf didn't actually howl in the distance, I got carried away setting the atmosphere. Anyway, the ride from Moore dam (which you can get very close to on a bike) to Littleton kinda sucks. The shoulder is wide, so I'm not too concerned for our safety, but damn there are a lot of trucks, and they are all going really fast, and they are all really loud. There's a back way into town with way more hills and dirt roads, but at the end of a 60-mile day, we aren't trying to add an extra 10-15 miles.

The skies open up and start absolutely dumping rain on us just as we turn off the main road onto the residential hilly streets of Littleton. As we reach home, the sun peeks out behind this passing rainstorm, and a rainbow appears over Franconia Notch. Seriously, I'm not messing with you, that's not me setting the atmosphere, it actually happened.

Conclusion.

We just spent a whole week on bikes!

It's a lot to process. On one hand, it was a lot of work to plan out a route, find campsites, pack our things, and lug them up hills all across Vermont. On the other hand... with the exact same setup, we could live off our bikes indefinitely anywhere. All we'd need is a laundromat every couple of weeks. And maybe a little more discipline when it comes to eating 8 meals a day.

My biggest fear going into this trip was twofold: we'd either get mentally or physically sick of biking by the end of the week. Turns out, that didn't happen. The day after we finished this trip, we loaded the mountain bikes onto our car rack and cruised for a few hours around Kingdom Trails in Burke. Then we got home, ate some ice cream, and ascended Mount Agassiz on Bethlehem's new mountain bike trails. The weather was perfect, and with fall looming, it's hard to say when we'll get our last bike ride in for the year. Might as well keep going.

When we set out on this trip, Meg and I wanted to prove to ourselves that we COULD live off of bikes for as long as we need. I think we've accomplished that. And now we're already floating ideas of a month in Europe next year.

If you're trying to read these in backwards order (who am I to judge?), check out part 5 here:

• Day 5 (Little River/Stowe to Morrisville)

If you somehow missed my post for day 1, check it out here:

• Day 1 (Littleton to Marshfield)

Wow it's Already Day Six

We awaken at 7AM to the most condensation and fog we've seen all trip. It doesn't take us long to pack up our tent and sleeping supplies: at this point, we've had plenty of practice.

Our ride into Morristown is quick, but our small stint on 100 turns out to be very busy at 7:30AM. Black Cap Espresso turns out busy as well, but the breakfast sandwiches, coffee, and breakfast burrito are all highly competent.

At Black Cap, we meet a crew of bikepackers starting on their first day of the Gravel Growler. None of them have panniers (the big bags on the racks at the rear of our bikes). They're all riding lightweight bikes, wearing spandex, and rocking some serious dad vibes. Their bags are small enough that I don't know where they're packing their sleeping bags, much less their tents.

They seem very surprised that my 7-speed 90s mountain bike ascended the 20% grades of Lincoln Gap. Incredulous to the point of disbelief, actually. I quickly realize that despite the fact that we're riding (mostly) the same bike route, we are very, very different kinds of bicyclist. They have clearly fallen for The Efficiency Ruse. I wonder how many beers they allocate for themselves per day to maintain their racing pace.

After Black Cap, we ride through Morrisville, and nearly the minute we cross VT-15, the road turns to dirt.

There are a hell of a lot of hills, but they're gentle and rolling, and none overstay their welcome. At this point, it's hard not to notice that every mile north we ride, the trees get more and more red.

By the time we stop for second breakfast, the hills are ablaze with more fall foliage colors than I've ever seen.

A random field presents an opportunity to eat our first donut: a maple glaze. The donut is great, but the views are hard to beat.

A cemetery on a hill provides a perfect spot to leaf peep with a fresh Heady Topper and a chai spice donut.

My notes indicate that I should thank North Country Donuts of Morrisville for the perfectly textured donuts.

Not long after the cemetery, we spot Craftsbury, located right at the top of a big hill.

After a lengthy hill climb, we spot a general store, and immediately step inside for a calzone. By the time we finish the calzone, we realize that there are actually two general stores in town... and the fancy one we meant to stop at is just down the street. So naturally we swing by the fancier store for a to-go sandwich, a fancy bottle of pét-nat, and some longing gazes at cheese. Next time, cheese!

The last leg of today's journey takes us through a windy, hilly, foliage-y stretch of dirt roads that eventually lead to Hill Farmstead, one of the finest breweries on the planet.

At one point, the trail disintegrates into a puddle-y ATV trail. But the cows and foliage provide all the motivation we need, and at 2:50, we arrive at Hill. Just 5 minutes after our reservation -- not half bad for a complete guesstimate we made 7 days and 250 miles of biking ago!

After Hill, it's a short downhill ride to our campsite, coincidentally the same place we stayed almost a year ago for our New England Tour. There's a baby cow. I hand-saw some branches from a downed tree for a fire. We eat a whole basket of cherry tomatoes. We don't get eaten by any coyotes.

We fall asleep to the gentle crackle of our dying campfire.

The Saga Continues

Check out part 7 (whenever I finish writing it -- maybe I already have?) at Day 7 (Greensboro to Littleton).

If you're trying to read these in backwards order (who am I to judge?), check out part 4 here:

• Day 4 (Mount Philo to Little River/Stowe)

If you somehow missed my post for day 1, check it out here:

• Day 1 (Littleton to Marshfield)

Mountain Biking, in Hard Mode

At 7 AM, we finish packing the tent and the bikes are ready to go. A quick toothbrush-by at the bathroom later, and we're on our way out of the campsite.

But, much like our stay at Onion River, we aren't satisfied strolling out the front entrance, past the ranger. Instead, we have a full morning of mountain biking trails mapped out. Instead of taking potentially busy roads, we'll be hoofing it over downed trees, through poorly-marked intersections between trails named "Stonewall" and "Bear Run", and around trails closed due to landslides.

And that's just the way we like it.

We start out on a backroad that connects the "A" and "B" camping zones. Then we pull off onto a brutally uphill doubletrack route. Then the signage gets interesting: some trails are 2 way, but only one direction bans bicycles. Huh.

Eventually, we end up on a blue (intermediate) mountain bike trail, switchbacking our way uphill to the trail that will take us most of the way to Stowe. It's tough going with 30 kilograms of fully loaded bicycle, but we persevere and make it up the hill.

Next, it's gambling time: intersections with absolutely no signage at all. But thanks to a decent sense of direction and the occasional scouting mission, we figure things out.

Then we hit Ricker Farm, the start of the slightly easier doubletrack that we'll take the remainder of the way.

From here, we ride on an abandoned road that's mostly clear-cut biking. There's plenty of rocks, the occasional downed tree, a mixture of up and downhill... but it's mostly just beautiful forest.

Since we're essentially in a long crevasse on the side of a mountain, we largely travel uphill until we cross a stream, then downhill as we make our way back towards the reservoir.

The entire time, we only see one other soul: a brave gravel biker, trucking it as fast as he can to presumably win King of the Mountain on Strava.

The uphill makes for slow, but beautiful going. Halfway through the downhill, the rough dirt-and-rock path transforms into a smooth, recently renovated gravel almost-road. There are few things as satisfying as zooming down a well-earned hill, through the fantastic fiery fall foliage, towards a burrito & beer lunch.

It's a Von Trapp

Our journey continues with one last hill, and it's a big 'un. Over the course of 1.8 miles, we ascend from 700 feet to over 1400 feet. It's an intense climb, but the road is a perfect example of VT dirt, and the views at the top are straight-up gobsmacking. And the downhill goes by very, very quickly.

Our first stop in town: Idletyme, which we haven't visited since 2019. Meg was extremely excited (and not disappointed) by the poutine. The beer was decent. The weather was perfect. The bees were friendly.

Next up, we swing by PK Coffee for a caffeine hit. Our beverages are good enough, but they last only long enough to reach Alchemist Beer. Sadly, Alchemist doesn't do pours every day, so we settled for a 4-pack of the freshest Heady Topper in the state.

After Alchemist, our 2019 nostalgia trip continues with Stowe Cider, where we enjoy the fall seasonal sampler and some complimentary phone charging.

On our way there, we interrupted something truly haunting: a sphynx cat photo op on a bike path bridge. I'm not sure what's more horrifying: hairless cats, or the fact that this couple assumed they could take up the entire busy bike path bridge to take multiple fall photos. All I can say: if your animal gets so cold outside when it's 60 degrees Fahrenheit that you need to keep it inside your hoodie, I'm not sure it's well suited to a fall foliage photo op.

Burritos 4 Lyfe

After our scarring naked cat experience, we fulfill my daily bike trip requirement: we stop for burrito. This time, it's not a new experience. Instead, we visit the first place I ever enjoyed a burrito in Vermont: Ranch Camp. The beer selection is rad. The burrito is rad. The service is slightly slow, because it's busy as hell. But the porch is a lovely place to hang out, and both the weather and views outside are beautiful. It's hard to complain.

Please Head North

After Ranch Camp, our route is simple and short: a few miles up the valley to Morristown. We arrive at our campsite with plenty of time to spare, and meet up with my brother Kevin and his wife for dinner and drinks. Thanks for hanging out! If you ever feel like live music, a local beer, and a classic chicken tender after a long day of mountain biking, I couldn't recommend Moog's Place more.

Our night wraps up late -- nearly 10 PM. It's crispy cold outside, and the nearly full moon casts a bright pale glow over the landscape. The stars are beautiful. Our bike lights (including my dynamo light, which doesn't require batteries at all) provide all the light we need. After a quick relaxing ride back to the campsite, we quickly fall asleep to the sound of yet another babbling brook.

The Saga Continues

Check out part 6 (whenever I finish writing it -- maybe I already have?) at Day 6 (Morrisville to Greensboro).

If you're trying to read these in backwards order (who am I to judge?), check out part 3 here:

• Day 3 (Lincoln Gap to Mount Philo)

If you somehow missed my post for day 1, check it out here:

• Day 1 (Littleton to Marshfield)

The Burlington Shuffle

Thanks to our late night campfire, we wake up a bit later than usual -- 6:30 or so. But we make OK time during site breakdown, first breakfast, and my very fast, very cold, very free shower. So we end up on the road at 7:15.

It's nice to roll downhill to the entrance of Mount Philo. But then we descend into madness: 18 miles of trash on the side of the road, small shoulders, and cars driving "45 MPH" from the soulless sad exurbs and suburbs into town. All to get to a coffee shop that we're not that excited about. It turns out Burlington's north/south bike infrastructure is nonexistent. Once you get inside the city proper, I'm sure it's fine. But the suburbs do a worse job than Denver at keeping us safe next to traffic.

You could say we're excited to get back into the mountains.

After a particularly haunting stretch of miserable road where we couldn't even hear cars because of the incredibly loud fighter jets flying above (why on earth do people live here?), we arrive at second breakfast: Red Barn Market & Deli.

It has all the charm of an especially clean Central New York gas station, without the gas station parts. The sandwiches are OK, especially the spicy one, which reminds me of Deli Sandros (in?)famous Wake-up call sandwich. The coffee is ... not artisan. Nor especially cheap. But there's a bathroom with paper towels, so I'll call it a win.

Escape from the Flatlands

After Red Barn, we're excited to start moving up into the foothills towards Waterbury. This meant getting back to the XVT trail that we loved so much for the first two days of the trip -- surely a good thing.

It's not a good thing.

To the east of Red Barn, the "sad suburbs" quickly escalated into "sadder strip malls and shopping centers." The kinds of places where you're never sure where to be on a bike: surely not on the 45 MPH 5-6 lane road? But probably not on the (inconsistent) (poorly maintained) (frequently blocked by abandoned shopping carts) sidewalk? But sometimes the sidewalk claims to be a bike lane?

Overall it's very confusing and not very fun. We're ecstatic when the shopping centers finally recede. But our ecstasy isn't destined to last long: we haven't escaped to fun riding yet. Just a series of very poorly marked intersections, both bike path and road. As if whoever posted the signs didn't understand that the proper place to mark the XVT continuation is at the intersection... not 100 meters down the road, behind a bush. Woof.

Pay Dirt

After fighting our way through the suburban Labyrinth, we end up on one more nightmarish skinny-shouldered 45 MPH hellscape... before we turn onto a delightful dirt drive. The transition from "dump truck passing without giving any space at 50" to "cows without touching distance" is abrupt, to say the least.

It isn't long before we see yet more dirt road construction (a fad, down here in the flatlands?), but we're fortunate enough that the construction workers just wave us by.

Then we hop back on a (wider shouldered!) paved road for a couple of minutes, before finally diverting onto the "true" XVT: a dirt road that soon morphs into full-blown singletrack. Sick.

After shredding the gnar on our fully loaded rigid touring bikes, the XVT dumps us right in front of our lunch destination: Stone Corral.

Have You Noticed We Like Burritos Yet?

Stone Corral treats us very well, with a top-up of our phone batteries, a well executed black IPA, and -- most importantly -- an impressive breadth of burritos, tacos, and rice bowls. I especially like the fact that they put all of the sets of ingredients in one big list, and you can order a taco, burrito, or rice bowl with each set of ingredients. It's something you usually see with bowls and burritos, but tacos, too? That's texmex innovation.

Anyway, the burrito is great -- it gives Ranch Camp and Black Lotus a run for their money for "best burrito of the trip." With heavy hearts and heavier stomachs, we set out towards Waterbury.

Sus Bridge

Not far after Stone Corral, we cross the Long Trail. Vermont is kind enough to put a very impressive pedestrian suspension bridge over the Winooski River here so hikers don't have to swim.

Tractor Man

Soon after the bridge, we spot a true Vermont icon: Tractor Man. Huge mutton chops, hair like Riff Raff from Rocky Horror, driving an ancient tire-chained tractor decorated in full hippie spray paint regalia. Legend says if you see this man on the road in Vermont, your turnips will grow especially fiercely next year.

Knees Sweaty, Mom's Spaghetti

On our way into Waterbury, Meg's knees start to give her some trouble. We decide to ice the knees over a nice long second lunch at the Prohibition Pig, which fortunately has a delicious food and beer menu. Chatting with other travelers -- some old, some young -- passes the time quickly. We even met some vanlifer Sammie Rae fans! Thanks to David and Lily Jo for the great conversation. Always nice to chat with fun people and get some music recs in the process.

Dam Little River

We stay at Prohibition Pig slightly later than intended. Fortunately, the ride to our campsite is really short -- just a few miles. Waterbury is very busy with car traffic, but it isn't long before we're on yet another dirt road, climbing up towards the top of a gorgeous dam with striking views of the Green Mountains. And not long after that, we arrive at our campsite, nestled under pine trees high up a precipitous cliff above Waterbury Reservoir. It's damn cozy, and our fire makes it even cozier. The cabot cheese and slim jims take it over the top, and before we know it, we're asleep from the sheer cozy overload.

The Saga Continues

Check out part 5 (whenever I finish writing it -- maybe I already have?) at Day 5 (Little River/Stowe to Morrisville).

If you're trying to read these in backwards order (who am I to judge?), check out part 2 here:

• Day 2 (Marshfield to the Lincoln Gap)

If you somehow missed my post for day 1, check it out here:

• Day 1 (Littleton to Marshfield)

Descending Lincoln Gap

Primitive camping by the babbling brook turned out to be a very pleasant way to sleep. We awake early in the morning to our chilliest morning yet.

Remember how yesterday's Lincoln Gap ascent was brutally uphill? The way down was... slightly less brutally downhill. And largely dirt. Note to self: the next time you climb Lincoln Gap, ascend the dirt side.

We set out on a long and winding path to Middlebury, where we've tracked down the first coffee shop of the day. On the way, we'll pass through Lincoln and a whole lot of dirt roads.

A Frosty Morning in the Greens

Lincoln sits within a valley in the Green Mountains. As we ride lower and lower into the valley, it gets colder and colder. We start to notice frost on the fields. The ponds give off a decidedly spooky vibe, thanks to fall foliage and the steam evaporating off the warm pond surfaces into the cold air.

We enjoy a lovely morning, looping up and down and over and across a myriad of hills on the healthy population of dirt roads in the Lincoln area. The occasional school bus or gaggle of kids waiting at the end of a driveway serves as a reminder that despite our vacation, for the rest of the world, it's Monday.

We finally descend fully into the flatlands surrounding Lake Champlain on a very windy, very steep, paved road.

It becomes immediately obvious that we're no longer "up in the mountains": the air is warm, the tree-encrusted hills give way to sprawling farms, and the narrow dirt roads inflate into wide, highly-trafficked pavement.

Aside from our cruise through East Middlebury and the crossing over 7 (as truck-filled a road as I've ever seen in Vermont), we manage to keep to back roads. The route into Middlebury and our coffee shop destination takes us on a dirt road right in the middle of resurfacing. Which means next to no traffic, except for the grading machine, because there's a giant pile of sand in the middle of the road.

Middlebury

We soon reach Middlebury, and take the "trail around Middlebury" to avoid the roads that are now somewhat-clogged with cars. A confused high school student asks us if we've seen her outdoor gym class on the trails; I wonder if she's still out there, looking for them.

A suspension bridge and a mildly stressful downtown ride later, we arrive at Royal Oak Coffee. After all our hard work, it seems fitting to reward ourselves with a vegan pastry "flight" containing:

• cardamom bun
• spiced pear cake
• cider donut

Meg was especially fond of the cider donut. I thought the cardamom bun had the most "not-vegan" texture. When you regularly buy cider donuts in the local diner for 50 cents, purchasing a fancy vegan cider donut for $3.75 feels not entirely unlike the infamous Pulp Fiction $5 milkshake. But Royal Oak did made some of the best coffee of our entire trip, including one of the best mochas I've ever had. I'll allow the markup since vegan pastries are really freaking hard to get right.

Chock full of pastries, it's time to check out the local brewery. We head north to Otter Creek brewing, one of the older Vermont breweries. It dates all the way back to 1991, positively ancient!

Odder Creek

Our experience at Otter Creek is decidedly odd. First off, our beers: I enjoy a bitter IPA. Meg opts for a flight:

• a pumpkin beer (tis the season!)
• a black and tan (report: not actually a black and tan at all)
• a pale ale
• an IPA

The beers are decent, if unremarkable. The staff, however, is the friendliest staff of any brewery I've ever been to. And we've been to a lot of breweries. We chat for a solid hour with the only two employees about Otter Creek's wild ownership ride over for the past few months: no less than three acquisitions involving breweries absorbed by breweries that proceed to get bought up by other breweries.

They make a very peppery homemade mac and cheese, which they are happy to inform us they recently created as a means of feeding the many bicycle tourists that pass through on the Gravel Growler. Apparently carbs are the number one bike tourist request. The panini wasn't bad either. My only regret? We hung out the entire time inside, because the employees were so nice. As a result, we missed out on the beer garden outside. At least we enjoyed 99% of the rest of the day outside on the bikes.

Vergennes

But we can't hang out at the brewery all day. So after a couple of beers and some carbs, we hit the road to Vergennes. The weather is beautiful, even warm. There are cute farms, dirt roads, cows, and very fluffy dogs.

Time flies by, and before long we find ourselves at the 3 Squares Cafe.

I enjoy a remarkably well executed pita. Meg chooses a soup that is disappointing only because it really really sounded like a creamy soup... but turned out to be not creamy at all. Such is life.

We grab a 4-pack of Foam beers at the local wine store, and take the annoyingly busy route 7 out of town to a corner store that stocks subs and pop tarts.

Mount Philo & Mango

Then, it's a relaxing lumpy ride all the way to Mount Philo. Even at the base of the hill, the views of Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks are stunning. The ranger is kind enough to let us take our bikes the wrong direction around the hill to avoid an extra mile or two of brutal climbing after an already long day on the bikes. Thanks Nathaniel! Sorry for spooking you at the window when we silently arrived on our bicycles.

After arriving, we grab a couple of cans of beer and enjoy the sunset view at the peak. Nothing beats petting a very kind golden retriever named Mango while looking out at a sunset over the mountains and sipping a local beer.

Soon, it starts to get dark. We say our goodbyes to Mango, and return to the campsite to set up the tent. Before long, our good friends (and new Burlington residents) Rachael and Gino stop by with some firewood, beer and hot dogs. Thanks for stopping by to hang out! It was a great way to spend the evening.

The Saga Continues

Check out part 4 (whenever I finish writing it -- maybe I already have?) at Day 4 (Mount Philo to Little River/Stowe).

If you somehow missed my post for day 1, check it out here:

• Day 1 (Littleton to Marshfield)

Return to the Old Railroad Bed

Meg and I wake up at 5:30 to a crisp, cool, classic Fall morning. Our route begins with an "easy" connector over a half mile of campground trails to the same Old Railroad Bed trail we used yesterday.

The campground map helpfully shows "biking & walking trails" to the east. But there's a whole mishmash of trails between us and the Old Railroad Bed. We hit the first trail intersection, and we pause. The signs indicate that one way sends us to the meadow. The other way sends us to... some other landmark. Which one leads to the Old Railroad Bed, again? I pick a random direction that moves us vaguely east.

The "random direction" strategy pans out, until we end up on some steep, narrow trails that we can't ride on any more. Naturally, I'm elected scout for the group, and I run ahead. A couple of wrong turns and some jogging later, I pathfind us to the Old Railroad Bed. Soon enough, we're enjoying our first country store cider donut of the day on the intended trail.

Today's section of the Old Railroad Bed turns out to be a little rougher than yesterday's. But any time you're on level-ish ground away from the tyranny of wheels is a good time to me. It's a muddy, tree-y, rocky good time.

The Unexpected Burrito

We make speedy progress down the rail trail, so it isn't long before we cruise our way to what seems like the end of the rail trail. The return to civilization and paved roads disappoints us for a hot second... but the Black Lotus Kitchen soon lifts our spirits. Seriously, this food truck is run by possibly the most friendly guy I've ever met. He was more than happy to drip maple syrup right into our coffee as he fried up an incredible breakfast burrito with local ingredients. First chance we get, we're trying lunch and dinner here.

With bellies full of coffee and burrito, we briefly cruise down 2 to meet up with the rail trail yet again. This section has received a bit more love in recent years -- in one washed-out section of forest, the caretakers have even gone to the trouble of building a loopy detour, complete with fresh gravel and guard rails. Fancy!

The Phantom Trail

But all good things must come to an end, so before long we return to 2. It's... fine. The shoulder is big and it doesn't crumble beneath our tires, so I'll call it a win. The cars speed by loudly, but there aren't too many. The scenery is pleasant. We typically route away from major roads like this, but they're sometimes a necessary evil to connect things. And with thousands of feet and dozens of miles to go, we probably shouldn't take on any more miles or hills.

Given my assumption that we'll have to ride this road all the way into Montpelier, I'm dumbstruck when we notice what looks like a bike path popping out of the trees along the shoulder of the road. Like any misguided bicycle tourist, I have no choice but investigation of where this mysterious path leads. After all, it sort of looks like it's going in the right direction. My intuition was correct (ish) in the forest this morning. What's the worst that can happen?

So we hop on the bike path. It leads to an absolutely beautiful, brand-spanking-new bicycle bridge that claims to be a bicycle path leading right into Montpelier, a new stretch of the XVT!

We excitedly snap some photos on the bridge, and head up the hill on the path, which quickly turns into dirt...

... which swiftly turns into rutted mud...

... which abruptly stops in a drainage ditch, and a series of trees marked as a future route for the XVT. Nuts.

So we backtrack to the bridge, which connects to a dirt road which looks like it leads into Montpelier. And then we notice XVT signs! Hurrah, we're saved! It turns out that the bridge got us to the opposite site of the river, where the XVT currently runs. That dirt road turns into a bike path closer to Montpelier, which led right to the Capitol and a very cute downtown grid.

Forbidden Peanut Butter at The Capitol

A quick stop to chat with some other bicycle tourists (good luck on your trip to Boston, NYC, and Washington, DC!), and it's time to grab second breakfast.

I enjoy a croissant with bacon, apple slices, and peanut butter. Meg looks at me with sheer terror. Despite their controversial sandwich choices, Capitol Grounds makes a solid espresso. They rank among my favorite coffee shops of the trip. And in Vermont, there's steep competition.

Overall, Montpelier really impressed me. I imagined it to be a much larger city, but it turns out it's just a big-ish town with a nice dense multiuse downtown. Looks straight out of Europe, or England at least. Lots of brick buildings, taverns, bridges, a train right through town, and tons of people riding around on bikes. It's rare to visit any place in the USA where I feel like I could live without a car, but Montpelier ranks high on that scale. Very close to Fort Collins, another town I've raved about on this blog after a biking trip.

Natural Burials are Legal in Vermont

We cruise out of Montpelier past the gorgeous Green Mount Cemetery (only $1200 for a natural summer burial!), and quickly turn onto some classic VT dirt roads.

Dirt Roads, Spooky Barks, and Trucking Nuts

The foliage is once again smashing, and despite the slow incline into the mountains, Meg and I have a great time. Until we hear the sound every bicyclist fears: a barking dog, just around the corner. 99% of the time, it's no problem -- between invisible fences and mitigating tactics, you can usually cope with a dog. But our hackles have been successfully raised. Until we round the corner, to be greeted with... a big, fluffy, drooly, silly, dopey golden retriever. Whew!

Continuing down (or rather, up -- it's quite the grade at times) the road, we only see one other group of human beings: a gaggle of hunters that literally attached a set of deer testicles to their truck as a bizarre reinterpretation of truck nutz.

One wrong turn later, we end up in some kind of bizarre Breaking Bad drug deal set, complete with a completely trashed abandoned car. A quick check of the map, and we discover that we should have "stayed" on the main road a quarter mile or so back.

Class 4: What was Class 3, Again?

A speedy backtrack later, and we find ourselves on a classic VT class 4 road: giant puddles of mud, enormous swathes of exposed raw rock, downed chunks of trees, and rocks that could be described more as boulders than baby heads. It was brilliant.

A small amount of uphill later, we pass through the notch of the hill. Then it's downhill, which turns out to be even harder than uphill on this terrain, since you need to constantly brake before you... break.

Not to be Confused with Mad TacoS

Then it's an abrupt transition from class 4 offroading back to a completely normal road, another ascent, and our first sweeping views of the Mad River Valley, all the way to Sugarbush (close to Lincoln Gap, our destination for the day). With the foliage just breaking into peak levels, it's absolutely rad. The dirt roads just keep ascending to breathtaking views, then descending back to another grueling hill climb. But hey, there's cows!

Soon, we're descending into Waitsfield, and our lunch spot is in view. Mad Taco does not disappoint, though I feel concerned that Mad Tacos near Cazenovia, NY might be in some dicey intellectual property space with these folks. But they have Hill Farmstead on draft and burritos, what's not to love?

Lawsons Loves Bicycles or Maybe Bicycles Love Lawsons

After Mad Taco, we haven't consumed quite enough calories to push our way over Lincoln Gap. So we do as any sane bicycle tourist would do -- we head over to Lawson's Finest Liquids for some additional carbs. Meg highly recommends their black IPA.

Lawsons has a lot of bicyclists. We had the good fortune to meet a (European?) couple staying in Warren who are almost done with the Gravel Growler bike route, which inspired this ride. We also meet a very enthusiastic guy who just bought a Salsa Journeyman, who had so many questions about bikepacking and bicycle touring that his mom literally had to drag him away from us. If you end up reading this post someday, I hope you end up buying that Swift Industries bag you wanted.

Warren

With the day officially crossing into "afternoon" territory, we trim a dirt road featuring a hill & a cow & a foliage view to keep ourselves on schedule. A quick ride down 100 takes us to Warren. We notice quite a few nature paths off the road, but we're on a schedule, dammit. If we don't get to the country store in time, they'll be all out of pastries for tomorrow's breakfast!

So we roll into Warren to load up at the country store. A bathroom break, a homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream sandwich, and some dinner & breakfast goods later, we snap a quick shot of the gorge, and head to Lincoln Gap. It's only a few miles to the campsite, how bad can it be?

Steep, Like Tea Bags

... MULTIPLE MILES OF GRUELING UPHILL 20%+ GRADE STRAIGHT INTO THE SKY LATER, we make it to the notch at the top of Lincoln Gap. It's beautiful! The setting sun really brings out the foliage, and we get our first glimpse of the Adirondacks. We get a small taste of tomorrow morning's descent, then pull off onto a side forest road for some primitive camping for the night.

A beer, a hummus wrap, and a beautiful sunset later, we're tired enough for an early sleep. We take advantage of the forest road to hang our bear bag a good distance from our campsite. With the ascent up Vermont's highest vehicle road behind us and a babbling brook in the near distance, sleep comes easy.

The Saga Continues

Check out part 3 (whenever I finish writing it -- maybe I already have?) at Day 3 (Lincoln Gap to Mount Philo).

Through the power of internet magic, I'm posting all seven links at the top of this first post. Each link will start working once I actually write the post for that day. But until then, enjoy my absurd 404 page.

• Day 1 (Littleton to Marshfield)
• Day 2 (Marshfield to the Lincoln Gap)
• Day 3 (Lincoln Gap to Mount Philo)
• Day 4 (Mount Philo to Little River/Stowe)
• Day 5 (Little River/Stowe to Morrisville)
• Day 6 (Morrisville to Greensboro)
• Day 7 (Greensboro to Littleton)

Shipping Out

Meg and I wake up at 6am for an espresso & an english muffin. This fuels our ride down the Ammonoosuc Rail Trail.

The trail ride starts with some rough going: lots of baby heads and soft, sandy surface. Our tires sink into the soil. We hopscotch rocks and mud puddles. But thanks to striking fall foliage, the excitement of a full week's bike vacation, and a shared affection for fog, we push south to Lisbon, where the trail improves.

This is the first time we've biked the entire length of the trail to the VT border. It's really neat! Like most rail trails, the Ammonoosuc features a number of old rail bridges. My favorite looms high above a sandy beach just down the trail from Bath. We'll return next summer for a swim -- for now, the water is a tad cold for a dip.

Shortly after the high bridge, a rafter of turkeys appears in the path. We creep up for a photo op, but they, uh... fly away down the trail. For a sizable distance. Huh. Earlier in the day, we followed a fawn down the trail for a while, but "flying turkeys" are my favorite memory.

On the subject of "cool stuff you don't see from a car": Bath, NH is home to a very long, very pretty, covered bridge that you can only view properly from the rail trail. It's a great spot to consider eating a donut, but decide against it because you're saving stomach space for a breakfast sandwich.

Second Breakfast

After a brief spooky road ride across the VT border to Wells River, we reach our second breakfast destination: The Hatchbox, a very small towable trailer transformed into a breakfast sandwich kitchen. But they're unexpectedly closed "for the weekend". Sigh -- VT small businesses strike again! So we settle for a stop at the nearby diner, Tuttle's, instead.

Not a Mistake

When we mapped out our route, I dreaded one section of the ride the most: the brief post-breakfast stint on the shoulder of US-302 from Woodsville to Groton. It's technically part of the Cross Vermont Trail, or XVT. But Meg and I have driven a car along that stretch of road before, and the wide shoulders did nothing to ease my worries about 50MPH speed limits and claustrophobic guard rails.

Fortunately, I was completely wrong.

Heading out from breakfast, the road is a smidge busy. But Meg reminds me that the XVT repeatedly diverts onto side roads and trails to keep bicycles off 302 as much as possible. We soon follow the XVT signage off the road onto a stretch of doubletrack. It leads through a quiet, peaceful, mushroom-filled chunk of forest completely separated from the road. We pass under the highway and the highway off ramps. A picnic bench presents an opportunity for a cider donut within spitting distance of the highway. Because somehow Vermont managed to make a park near a highway a pleasant place to be. Who knew?

Mouse and Moose

On the subject of those donuts... we stored them overnight in our bike bags before setting out. When we opened up the bag for a pre-lunch snack, we discovered that something ate its way through the bag and into one of the donuts for an overnight bite. A mouse? A hungry late-night Nate or Meg? Who knows?

Post mouse-surprise, we spot a large, dark, long-legged animal on the trail ahead of us. It quickly noticed us and sped off, but Meg's completely convinced it was an adolescent moose. I didn't see a white flashing tail, and it definitely had long legs, so who's to say? We'll call it the first moose sighting of our New England experience.

Experiencing Confusion

We soon rejoin the road, where the XVT signs (or lack thereof) immediately stymie us. They aren't ideal -- we frequently hit intersections with no indication of how to stick to the XVT. But thanks to Ride With GPS and Osmand, we (roughly) figure it out. Eventually. None of the roads are busy, the weather is beautiful, and the foliage just keeps getting better. Neither of us minds getting a little lost.

Eventually, we end up on "Old Railroad Bed," a proto-rail trail through Groton State Forest. This trail has it all: lakes, brilliant autumn oranges, reds, and yellows, massive boulders, easy grades, friendly people, vintage bikes, knives, lollipops -- exactly what you'd expect on a bike ride through the Vermont woods this time of year. And we spot our first sugar bush (of many), complete with a massive network of blueish sap piping.

Resentment and (Non)Forgiveness

With time, the XVT diverts from the "Old Railroad Bed" to dirt roads, plummeting towards Marshfield. Meg still resents me for making her climb a steep uphill around here because I saw a really cool waterfall. Some things, you just can't forgive. But it was a really cool waterfall.

The Hot, Instagrammable, FOMO, Zoomer, Calzone

Our course briefly separates from the XVT for a visit to the Marshfield Village Store, where we:

• repeatedly step outside to cool off from the sweat-inducing heat while we wait for deli food
• wolf down a surprisingly well-executed thin-crust veggie calzone
• purchase our first heady topper 4-pack (of many) of the trip
• acquire a delicious deli sandwich for later consumption at our campsite
• puzzle at the background music -- early 2000s rap in the deli and beer section, 1990s pop in the store
• just cannot understand the instagramming leaf peeping zoomers who ventured upstate from Massachusetts to avoid Autumn FOMO

Actually a Mistake

Now we make our first major mistake of the journey: we diverge from the old railroad bed. All because we're too lazy to climb the hills we just descended to reach the general store. We end up riding down the shoulder of route 2, where the leaf peepers drive as fast as possible to get to their AirBnBs by nightfall. The shoulder literally crumbles under our tires, and even if most drivers are polite, I'll never get used to RVs driving by me at 50MPH.

After a few harrowing miles on 2, we reach Onion River campground. The owners are incredibly friendly, and even deliver firewood to our campsite. Special thanks to Onion River for accommodating us despite a massive group reservation consuming most of their sites. We called ahead well in advance to make sure it was OK, but it was still kind of them.

A couple of heady toppers, 2-human Gin Rummy, a campfire, and a sub later at our riverside campsite, we lay our tired, smoky, smelly bones down in the tent. Life is good.

The Saga Continues

Check out part 2 (whenever I finish writing it -- maybe I already have?) at Day 2 (Marshfield to the Lincoln Gap).

On bikes, it's so much easier to pull off to the side of the road to dip your toes in a beautiful stream, or engage in a staring contest with a deer or a porcupine, or debate eating a not-quite-ripe wild strawberry. You end up seeing an area through completely different eyes.

Day 0: Littleton->Brattleboro (by car)

Our route began just north of Brattleboro, in Dummerston. Since we live a hundred miles away in Littleton, NH, we tossed the bikes onto our new 1up rack and made our way south to the starting point. As all good shirefolk do, we rise with the sun, which is like 4:50 AM near the solstice. So it was pretty easy to stop by the Blue Sparrow and enjoy our first fantastic Vermont foodie experience of the weekend -- two high quality breakfast sandwiches, a perfectly microfoamed latte, a just-a-tinge-sweet cold brew, and a croissant and scone for later consumption on the bikes. I am pleased to say that as fantastic as the Blue Sparrow is, it wasn't even the best breakfast we ate on the trip. More on that later.

With full stomachs ready to fuel a long bike ride, we parked the car at a park-and-ride by a covered bridge in Dummerston and set off over the covered bridge on our first dirt road of the trip. First destination: Brattleboro, a supremely touristy and surprisingly large Vermont town.

Day 1: Brattleboro->Wilmington->Somerset Airfield

After our initial warmup on the relaxing dirt road, we ended up on a somewhat busy paved arterial into Brattleboro. Since it was a Thursday morning, traffic was light. Until we reached main street, which, in classic summer Vermont style, sows unending confusion among the Massachusetts tourists and backs up traffic for blocks and blocks. Fortunately when you're riding a bike you can just hop off it and walk down the sidewalk. Take that, car industrial complex!

Our next stop was a quick snack break at The Works. You know how your mother always told you that "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all"? Well I don't have much to say about The Works. I certainly don't have anything to say about Meg's iced chai latte, which appeared to be made of a 1:1 sugar:water ratio. I damn sure don't have anything to say about my "latte", which literally had no foam at all on it and tasted like a 50/50 combination of day old burned coffee and overmicrowaved hazelnut creamer. I can say that our panini was passable, though inconsistently microwaved enough to both burn my mouth and still feature ice-cold sweet potato chunks. I can say that our bagel tasted kind of like the free leftover bagel you'd get after a board meeting at an insurance company.

All I'll say is this... I do not recommend "The Works" in Brattleboro.

After our exciting food critic experience in Brattleboro, it wasn't long before we ended up back on windy dirt roads. Before long, those dirt roads started to go up an awful lot. But with our Blue Sparrow flaky-yet-soft-and-buttery croissant and delightfully-crumbly scone as fuel, we soldiered up the hills and generally enjoyed hanging out in the woods, saying hello to deer and porcupine, pointing out every tiny little cemetary on the route, and de-stressing from the pains of 9-5 life. There were so many stunning overlooks and cute houses on this section of the route, you should probably just look at the pictures.

We stopped at a school in West Halifax to split an apple and refill our water bottles. And a nearby cemetary to finish the aforementioned insurance company board meeting bagel.

A short time later, our route took us on VT 9 and VT 100, which eventually led to ice cream and a Shaw's visit yielding beer and goldfish.

With ominous grey skies looming, we checked out dinner at the Maple Leaf Tavern. It was generally a fine place, with a good beer selection and a slightly pricey menu. But we were really distracted by the fellow who stopped by after a "long day" for two to-go cups of vodka mixed with red wine. I've had some long days myself, but... if you ever see me order vodka mixed with red wine, call a doctor. Please.

We headed out from our burger-and-beer dinner with full stomachs and a sense of unease at the somehow even-more-ominous and even-more-grey skies. But our campsite was still miles away, and with bikes and dirt roads, it's hard to say if you'll average 10 miles an hour or 2. So we donned our raincoats and headed out.

Sure enough, within just a few minutes we were biking down the side of the road in a torrential downpour. But traffic was light, and after a long sweaty uphill day, a shower wasn't the worst thing ever. We eventually made it to forest road 71, a dirt road in absolutely supreme hardpack condition, and rode along the river and past a cool bridge on our way to the campsite at Somerset Airfield. We enjoyed a refreshing Heady Topper as we set up the campsite and turned in for the night.

Day 2: Somerset Airfield->Winhall Brook Campground

It rained on and off throughout the night, so Meg and I slept in a bit Friday morning. By 9 or so, the sun started to poke out between the clouds, so we dried off the tent and enjoyed some Clif bar breakfast. A group of New Yorkers stopped by, and asked if we were done with the campsite -- Meg let them know that we were packing up and would be out in 10 or 15 minutes. So they idled their loud vehicles, drank their Monster, and chain smoked cigarettes right next to our campsite while staring at us as we packed up our panniers. That's probably the fastest I've ever packed up our tent and panniers, but it somehow still felt like a very, very, very long time.

After that awkward experience, we were happy to head over to some technical doubletrack roads that giant RVs couldn't possibly traverse. We enjoyed a morning of relative peace, enjoying the many beaver houses, bogs, lone abandoned bus, and wildflowers with only the mosquitos and horseflies to keep us company. Eventually, the route looped back to forest road 71 and we once again enjoyed the supreme hardpack dirt roads -- a pleasant change of pace from the very rocky doubletrack we were just riding. Sadly, great roads never last, and we were soon greeted by my worst dirt road nightmare: resurfacing. Based on the smell, I can only imagine that the national forest service is dumping loads of bog water on the road to level it out. Based on the riding experience, I can only imagine that the national forest service is actively attempting to make riding a bike or motorcycle as unpleasant as possible by dumping super loose dirt and tons of rocks all over the road. Hopefully the new material will eventually settle down into nice hardpack again, but for now... it was the worst riding experience of our whole trip. Thankfully it was just a few miles, and mostly through very pretty forest. It did make us appreciate all the other roads a lot more through contrast, I guess.

After a quick lunch break from the awful resurfaced road, we quickly made a turn onto Forest Road 341, aka "International Paper Road", an 18.6 mile singletrack route around Stratton Mountain. With our fully loaded panniers on our bicycles, I'm sure we looked a bit silly to the gravel cyclist and guy hiking with his dog... but it was a really fun route. Technically challenging enough to remain interesting, never so brutally uphill to stop us completely, and with a long rewarding downhill stretch at the end that took us nearly all the way to lunch.

For linner, we stopped in Winhall (or Rawsonville, or Jamaica? Apparently nobody can agree on what this place is called) at the Workhorse Cafe. I had a poke bowl that was both huge and well executed (especially for someplace so far from the ocean!). Meg had a delectable bahn mi sandwich. They had a decent beer selection to boot. Then we headed over via an indirect (but happy cow adjacent) dirt road to the local beer store for some Focal Banger, and Meg grabbed a quick chocolate/vanilla twist at Honeypie because we apparently cannot go a single day without ice cream.

Then, we headed off to our campsite. Our route took us along a dirt road (big surprise) by the river, which eventually ended at somebody's driveway. But our routing told us to continue straight, and sure enough, at the end of the driveway we found a gate to an almost invisible ATV trail right along the side of the river. We followed that for a few miles, and eventually burst out of the woods in the middle of the Winhall Brook Campground, where we surprised a random person by asking where we could register for our campsite. Considering you have to pass the office just to get into the campsite by car, this random person was very confused... but eventually directed us up the (grueling) hill to the office, where we checked in and got a campground map. It was still pretty early, so we enjoyed some beers and waded in the river before we turned in for the night. It was a great campsite except for the fact that we were woken up by 30 minutes of loud, drunken Kelly Clarkson karaoke at midnight.

Day 3: Winhall->Londonderry->Grafton->Brattleboro

By day 3, we were in prime bike touring mode. We woke up before 7, ate a light breakfast, sunscreened and bug sprayed up, and were on our bikes by 8. We set off on another riverside ATV trail, and soon found ourselves at my favorite breakfast of the trip -- Corner Market Deli (sadly, their only internet presence is a Facebook page). I enjoyed one of my favorite breakfast burritos ever, Meg had a fantastic sausage-egg-cheese-biscuit sandwich, they made a competent latte and a cold brew... and the staff was super friendly and helpful, asking about our bike ride and letting us know that we could buy singles of any of the four packs of beer in their cooler. The guy at the counter seemed very impressed that we were riding all the way to Brattleboro, indicating that the route was "waving hand motion." I can confirm that there were a lot of hills. There was also some... very Vermont-y eavesdropping to be had as various locals stopped in, ordered their almond milk cold brews, and talked about the yard and personal farm work they wanted to do. 10 out of 10 experience.

After our quick stop in Londonderry, we headed down the many miles of "winding gravel road" to Grafton, where we stopped at MKT: Grafton. This place was bougie compared to Londonderry, but damn was the food great. We ate a donut first, then split an ice cold Heady Topper (despite it being 10:30 AM) and a pesto-bacon-turkey-cheddar-romaine wrap. The donut was so good I bought a second one. I still want to go back to buy some of the local cider and reisling they had on display... and I didn't even bother going near the cheese display, because I'm sure I would have bought pounds of cheese that would have weighed my panniers down even more. One of the biggest downsides of bike touring is the weight limitation.

After Grafton, we continued down the road to a snacking spot by the river, and eventually came to a crossroads: we could either take a cool dirt road detour up a very large hill, or stay on the (not very busy) main road and check out a farm stand that sells locally made ice cream. I'm sure you've already guessed that we stayed on the main road and had some ice cream. We even saw one of the cows that produces milk for the ice cream. It was fantastic and absolutely worth it.

After ice cream, it was literally all downhill. We met another cyclist who asked all about our trip and confidently introduced himself as Wayne Conway (but probably not this Wayne Conway). We swam in the river under a bridge and enjoyed a refreshing beverage. We enjoyed our last taste of dirt roads. And then we got back to the car, where the parking lot was literally completely full of Massachusetts plates, and the river was chock full of Massachusites. And then when we headed back to Meg's parents, the roads and towns were full of Massachusites...

Anyway, it was a great ride. I'm glad we started it on a Thursday.

Summary

Our longest bike tour ever was an awesome time. We experienced Vermont in a way I've never experienced it before, carrying our food, water, trash, and camping supplies on our bikes every step of the way. Not showering is not that big a problem when you're always outside, and swim once or twice a day. My dynamo setup provided us with light and power to recharge our phones for navigation, and ridewithgps ensured that we could navigate with or without cell service.

I could absolutely live off of my bicycle for weeks at a time. So could Meg. Maybe we will sometime. I'm gunning for a grand European bike tour next spring.

If you're interested in our route, check it out at ridewithgps.

Settling Down

Slowly but surely, we're getting used to New Hampshire. It's a big change from life in Denver and NYC, but life up here in the mountains has a lot of appeal when you basically just want to ride bikes all day and occasionally have a nice beer.

Though at some point, the number of covered bridges does get to be a bit much. Still cute though.

This weekend, we did a small "hike" with Meg's dad at the Flume Gorge. A little touristy for my liking, but the combination of early season and chilly weekend worked in our favor. A very pretty natural landmark that's worth checking out if you're ever in the area.

We also checked out a staple of the area, Polly's Pancake Parlor, which is just as ridiculous as you'd think given the name. It is pretty neat that the servers make the pancakes themselves, though. And there's a nice nature walk out back to walk off the heavy breakfast.

The farmer's market here is fantastic. Two things particularly special about our farmer's market:

1. Wow, there are a lot of bernese mountain dogs in this town!
2. Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeese.

Ranch Camp

As usual, we take any excuse we can to grab a burrito for lunch over in Stowe at Ranch camp. Since we finally got our hands on some mountain bikes, this weekend we headed over for a burrito AND a bike ride. The trails turned out to be incredibly fun, and even easier than I expected. Lots of very flowy non-technical terrain and a solid balance of ups and downs so you're not stuck slogging up a hill for 30 minutes or burning out your brakes zooming down the hill for 30 minutes. And they've got great views.

Kingdom Trails

Since this was a long weekend, we also managed to fit a visit to one of the coolest mountain biking spots in the Northeast: Kingdom Trails, in Burke. It's about 40 minutes from home, and based on our experience, I suspect we'll be up there a lot more over the rest of the summer.

The trails were plain old fun: zoomy as hell, fewer rocks and roots than I'm used to at the local trails, and such a huge range of different microbiomes you never get bored. Over the course of a single ride, you'll go from riding next to a sunny field of cows, to zooming through deciduous trees that look like a classic upstate NY new-growth forest, to a stretch of cedars with no undergrowth that looks straight out of the tundra, to a mossy forest that looks like it belongs on the fringes of the Shire. Great trails, beautiful views, not too buggy, and great beers afterward.

In just a few days, Meg and I completed our longest move yet: Denver, Colorado to Littleton, New Hampshire. It was a long, tough journey. But we had a good time overall, and nothing went wrong. Special thanks to Meg's dad, Craig, for flying across the country to help us pack the truck... and driving across 2/3 of the country in just 2 days with a moving truck. We couldn't have done it without his help.

The Move

Once we found a place to rent in New Hampshire, we started to pack right away.

🌈⭐ The More You Know 🌈⭐

Meg contracted COVID at a not-very-optional work event less than two weeks before we moved. We were fortunate that her symptoms abated before the move. We were even more fortunate that, thanks to masking in our own home and sleeping in separate rooms, I didn't manage to catch COVID and ruin our entire moving plan. Thanks, name-of-meg's-company-that-i-will-not-namedrop-here, for easing up your COVID precautions. That was exactly what we needed in the middle of a stressful cross-country move!

One fateful night in April, we were (mostly) (kinda) (sorta) (for the most part) packed. We still had to break down some furniture, and sort some basic need items into boxes, but we'd put pretty much everything we could into boxes. Meg's dad arrived, and we went to Illegal Pete's for a last burrito (and margarita) of Colorado. They did not disappoint.

The next morning, we were up bright and early to pick up the moving truck at 7AM. After a only-slightly-harrowing journey down very potholey city streets that were definitely legal for a truck of our size, we made it back to the apartment. Just 6 hours of elevator hogging, dolly rolling, package securing, and ratchet strapping later, everything was settled in the truck.

One quick stop for subs, and a whole lot of driving later, we made it to Lincoln, Nebraska. Despite a slightly behind-schedule loading experience, we were right where we wanted to be: in a cheap-ish hotel, in a quiet, safe town, a reasonable drive from our next stop: Batavia, New York. Where Whitney and Eddy awaited us with delicious Wegmans subs, beers, and a free place to crash.

Even though Google Maps estimates that drive at 16.5 hours, don't make the mistake of thinking you can actually average that:

• in a moving truck
• with PA and NY's insanely long 55-MPH interstate construction zones
• when losing a whole hour due to time zones

We left with the truck at 6 AM or so. We didn't get to Batavia until almost 2 AM the next day -- almost 20 hours later. We only had to deal with a torrential downpour for the last two hours or so, so I'll call it a ... win? Needless to say, the beers, subs, and friends were very, very needed when we finally arrived.

After that, the next day was easy: a hearty bacon, egg, sausage, and toast breakfast thanks to Whit and Eddy, and a quick two hour drive to Chittenango to relax with the dogs at Meg's parents' place. In retrospect, we could have divided up our drive a little better than 8 hours/20 hours/2 hours. But it was pretty great to see friends that second night.

One day of rest later, we woke up on Easter to drive the last 6ish hour stretch to Littleton, New Hampshire. Aside from a surprising amount of snow in Utica, Albany, and the higher altitude parts of Vermont, it was a beautiful, low-stress drive. At the very least, there weren't many people on the road, and those that were on the road seemed to have a good grasp of how to drive in the snow.

We arrived in Littleton a little after noon, and it only took us a couple of hours to unload our boxes and furniture into the house. The next morning, we woke up early, dropped off the moving truck less than a mile from our new place, and walked home on a greenway, crossing the river to stop at a local coffee shop for breakfast on the walk home. Funny how you can move from one of the largest cities in the country, where you somehow can't reasonably walk to pick up a moving truck or go to a decent coffee shop... to a small 6,000 person town, where you can. I don't know enough about city planning to really say what's wrong with American cities, but something is seriously wrong when the walkability is this much better in a tiny mountain town.

Living Free, Not Dying

We're happy with Littleton so far. It's a big change, moving from some of the biggest US cities (NYC, Denver) to a town almost as small as where I grew up in upstate NY. But so far it's been a welcome change to have some peace and quiet, some walkability, nearby mountain biking trails, a really nice co-op for groceries, and familiar faces around town. Easy access to northern Vermont and a myriad of hikes is icing on the cake.

Since moving, we've:

• gone mountain biking several times on the trails that start literally a few hundred few down the street from our home

• fully explored the length of Franconia Notch State Park, all the way to a brewery in Lincoln, NH

• checked out the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail

• used a random day off to buy way too much beer at Hill Farmstead, damn near the best brewery in the country

• visited home for a concert without spending an entire weekend driving or taking time off from work and thousands of miles on the car

Only time will tell if small town living is right for us. But who knows, maybe our next step is living off of the touring bikes for a few months to figure out where we'd prefer to live next. In the meantime, we're happy to explore this new state and town we call home. As (short) residents of New Hampshire, we're officially shirefolk now.

Now

We're now back in upstate New York, just a 6 hour drive from home. It's good to be so close to family and friends again.

• celebrating two birthdays in our favorite mountain town, Leadville
• two days of the best skiing Colorado can offer (that isn't totally insane for visiting friends from low altitudes)
• cross country skiing the only major trail around Leadville we haven't gotten around to yet
• a biking + food truck + brewery + park + bocce day around Denver
• one hell of a sunburn (Neutrogena, I will never forgive you)

Special thanks to our visiting friends Whitney and Eddy, who managed to make it out for their third visit in two years of Colorado living.

Sidenote: why on earth do we say "an elegy" but "a eulogy"? Turns out, there's a perfectly logical explanation. English is silly.

Day 1: Arapahoe Basin

As usual, we started our trip with a visit to A Basin, the coolest mountain on the I70 corridor. The day started out windy as hell -- they didn't even have the Montezuma backside bowl open! -- but the frontside conditions were good enough to have a fun time anyway. We spent the morning exploring all of the trails we usually ignore on the frontside, zooming through trees and moguls and anything else we could find.

After a quick pit stop for beers, Bloody Marys, and chicken fingers, the wind started to ease up. It wasn't long before they opened the Montezuma bowl up, and we tired ourselves out completely riding the untouched bowls and glades until closing time. Nothing makes you appreciate the backside of a mountain more than being limited to the frontside all morning.

After our day of skiing, we headed over to Leadville to stay for the night and prepare an elaborate meal of chicken and pasta.

Note: it turns out there was a significant avalanche on Loveland pass right after we drove through to get to A Basin. That isn't surprising, given the fact that it was warm, super windy, and they were actively avalanche blasting at A Basin throughout our day of skiing. But it's pretty crazy to think about how narrowly we missed getting blocked by -- or caught in! -- an avalanche.

Day 2: Ski Cooper

After our warmup day at a world-renowned ski resort, we were ready to shred the gnar at Ski Cooper, a cute, locally-owned family-friendly ski hill.

As usual, conditions were absolutely amazing. One things Coloradans don't seem to appreciate: all of the big resorts are too popular for their own good. They have amazing trails, fast lifts, huge volumes of powdery snow every year, and make a shitton of money. But the amount of traffic at Ikon resorts (not even mentioning Epic resorts, which are even busier) tends to scrape damn near all of that powder off of the mountain within a day or two of each snowfall.

I absolutely love every trail at Ski Cooper. The groomers are firm, but soft enough to easily carve; the glades start out slick, but soften up within an hour of open so you can easily set your preferred pace and stop on a dime if you see an obstacle; and even the ungroomed trails still have sections of untouched powder on pretty much any day of the year.

The design of the hill is awesome, too: you've got a million ways down from any point on the mountain, little glades pockmarked between all of the trails, and somehow you never end up doing the exact same run. It's the only ski place I've ever been where I feel like I can cruise anywhere at all unless it's behind a fence. (OK, Keystone is kind of like that too... but they have a million miles of fence along 90% of their runs, so it's not quite the same).

Oh, and they have great chicken fingers, the best chili of any ski hill I've ever been to, a simple, decent, and cheap beer selection... and incredibly friendly employees.

I really hope they stay off the radar of vacation traffic in Colorado. This place is the best exactly the way it is, and I hope it doesn't get trampled to death like every other trail, mountain, and campsite within 3 hours of Denver.

Anyway, it was a great day of skiing. We zoomed through glades, moguls, and groomers on a constant loop, barely even stopping for lunch. It was beautiful out all day, and even got warm enough at the end of the day that one group decided to ski down the hill without shirts. Whitney, the only one in our group who didn't grow up regularly skiing or snowboarding, built the confidence to try some glades, and mostly survived some black diamond moguls and trees she definitely didn't accidentally wander onto.

It was a great day. When I come back to Colorado, Leadville and Ski Cooper are at the top of my list. When you can avoid the crowds, the mountains are a truly incredible place that's unlike anywhere else in the US.

Day 3: Cross Country Skiing the Mineral Belt Trail

Once we tired ourselves out with two days of skiing, the obvious next move was... another day of skiing. But this time on (relatively) flat terrain.

Meg and I have biked and walked the Mineral Belt Trail before, and even cross country skied small sections in town at night. This was our first time skiing the entire trail. At 11 miles, the Mineral Belt Trail is just a smidge shorter than our previous trip skiing the 14 mile Turquoise Lake Loop. But this trip really gave us an appreciation for what blue skies, warm weather, and grooming can do for cross country skiing.

The Turquoise Lake Loop took us nearly 7 hours to complete, including a brief stop for lunch. It was almost completely ungroomed, actively snowing, and very hilly. The Mineral Belt Trail took us about 3 hours total, including a long stop for lunch. It was completely groomed, sunny enough to give us all a nasty sunburn through sunblock, and only gradually hilly.

It was a great time. We got some awesome views of Leadville, learned some fun historical facts, drank some tasty beers, and ate some solid salami sandwiches.

Day 4: Interlude

Not much to say about our trip back to Denver. The weather was great, the fish burritos were as filling and delicious as ever, and the aloe felt really great on our faces when we got back home. We played way too much Settlers of Catan and probably drank a few too many beers. And I learned all about Jello Cake, Whitney's birthday cake of choice (only one day late -- who wants to bake a cake in a short-term rental?). Happy belated birthday, Whitney!

Day 5: Bikes, Beers, Bocce, and Ninja Ramen

Our last day, we followed the classic Meg & Nate Denver formula: we hopped on our bikes, drank tasty beer and ate tasty food truck food at one of our favorite breweries, then picked up some cans to drink in the park while we played bocce. The parks in Denver were packed on Sunday, no surprise given the weather in the high 70s. But we carved out a nice spot for a game and had a wonderful time hanging out in the park. Add in Meg's birthday ice cream cake when we got home, and Sundays don't get much better.

Eulogy for Denver

As I mentioned in the intro of this post, Meg and I won't be here in Denver for long. We originally wanted to move to the mountains of Colorado... but all it takes is a couple of soul-crushing months looking for a reasonable rental to shut down that idea. In the end, we decided to give New Hampshire a shot. It'll give us easy access to friends, family, outdoor activities, world-class gravel biking, Montreal, Boston, Burlington, Portland, New York... and offices for our now-permanent remote work arrangements. We'll be moving to Littleton in mid-April, so stay tuned for an update on our cross country drive. I hope it'll be interesting, but not too interesting.

We had quite the adventure.

Day 1: Arapahoe Basin

Our ski week started with a Monday at Arapahoe Basin, Colorado's least soulless mountain. A Basin has it all: reasonably priced, decent Bloody Marys; crazy terrain that even scares seasoned skiiers like myself and Meg; no awful million-dollar studio condos; a crowd that leans more "high ski bum" than "Californian millionaire on vacation"; and a peak that's over 13,000 feet.

It's my very favorite mountain on the I70 corridor.

Monday was a perfect blue-sky Colorado day. Light wind, barely a cloud in the sky, and a sun so strong you could hang out on the deck in a t-shirt. The morning started out a little icy, but quickly softened up to a point where all the moguls and groomers were comfy to ride down. We ventured into the glades just once, but it was so icy it just wasn't worth the risk to life, limb, and our already-dull edges.

I forgot to mention one of my favorite parts of A Basin: the food. For a non-crazy price, Meg and I split an entire (very large) tray of chicken fingers, waffle fries, and a bowl of chili to dip them in. If you haven't tried dipping chicken fingers in chili, you're missing out. It's best on a mountain.

We wrapped up our day in the early afternoon, and cruised over to Outer Range brewing for an afternoon beverage. They might not serve the most complex brews in the mountains, but if you want a hazy IPA, they know what they're doing. Just avoid the sours.

After Outer Range, we headed up to Steamboat Springs for our rental and the next stage of our vacation: hot tubbing and skiing, day in and day out.

Day 2: Steamboat

Our rental condo was mere steps away from the Thunderhead lift at Steamboat, so we started out our morning early on some groomers. Conditions were decent, but a little icy. We made our way up the mountain to Morningside Park, a bowl that's chock full of glades and blues. Bonus: all of the trails use breakfasty names like "Cheesy Grits", "Wake Up Call", "Biscuits", and "Huevos". As the snow softened up, the glades became more and more fun, but also more and more busy. We didn't end up catching the last lift or anything, but I'd say we got a pretty solid day of skiing on the mountain.

The day ended with a modest amount of snowflakes, hinting that we might just get some much-needed snow overnight. We had a beer, a pizza, and a crazy good beet salad (seriously) at a favorite from our last Steamboat visit, Mountain Tap Brewing.

Day 3: Steamboat Pow Day

We woke up on Wednesday to a brilliant sight: inches of fresh snow, and more coming down. It wasn't hard to get ourselves to the lift a bit before opening time, and we must have looked so psyched for the powder that the liftie took mercy on us and let us up a few minutes early. We ascended up the mountain into what could be best described as... white. Maybe 50 feet of visibility, inches of powder on the groomers, and the glades in Morningside were chock full of fluffy, fluffy snow. It was nothing short of spectacular.

We circuited Morningside for a couple of hours, until the line started to get really busy and disorganized, and then started to explore the glades on the middle-front side, where the lifts had essentially no lines. I couldn't believe it, but those glades were even better, and had less traffic to boot.

Fresh tracks every time we headed down the mountain, even when repeating the same glade back-to-back, and my first experience skiing aspen glades. We even spotted an ermine (a sure sign of good luck)!

We skiied the absolute hell out of Wednesday, and drained just about every minute we could out of the ski day. Conditions were a blast, the hot tub was well deserved after, the peak beers were delicious, and the Colorado Style Pizza... well, it was kind of like shitty upstate NY pizza with honey for dipping the crust. But it tasted damn good after a hard day of skiing through inches and inches of powder.

Day 4: ... Still A Steamboat Pow Day

Thursday's conditions were almost as good (maybe better on the groomers) than Wednesday. The powder settled into a fairly solid upper layer on the slopes, and you could make it down most runs in the morning without hearing a single hardpack scrape. We once again explored the many many glades of Morningside until things got busy, then switched to the frontside glades, which were as amazing as they were the previous day.

The only issue? By our third day at Steamboat, it became very, very clear that the lodge design is... poor. We spent most of our time riding on the Thunderhead/Morningside half of the mountain. The only lodge on that side of the mountain isn't really a lodge, it's a sit-down restaurant. With a very very tiny bathroom for each gender. And non-sit-down seating that's less spacious than the tiny ski hill lodge I used to frequent back home, Dry Hill. This isn't just inadequate for the amount of people on the hill (on a weekday!), it's incredibly annoying to constantly wait in line for the urinal. Let alone trying to warm up when there's no space and people are just giving up and sitting on the ground in the hallway outside the bathroom. If anybody knows of some secret lodge on that side of Steamboat with adequate bathroom space and big tables to warm up and sip a hot cocoa at without a waiter... let me know. But that was probably my biggest beef with Steamboat.

The crowds started to clog up the groomers and lift lines by early afternoon, so Meg and I opted to recharge in the hot tub with beers instead of fighting the traffic. After a few hours, we were ready to get back on the slopes for a night of skiing under the lights on the frontside. Night skiing turned out just as great as Meg and I remembered from when we were in high school, and we had a great time zooming down the slopes (with Olympians!). A margarita and a big plate of nachos later, we headed (slightly stealthily) back uphill to our rental on the side of a green run, since the local shuttle service apparently doesn't extend to our condo. A beautiful walk, and a great workout besides.

Day 5: Steamboat Pow Morning, Donut Afternoon

Our last day at Steamboat followed the same pattern as all of our previous days: we skiied the Morningside glades until the crowds clogged up the lift, then we headed back down the frontside glades to Thunderhead to journey home. We woke up to a very fine inch of powder, with more up the mountain, and the glades felt just as good as they had for the last two days of powder. Our last run down the mountain from nearly the top of Storm Peak all the way to Thunderhead was very much the long way down, but ended up being pleasant cooldown after days of thigh-and-calf-aching powder surfing.

After our couple of hours on the slopes, Meg and I had one final stop in Steamboat: Yampa Valley Kitchen. Our meal was just as delicious as our previous meal, and Meg is happy to report that her Cinnamon Toast Crunch Latte was just as she remembered it. (She can, in fact, see why kids love it) After our brunch, we headed straight back home to Denver over Rabbit Ears Pass, excited to be back in our apartment after many days of skiing.

Unfortunately, Colorado had other plans.

The Long Way Down

Right at the peak of Rabbit Ears Pass, our car, Clem, started yelling at us to consult our manual. As a naturally skeptical person regarding all technology, I figured it was just a software bug, and recommended that we ignore it. Fortunately cooler heads prevailed, and Meg checked the tire pressure using the dashboard. Once we realized that our rear passenger tire was rapidly losing pressure, I changed my tune and recommended that we pull off immediately. Mountain passes might seem like a shitty place to get a flat, but I have to admit: there are few places in the country with as many pull-offs as Colorado mountain passes.

So we pulled off into a backcountry skiing parking lot and I opened my door check the tire. A very, very loud HISSSSSSSSSSS informed me that our problem was not just a software bug. In about 30 seconds flat I watched our tire turn into a pancake, and not the tasty kind.

Fast-forward through about 5 minutes of debating the merits of roadside assistance vs. a tow truck vs. a roadside DIY repair, and Meg and I sprang into action. We cleared out the trunk of ski supplies, lifted the damaged wheel, and swapped our fresh pancake for an anemic donut (don't worry, we know all about the star pattern). Not very many minutes later, we were on our way to the nearest Subaru dealer in Dillon, around 60 miles away. I have to give Meg's dad, Craig, credit: I'm really, really, really, really glad he taught us how to change a tire last summer. If you don't know, please watch an instructional video or at least read an article. Thanks Craig!

Did you know that you're not supposed to exceed 50 miles per hour on a spare tire? It seems most Colorado residents don't. Even with our best efforts to frequently pull off the road to let traffic by, it was amazing how many drivers took our 50 MPH speed cap as a personal affront. I've never been honked at or given the finger so many times in my life.

About 30 miles later, we made it to Kremmling, where we stopped at a gas station to check on the donut. Sadly, their air pump lacked a gauge, so we skipped topping off the donut's air to avoid accidentally overfilling it. At Kremmling, we finally had reliable access to cell service, so I contacted the Subaru dealer in Dillon to hook us up with a service time.

Another 30 miles of angry drivers, and we made it to Groove Subaru, just in time for our appointment. Groove might just be my favorite Subaru dealer ever, since they had it all: two dogs (one was a Bernese!), a ping-pong table where Meg realized how embarrassingly bad I am at ping-pong, free coffee and granola bars, and some incredibly helpful and kind workers. We ended up waiting for an hour or so while they fished a large piece of metal out of our tire. Then we found out that they couldn't patch the tire. And they didn't have any replacement tires, used or otherwise, that we could use to get home. So we did what any reasonable person would do: asked them to fill up our donut to the appropriate PSI, and headed out on I70 during a peak traffic time in the hopes that we wouldn't exceed 50 MPH much during traffic anyway.

(Thanks Grace! We owe you a beer.)

(we were correct; most of the time, we were lucky to go faster than 30)

In the end, we made it home by 7 PM or so -- a testament to the buffer time we left ourselves on the way home from skiing. Aside from one highly aggressive yellow rental moving truck driver who very nearly honked and rammed us off the road (despite adequate passing space on the left), it wasn't too bad. We made it home safe, dragged our stuff back to the apartment, and headed over to Illegal Pete's for some much-deserved margaritas and burritos. Fortunately, the Friday night peak burrito hour line gave us plenty of time to agonize over replacement tires on our phones.

• attended a wedding
• drove 25 hours from Buffalo to Denver... without stopping to sleep
• explored the far east edge of Denver's Cherry Creek trail
• entertained guests at some of our favorite Denver breweries and parks. (thanks for visiting, Joe & Abby)!
• broke in a brand-new espresso grinder for the growing 2-person remote office

... plus a slew of bike rides to breweries, virtual game nights, and bicycle slash coffee experiments. Also working, I guess.

Needless to say, the time was ripe for a personal weekend outside of the Denver area. We've also been eying a move to a smaller town, since Denver is an enormous megalopalis that we only lived in because Meg used to want to commute to a physical office.

This weekend, we managed to kill two birds with one stone: we had a relaxing time outside of Denver, and we just might have found where we'd like to live next.

Before we jump into our most recent ride, a smattering of some recent happenings in our lives:

The Road to Fort Collins

The day began with a long, annoying drive up the Front Range. There's no escaping it: I25 sucks. It's the major route up and down the population-booming Front Range, and it's crazy busy at pretty much all times. The only thing that makes I25 look good? I70, which winds through the mountains and grinds to a complete halt every weekend all year round.

So because the highways in our state were built in the 1960s and haven't really been improved or supplemented since, we migrated over to a not-highway, 287, as soon as we could. It's far from my favorite road, but it gets the job done, unlike I25. The journey on 287 took us through Loveland, a Boulder suburb I'd heard of, but never visited before. It was exactly the kind of strip-mall filled suburban hellscape I was afraid of -- all the fast food, big box stores, and car lanes you can imagine. No room for people. So we got out of there pretty quick too.

Soon enough, we arrived in Fort Collins. And to be honest, I was not initially impressed. I mean, it's another small-but-sprawling Front Range city. It has slightly more bike lanes painted on the roads. What's the big deal?

Meg and I hopped on our bikes and started down the Poudre River Trail, and soon caught a glimpse of how special Fort Collins really is.

A Pleasant Valley

The Poudre River Trail turned out to be just the kind of scenic greenway we've come to love in Colorado: rocky rapids, cute bridges, isolation from noisy cars, and in early November, the last bits of fall foliage making their way from branches to the ground. But since we hopped on the trail close to the end, it wasn't long before we graduated to a mixture of on-road and next-to-road paths. An unusual design choice placed both directions of bicycle traffic on a single side of the road... allowing us the unusual experience of riding toward oncoming traffic. Not a choice I would make, but hey -- at least traffic was light. And it helps that the sky was utterly and completely blue, and a faint November morning chill clung to the air, keeping it crisp and fresh.

As expected, after a couple of miles, the trail petered out entirely. Fortunately, the end of the trail coincided with a popular nature preserve and fishing spot encircled by a dirt road. Since the preserve stretched almost all of the way to our destination, we decided to test out a potential shortcut, and appreciate a nice park even if the shortcut didn't work out.

The park turned out to be far prettier than I'd hoped. Sapphire blue water, a rugged red ridge rising up into the sky, and some washboardy-but-fun dirt roads made for a fun ride around the lake. The only company we had was fishermen, and the obligatory fisherman companion: lazy, medium-large dogs.

We reached the north end of the park, and I was slightly disappointed to discover that our destination, Pleasant Valley Farms, maintained a rather tall and intimidating fence between their land and the park. We would have to take the longer, car-trafficked way around. Oh well. We opted to finish our loop around the park, exploring the other half of the park across the lake from where we'd already ridden. But it wasn't long before we reached... another impassible fence. And somehow we were on the "no trespassing" side of it. Curious, when you haven't hopped any fences to get there.

The problem was easily solved with a bit of balance: the fence extended to the edge of the lake, but no further, for obvious reasons. So we just passed the bikes around the fence, then jumped around ourselves. So much for padlocks and barbed wire!

After the no-trespassing excitement, our ride mellowed out considerably. We finished our ride around the park, hopped on the road, and whizzed over a couple miles of rolling hills to reach our goal: The Howling Cow Cafe.

The Howling Cow Cafe

There's nothing like a well-run cafe to get your bike ride off to a good start. The Howling Cow didn't disappoint, with well executed coffees, two particularly fresh sandwiches, and, for some reason, one gloriously creamy milkshake. I suppose you'd expect a dairy farm to make a great milkshake, but this one was even better than I'd expected.

We took in our sandwiches, coffee, and milkshake on the expansive lawn, and enjoyed a day that was just breaking 70 degrees. Dozens of cyclists rode by in the time it took for us to eat and drink, and a healthy chunk of those cyclists swung by the Howling Cow for a bite to eat. Fortunately, they've got an entire dedicated bicycle parking lot. It was nice to visit someplace within a 20 minute ride of a major city where nobody bothers to lock their bike -- another major difference from Denver, where even if you lock your bike in your own garage, you're never really certain it'll be there when you come back to it.

After relaxing for a bit on the lawn and remarking on just how pleasant Pleasant Valley Farms really was, we set out on the bikes again. This time, we didn't really have a destination in mind.

Horsetooth Reservoir

Our plan for the day mostly revolved around exploring the city: checking out the bike paths, trying some beers, and investigating the local food truck scene. But fate took over when we left the Howling Cow. We found ourselves right behind another group of cyclists, and just before we arrived back at the Poudre River Trail, we noticed that the other cyclists deviated down a side road. That road looked like it headed straight for the reservoir on the edge of town, which has lots of trails and great views, so Meg and I decided to check it out.

The ride started out with roads much like those we'd already ridden by Pleasant Valley: rolling hills, wide shoulders, polite drivers. I'm sure those rolling hills are beautiful the 30 days a year that they're actually green, mostly in May. But we soon hit our first big obstacle: a very tall, very steep, very long hill right next to a dam for the reservoir.

Fortunately, it comes with a built-in rest stop: the road at the top of the dam, halfway up the hill (the rest of the road continues up, up and away into the ridge between the reservoir and town). We gritted our teeth, and tackled the hill. By the time we made it to the top of the dam, I was happy to shed a layer of jacket and sip some water. But I didn't expect the view: a breathtaking vista of rocky ridge, reservoir, and just the faint outlines of high peaks peeking from behind the foothills.

And the views at the top of the ridge were even better, providing a view of the reservoir in addition to sweeping views of the entire Fort Collins area. Damn, those guys have it nice. The ridge is literally right on the edge of town!

We continued down the ridgeline roadway for a few miles, taking in the views. I was impressed at the road etiquette of (nearly) all drivers: pretty much everyone gave me a full lane's passing distance, instead of squeezing by within inches. But after a few miles, I was content with the view, and ready to get off the road.

Mandarb Gets in Touch with His Roots

As I've mentioned in previous posts, Meg rides a relatively new steel touring bike, and I ride a 1990s steel mountain bike that's been (semi-professionally) converted into a touring bike. In this episode, Meg and I try to take Mandarb and Sully (those are the names of our bikes) on some mountain bike trails.

As we rode down the ridgeline roadway, I noticed that there were a fair number of trails weaving their way through the park land on either side of the road. By the time we were ready to leave the road, I'd spotted a perfect alternative: a singletrack trail snaking its way down the mountain, with only a few dogs and mountain bikes to dodge.

Meg was (reasonably) skeptical at first, but eventually gave into the temptation of adventure. The trail turned out to be chock full of rocks. And hairpin turns. And more rocks. And more dogs and bikes than I expected. Frankly, it was a bit much with a pannier full of water, snacks, bicycle repair equipment, and layers mounted on Mandarb. But we took it slow, let faster travelers pass us, and in the end we had an absolutely brilliant time. Nothing quite like sailing down a mountain bike trail right into the bike lanes of town.

Not Just Bikes

From the mountain bike adventure, Meg and I decided to tour a bit around town. We really wanted to check out CSU and Fort Collins' supposed best-in-country bike infrastructure. While Fort Collins isn't exactly Amsterdam, it's a step above anything I've ever experienced in the US for bicycling. It's so freeing and carefree to ride around town, because you don't have to think about which roads are built to accommodate your bike. They pretty much all are. Because there are so many bikes around, cars seem to have a natural (and healthy) respect for cyclists, instead of zooming past you just to wait for you when they have to turn in a block. On the CSU campus, the signage is awesome: there's dedicated lanes for bikes, separate from the dedicated lanes for pedestrians. Even better: in the densest parts of campus, there just isn't a dedicated lane for cars at all. Take that, car-industrial complex.

We were also impressed by the sheer number of bike racks and parked bikes around town, especially on campus. It's clear that a huge proportion of residents and college students use bikes to get around everywhere. In Denver, Meg and I travel around on bikes all the time, because things are generally too far to want to walk all the time. But finding an open and safe bike rack is no easy feat. In Fort Collins, it feels like every business has multiple bike racks. And they're all in use. I assume that any business that tries to not have a bike rack would be run out of town.

Beers and Bikes and Bros

After CSU, we headed over to the first brewery we could find that looked cute -- not exactly a difficult task in Fort Collins. We ended up picking Stodgy Brewing, whose employees are far from the cantankerous misers the name implies. The beer selection was small but competent. The outdoor space was sprawling and cute. The bike rack was... many bike racks. The bathrooms were individual non-gendered toilet rooms with shared sinks. The food truck was a simple but well-executed prosciutto and artichoke heart flatbread. And it was super easy to get to Stodgy, because all of the roads have bike lanes.

Mason Street

After our pit stop at Stodgy, it was time for some more exploration around town. This time, Meg and I tried out the north-south bike-and-bus-only thoroughfare up the center of town, the Mason Street Transitway. As you'd expect, riding quickly north-south through the heart of the city, hardly dealing with cars at all is a very pleasant way to ride your bicycle. It goes to show that it is, in fact, possible to create north-south bike routes through town. Looking at you, Denver.

We eventually ended up right in the heart of Fort Collins: Old Town. A super walkable stretch of restaurants, bars, shops, and a guest taproom for every major Colorado brewery who isn't originally from Fort Collins. Plus it has nice lights, pavers, and weird terminator statues. I don't really care much for that kind of bumpin' downtown atmosphere, but it's nice to know that it exists in a town for impressing visitors and preventing your town from rotting into another Gary.

After exploring downtown, Meg and I headed over to Snowbank Brewing, which has:

• good beer
• ample bike racks
• good outdoor space
• a cute logo
• rowdy birthday partiers, apparently

On our way over to Snowbank, we swung past two of the most famous Colorado breweries, who both call Fort Collins home: Odell, and New Belgium. New Belgium seemed to be hosting some kind of bicycle race, and we had the pleasure of seeing one of the competitors ride two bicycles at once down a bike lane to his truck. Only in Fort Collins, I guess.

The Road Goes Ever On

After Snowbank, Meg and I headed back up the conveniently-close Poudre River Trail back to Clem. The sun was just setting as we packed up the bikes, but after such a fun day, it wasn't hard to motivate ourselves for the ride back to Denver. Plus, we stopped at another local favorite brewery, 4 Noses, in Broomfield, for another beverage and a burrito bowl each. We took advantage of the empty Saturday night suburban grocery stores to load up on supplies for the week, and headed home.

Conclusion

Fort Collins opened my eyes to just how good city bicycling can be. I didn't bike back when I lived in Rochester because my bike was stolen. I didn't bike back when I lived in New York City because I didn't want to die. I started biking in Denver because the weather here is perfect for it, the city is flat as a pancake, and places I want to go are too far to walk. But I want to live someplace where I can walk, bike, and (hopefully not too much!) drive around safely. And now that Meg and I can both work fully remote, it might just be the time to try.

• where to find the best a la carte cucumbers and pickled eggs in New York
• how hilly it is in the Finger Lakes (hint: there's more incline than most of our Colorado bike rides)
• why horse trails are awful, awful places to ride your bicycle on the East Coast

As a bonus, I'll also drop a couple of recommendations for a coffee shop and taproom we enjoyed in Ithaca.

Coffee and FLX Dirt Road Riding

Our journey started early Saturday morning in Central NY. We got up (sort of) early, loaded up the bikes, and headed down to Ithaca for breakfast and coffee. Our ride mostly took us down NY-13 through Cortland, and was almost as lumpy as Vermont. But with fewer cute farm stands and maple creamies.

Our first stop brought us to Ithaca Coffee Company for coffee and breakfast sandwiches. My latte was good, though $1.25 is an obscenely steep markup for soy milk in a 12oz drink, and Meg's Kyoto-style cold brew was excellent. The sandwiches didn't disappoint either, even though Meg's took a bold stance on combining cream cheese, egg, and bacon on a single sandwich. Since I haven't found a good source for coffee beans in CNY yet other than Wegmans, I took the opportunity to pick up a couple of single origin coffees as well, which I can now report are as excellent as I'd hoped. Though it is unusual that Ithaca Coffee Company doesn't seem to stamp a roast date on their bags of coffee (or boxes, because for some reason all coffee from them comes in a bag within a box?). For what it's worth, mine tastes fresh, but the lack of a roast date sows doubt in my mind about what ICC is hiding.

After breakfast, it was a short drive from Ithaca to Finger Lakes National Forest, where we parked near Blueberry Patch Campground. We loaded up the bikes with some minimal supplies for the ride (with pannier space for Finger Lakes wine, or course) and started the ride on some well packed dirt roads over gradual, rolling hills. The first few miles whizzed by, though taking pictures was a little difficult since there are a LOT of bugs in the Finger Lakes, and they swarm you the minute that you stop your bike. But the weather was a very comfy 65-70 degrees, there was a mild breeze in the air, and the views, when we weren't surrounded by forest, were spectacular.

We eventually reached a steep-ish hill up a paved road, which fortunately wasn't very busy, which led us to yet another pleasant dirt road ride. Which ended in a dead end, which actually evolved into an ungroomed, unmaintained, dirt horse trail. There were some large rocks and roots, some mud, some weeds in our way, and some steep hills, but overall the terrain was good enough to ride on 95% of the time.

Then we came to a corner where our horse trail met another road, and turned into yet another horse trail to the east. The horse trail looked pretty muddy and overgrown... but the only other option was a ride down a busy highway for a good length of time. Plus, the horse trail was only a couple miles, long, so we figured "how bad can it be?"

We didn't bet correctly. Introducing...

The Horse Grinder

Miles of pure muddy slog, massively overgrown weeds (many of them thorny), multiple inch-deep muddy water pools, and horses every couple of minutes that we politely yielded to, because it's a dick move to scare horses by whizzing by on your bicycle. Which, on a narrow, overgrown path, meant forcing your bike and self into weeds that are taller than you on the path's edge and standing in the mud while you wait for the horses to go by.

There was also a lot of horse poop. I mean... a lot of horse poop. Think about how much horse poop you've seen in an entire 10 acre field of horses. Then spread that over a couple of miles of foot-wide path. You think you can avoid it for the first half mile or so, then you step in your first pile. And by the end of the second mile, you're not even bothering to look any more.

The mud was so thick and so wet, I had to stop multiple times just to scrape mud off of my tires, rack, frame, and brakes. Because so much accumulated that I could no longer turn the tire at all. I don't even know how many times I tried to power through a muddy section of trail, only to get stuck halfway through because my tires were either jammed by mud or the mud was so slick the tires couldn't push the bike forward any more, no matter how much I spun them.

You could say that I regretted wearing my chacos with no socks. Though I guess my feet were easy enough to clean later on.

Anyway, it wasn't the best time. I wouldn't recommend riding on horse trails on the East Coast ever. Horse shoes really tear up the dirt, and then that dirt turns into mud super easily even if it hasn't rained recently. And guess what? Tall weeds, water, and mud aren't really that fun to ride your bike on and through. Stick to gravel and dirt roads, folks. Take it from me: you only have to stand ankle deep in horse poop water while wearing sandals for so long before you learn your lesson. Let me teach you this lesson without you personally standing in the horse poop water.

The Paddock

After covering ourselves in bugs, mud, sweat, and horse feces, the next logical step was obviously heading to a fancy (for the Finger Lakes) winery. We took a route down a number of huge hills, which had the lovely side effect of flinging more and more accumulated mud off of our tires as we picked up speed. After one hill, I learned my lesson and used some of my precious water to clean the mud off of my brakes and make them functional again. Meg's disc brakes, as always, had no issues whatsoever.

It was around this time that I noticed yet another casualty of the horse trail: my supposedly indestructable Ortlieb panniers. Somehow the weeds managed to extricate one of the screws that holds them together, which both made them hang off of my rack at an awkward angle. And ruining the waterproofing. Thankfully they come with a 5 year warrantee, so hopefully I'll get a replacement soon.

About halfway to the winery, we reached a closed (but not locked) gate that the trail passed right through. Unusual though it may be, we passed through the gate, waved hello to the cows that were grazing nearby (they responded with an approving "moo"), and proceeded through the paddock, dodging cow pies all the way.

Our final descent to the winery took us down a mile at least of steep downhill overlooking Seneca Lake. We cut through a winery's vineyard, locked up the bikes, and then went to a different winery across the street when it turned out that the first, very fancy winery "didn't have any reservations available" for walk-ins. But I suspect they also had a problem with the sweat, mud, and horse poop that caked our bodies at that point. We settled down for a nice refreshing tasting of wine from a woman who claims that her favorite wine is "Coors Light" and soon we were on our way with a bottle of bubbly for the road.

The Broken Bridge

Fortunately for our legs, our return journey didn't take us up that same mile+ long hill we came down on our way to the winery. Instead, we headed up a half mile or so of the hill, took a side road, and almost immediately realized that the next road we were supposed to turn onto was just... gone. Turns out, the bridge on that road collapsed at some point in the last few years, but a lot of mapping software still lists the road. We rerouted yet again, and managed to dodge riding on the main road by cutting through an almost-road through yet another vineyard. We only heard long banging noises in the distance once, so I assume that if we were trespassing it wasn't egregious enough to get us shot.

Ice Cream Sandwiches and Cucumbers

The rest of our route took us down mostly-paved roads on our way back to the national forest with a mix up uphills and downhills that mostly spared our legs from severe punishment. On one of those roads was an adorable farm stand that claimed to have ice cream sandwiches. Naturally, we had to stop and purchase some. Even though they were very run-of-the-mill sandwiches, they absolutely hit the spot at that point in our long bike ride, and paired surprisingly well with the home-grown cucumber that Meg and I took bites out of just like a banana. Special thanks to the very friendly, very reasonably priced farm stand we stopped at -- after our experience at the snooty wineries, the woman running the stand didn't seem offended at all by our mud and sweat. Faith in humanity restored. I'd definitely stop by again for some pickled eggs or dill cucumbers, or the $5 flat-priced pumpkins.

Just after the farm stand, a herd of cows decided to run alongside us as we biked down the road. It's the little things in life that make you appreciate the world around you.

From the farm stand, it was only a few more miles of mostly quiet, mostly paved roads back to the car. Once we were back in the national forest, we passed some of the same horse riders we saw back during The Horse Grinder -- they seemed very surprised that we made it out alive.

Beers and Bruhs

We finished off the day (after a much-needed change of clothes) with a stop at Ithaca's Brewer's Cafe and Taproom, which had an mindblowing draft selection, a gobsmacking can selection, and a flabbergastingly good Kimchi Tater Tot plate (with bulgogi beef!). Sandwiches weren't bad either. We would highly recommend it as a place to meet up with some old friends, and they've got a huge beer garden yard space out back, too.

Conclusion

The Finger Lakes are pretty buggy, but full of nice people. Don't bike on horse trails, ever. Ithaca has good coffee and good beer.

Dedication

This post is dedicated in memory of Vincent Ostermeier, my grandfather, who very recently passed away. May you find good books, fast boats, fine wine, and good company wherever you are now. Special thanks to Meg for giving me the push I needed to include a stop at Smith Mountain Lake on our drive from Colorado to the East Coast. It wasn't exactly on the way, but I'm so very glad we spent a weekend there with Vinny.

• travelled from Colorado to Virginia to visit family
• subsequently headed up to Central New York to visit even more family
• visited Northern New York to visit yet more family
• completed a number of bike rides on the nice, flat, sometimes humid Erie Canal Trail in New York.

It's been rad. But it hasn't been vacation. More "long-awaited family visits." This weekend, Meg and I finally got back into the grind of just-us vacation. Also known as the gravel grind.

Lumpy Country

Our journey began from the Syracuse area on Friday. The route on major highways was pretty inefficient, so we cut the hypoteneuse through the Adirondacks for our drive to Vermont, a nice break from our many hours of highway driving on the CO -> VA -> NY route. Many deer sightings, farm stands, cute diners, and slow drivers later, we arrived at our first destination: Ranch Camp. (In case this link ever breaks, their slogan is "Bikes. Beers. Burritos.") After a craft beer from New England and a burrito with maple verde salsa, we were ready for the last leg of our journey: less than an hour of beautiful driving through northern Vermont.

For a second stop, we chose Hill Farmstead Brewery, one of the best craft breweries in... the world, I guess? It did not disappoint. We grabbed a draft pour, split a bottle, and then picked up an outrageous amount of cans and bottles to bring home and drink during our upcoming bike ride. I don't think I can do Hill Farmstead justice with any words I write in this post, so just know that if you love beer, it's worth visiting. Everything is well executed, even styles of beer that you don't like are worth tasting, and it's beautiful to boot. If you can pull off an IPA aged in white wine barrels, you can pull off damn near anything.

After Hill Farmstead, our campsite was a very, very short drive away. Special thanks to HipCamp for hooking us up with a guaranteed campsite that has a dedicated outhouse for a reasonable price. The land around our campsite was especially lumpy, presenting a bit of a challenge for finding a flat tenting spot, but after we found a flat enough spot I really appreciated the views of the nearby cemetary, rolling hills, and the cute farm animals. We dropped the car off there, I swapped out my awful Onyx brake pads for some aftermarket Kool-Stop upgrades, and we set off on the bikes in search of dinner.

Our bike ride to dinner turned out amazing. Turns out that unlike other Northeast states (New York, specifically), Vermont is chock full of low-traffic dirt roads with low speed limits. That's pretty great for bike rides. But the hills made me very glad to have upgraded my brake pads. Eventually we made it to dinner at Blackbird Bistro. My review, in short: good food. Solid poutine with sweet/creamy cheese curd. Fries should not come with every sandwich, because two sandwiches + poutine + fries for each sandwich was altogether too many potatoes. After this meal I was thoroughly potatoed out. The beer selection was unusually good.

After dinner, we took a slightly-less-hilly route back to the farm camping site. Avoided a passing shower by sheltering under some trees on the side of the road. Saw (and photographed) an impressive double rainbow during a spectacular sunset after the passing shower. Made it back to the campsite just before sunset, and shared a couple of Hill Farmstead beers as we watched the sun set and the stars came out.

Pointy Country

The next morning, we woke up before the goats. about 7 AM. Drove across the remainder of Vermont and a good chunk of New Hampshire to Gorham to have breakfast sandwiches at a combination coffee shop/bookstore.

Does a coffee shop/bookstore combo make Gorham sound quaint? Don't be fooled. Turns out, the city is fake-outdoorsy side-by-side hell with lots of fast food and motorcycles. Woof.

After a good deal of sadness and really loud rumbling from the many passing side-by-sides, we got some coffee and sandwiches in our systems and were ready to start our ride. After a brief stop at the local Dollar General to pick up some ramen, toothbrushes (you always forget one item on a trip like this), and a bowl, we got all of our gear in the panniers and onto the bikes. We were all ready to set out. Then we experienced a once-in-a-lifetime event: a visit from the local crazy bicyclist. TOM (The Orange Man) was very friendly, and supposedly a philosopher, and very into "living life in the now." We politely listened to his thoughts on life and compliments of our orange shirt choices and car. Then we headed out as quickly as we could to avoid another 40-minute lecture.

After our first impressions of Gorham, we were really afraid that our bike ride would be totally ruined by side-by-sides and ATVs. Fortunately, our bike ride quickly took us out of town on New Hampshire's Presidential Rail Trail, which let us enjoy the countryside far away from the noises of cars and ATVs. In our 18 miles of riding, we saw miles of rocky mountain creeks, cute former-rail bridges, bald mountain views, a wildlife sanctuary, one or two people riding bicycles... and at least a dozen e-bikes, mostly rentals. I guess New Hampshirians find pedaling a bicycle challenging enough to need assistance most of the time.

After riding the entire length of the rail trail, we set out on some rural roads to find dispersed camping. The journey began with a long, plodding ascent of a poorly maintained paved road, continued with a speedy hill descent down the Owl's Head Highway, and culminated with a long, steep climb up a hill leading into White Mountain National Forest.

Our search for dispersed camping at 4 PM on Saturday of Labor Day weekend went better than expected. After quite a few occupied campsites, most of which were suspiciously devoid of humans, we found a campsite with no tent set up, a plastic bag over the site marker, and a Ford F-150 parked across from the campsite parking spot. Since there were only two more campsites, both of which we figured were occupied, we parked the bikes and settled in, prepared to ask the owner of the truck if we could camp in a corner of his site when he returned. The owner never ended up camping in the site, and someone finally stopped by to pick up the truck around 8:30 PM, well after dark. Which just makes me more curious why anybody would leave their truck parked in a national forest next to a campsite they don't intend to use. But on the plus side, we got a campsite!

The campsite was largely uneventful, except for one thing: at 9PM, for a good half hour, the air exploded. BANG BANG BANG, one after another, for thirty minutes straight. Woke me right up and kept me up until it ended. I still don't know for sure what it was, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't fireworks because I didn't hear any telltale fireworks noises, so my only conclusion is that somebody illegally used the national forest as their personal shooting range. Such is life in the US, I guess.

We were also woken up around 10PM by somebody shining a flashlight around our campsite to see if it was occupied, which leads to yet more questions. Who is still looking for a campsite at 10PM when the sun sets at 7:15? How am I supposed to signal that my campsite is occupied when I don't have a vehicle to park outside of it? The world may never know.

After the flashlight, F150, and explosions, the night was uneventful. Meg and I woke up in the morning, made some coffee and oatmeal, and packed up the gear. Once I was 100% sure we were ready to go, Meg noticed that I had a flat tire. I took a chance and pumped it full of air, and since it seemed to hold, we continued on our ride, eying the formerly-flat tire suspiciously.

The day started off well, with a quick mile descent on the dirt road to a gas station. We nabbed a lemon poppyseed muffin and some water, hit the bathroom, and headed on our way down another paved road to the next stage of the ride, a long hill ascent to Jefferson Notch, the highest point along any public road in New Hampshire.

This hill climb was long, but a lot easier than the climb to our campsite the previous day due to the rolling nature of the hills and the fact that we hadn't already spent hours slowly pedaling uphill along a rail trail. After the hill climb, we were rewarded with an exhilarating 6 mile downhill ride back to the rail trail, which took us right back to Gorham. A quick stop for some poutine in Littleton later, we headed back to New York State, overcast skies, and rain.

Conclusion

New England impressed me. I spent a good deal of time in the Adirondacks and upstate New York in general growing up, so I had some preconceived notions of what Vermont and New Hampshire would be like for late summer outdoor activities. Turns out, Vermont has a hugely different feel from New York, which is hugely different from New Hampshire. The low speed limits, dirt roads, liveable small towns, and farm stands really impressed me. And the maple creamees really impressed Meg, our resident soft serve ice cream fan.

Broomfield Open Space

Broomfield contains a ridiculous number of intersecting trails, so we followed a route that took us through a smattering of those trails. We spent time on the coal creek trail, rock creek trail, meadowlark trail, and the US 36 Bikeway.

The trails were all really nice, though the smoke sort of ruined the views and made the entire ride feel like scenes in Mexico in Breaking Bad. The mix of gravel, concrete, and "singletrack" kept us entertained and even though some sections of the trail were a bit busy, other sections were empty enough that we could ride side-by-side and hang out on the bikes for long periods of time.

I recently invested in a new helmet and some new brakes for Mandarb. I ordered them both from Planet X, a bike accessory seller in the UK with obnoxiously low prices that actually made it worthwhile to pay the shipping fees from England instead of a US merchant. Overall my purchases turned out well, but keep in mind that covid still has US and UK customs utterly borked so if you order from them, expect your shipment to hang out in Los Angeles for a couple of weeks with no update from UPS.

Four Noses

After the ride, Meg and I stopped by the nearby 4 Noses brewery for a drink, food, and some to-go cans. We've purchased from 4 Noses before, since they distribute a little bit around the Front Range, but this was the first time I've actually been to their brewery for a drink. Turns out, they've got a fantastic location. I'm excited to bike all the way to 4 Noses from Denver sometime, since they're located just up the street from Kokopelli, which we've biked to before.

Conclusion

It was nice to spend a weekend relaxing at home, without figuring out a place to sleep overnight or how to best avoid traffic into the mountains. But since Meg and I only have a couple of weeks left before we head back to the northeast for a late-summer family trip, I'm sure we'll end up doing some more bike rides in the mountains soon. As long as the fires don't deteriorate air quality past the point of human safety.

Mount Elbert

As part of this adventure, we climbed Mount Elbert via the South Elbert trailhead. This trailhead has two parking lots -- one right on a paved road, and one at the very end of a 2ish mile ORV road. Fortunately we camped right on that ORV road, so we trimmed a half mile or so off of each end of the hike.

On the positive side, I can say that the south trailhead seems to be less busy than the north trailhead, so that was a blessing. But either way, everyone hiking the tallest mountain in Colorado is trying to get to the same point: the marker at the very peak of the mountain. So it's pretty much as you'd expect up there. Lots of people. Most of them tourists. Taking selfies. Struggling with the altitude. Even on a thursday. But the views were nice.

On the plus side, the views of Twin Lakes, Leadville, and Turquoise Lake were on full display for the vast, vast majority of this hike. So it wasn't just a pretty hike at the peak; this was a pretty hike for something like 80% of the climb, just a mile or two in once the trees start to thin out. No technical terrain at all, though I have to hand it to the trail maintainers: that's one of the nicest trails I've hiked on in Colorado. But the trail was actually so nice that it took away from some of the challenge of the ascent.

Paddleboarding

Paddleboarding on Twin Lakes is actually an activity that I've done before -- almost a year ago, and with the same rental company, and the same visiting friends. It was really fun back then. But it was even more fun this time, because we decided to be a bit silly and rent the "FIESTA PARTY BARGE" instead of getting individual paddleboards. Turns out, it's just as silly as it sounds, but it's also very easy to move around with four paddlers, easier to strap on top of your vehicle than four separate paddleboards, and a lot of fun to be able to hop into the water and trust that other people will remain on the paddleboard so it won't blow away into the distance.

My only nitpick: I wish we'd been able to bring a beer each to enjoy with lunch on the paddleboards, but that's apparently against the rules. It was still an absolute blast though.

Mount Sopris

This was my favorite hike of the trip. Mount Sopris is only 12,965 feet high, but since it rises over 6,000 feet above the surrounding landscape and Carbondale, it looks damn impressive from a distance and when you reach (either) peak.

We enjoyed a pretty gradual hike from the trailhead until we reached Thomas Lakes, a pair of fairly large alpine lakes a good way up the mountain. After the lakes, the trail got pretty steep and we found ourselves scrambling up scree for most of the rest of the hike, but the solid views of Carbondale, the red cliff faces near Carbondale, and the nearby Maroon Bells kept us in good spirits. I'm sure you could also see Elbert from the top, but honestly I just didn't care to look for it and it probably wouldn't have stood out much compared to all of the other similar peaks nearby anyway.

While my companions enjoyed lunch and a beer at the East summit, I took the opportunity to quickly hike the half-mile over to the West summit, which I would say was very much more impressive, a delightful experience, and totally worth the extra 600+ feet up and 600+ feet down. The surveys claim that both peaks are exactly the same height, but the West peak is so narrow it doesn't really feel that way. Still, it felt good to summit the entire mountain after such a long hike.

On our way down, we took the opportunity for a quick swim in Thomas Lakes. It was definitely a bit chilly, but after miles of hiking and scrambling and some pretty intense sunlight, I enjoyed every bit of it.

Conclusion

Camping for several days straight and exploring some of Colorado on weekdays (instead of the busy weekends) was an awesome experience. It's also a delight to show some East coast friends around the state who are such troopers we're not afraid to take on, say, the highest peak in Colorado. I had a great time, and the only thing I'd change is that I'd probably just bring instant coffee next time instead of hand grinding and Aeropressing for four people on the go.

Dillon Reservoir Loop

Our first stop was the Dillon Reservoir, where we enjoyed a quick coffee and a mostly relaxing 18-ish mile ride. The Dillon Reservoir Loop is a (mostly offroad) trail that encircles the entirety of Dillon Reservoir, passing through Dillon, Frisco, and Silverthorne. Except for a 2-3 mile hill ascent along a road, the entire loop is bike and pedestrian trail. Overall impression: it's a nice trail. It crosses too many roads (particularly for a trail that enscribes a reservoir -- why are there so many roads between the trail and the reservoir‽). There are a lot of clueless e-bike riders on it that do annoying things like pass you on the right without announcing themselves, or stop right in the middle of the trail to take pictures. The biggest hill in the whole loop is also the only section that isn't a dedicated bike trail, so you get to enjoy the delightful intersection of 7% grades alongside trucks and cars and SUVs blasting right past your 2-foot bike path on the shoulder. But... it's a beautiful trail. It's well-maintained. The views around the reservoir are breathtaking. And it's mostly quiet and car-free. So I'd recommend it only on weekdays and early weekend mornings.

Mineral Belt Trail

The Mineral Belt Trail is an 11.4 mile loop that starts in Leadville, winds up into the surrounding foothills through some historic silver mines, and finally returns back to civilization. It took up a small chunk of the afternoon after looping around Dillon Reservoir and having lunch in Leadville. The Mineral Belt Trail is less populated, better maintained (it's extremely smooth pavement, with basically no breakages anywhere), has just as pleasant (if different) views as the Dillon Reservoir Loop... and it's full of plaques bearing fun historic facts about mining in Leadville. There's a gradual but long hill as you leave Leadville, but also a ton of fun downhill action for several miles as you head into town. Overall my biggest complaint about the Mineral Belt Trail is that it's just too short -- 11.4 miles of pleasant riding goes by really quickly.

Mount Hope

Mount Hope is the third almost-14er (that's "not quite 14,000 feet tall" for those of you who aren't familiar with Colorado slang) that Meg and I have summited. We specifically picked out this hike because it's near a huge selection of dispersed camping sites, it involves a rocky ridge hike with lots of scrambling opportunities, and it's not a very popular hike, so we can actually enjoy nature instead of dealing with people.

The initial portion of the hike was really steep (which makes sense -- the ascent was only 3.7 miles total, but took us from ~10,000 feet all the way to ~14,000 feet!), but really unique in Colorado thanks to some VERY green and very wet forest at the base of the mountain.

Our hard work paid off as we passed the treeline around the midpoint of the hike, and we were treated to some spectacular views of the many 14ers nearby.

Once we hit the ridge, the view opened up even more, and we could see Leadville, Twin Lakes, Turquoise Lake, and basically the entire loop that we biked a couple of weeks ago.

The ridge itself was some serious rock scrambling, with almost no path whatsoever. After a few tricky spots and quite a few water breaks, we reached the top, where we finally got to see 360-degree views of the surrounding landscape.

The hike down the ridge was the trickiest part of the hike, but we managed to make it down without incident. Lots of loose rocks and tricky spots, but by keeping our pace slow and taking our time, we managed it. Special shoutout to the spiders who occasionally set up their webs in the PERFECT spots to descend, forcing me to reroute.

Conclusion

Overall, another solid weekend. The mountains were a fantastic opportunity to beat the record heat wave that we're currently experiencing in Colorado. It was nice to get back into hiking, even if it turns out that 4 miles of hiking is more stressful on your muscles than 60 miles of biking.

• some valuable lessons about charging your bike lights

• that Mandarb (my 1990s steel mountain bike) can handle just about any terrain I can throw at him

• that a 13% grade is just about the steepest hill I can climb on rocky, muddy terrain

• even if Colorado is usually sunny... that thunderstorms can still take several hours to blow over

Even so, I had an absolute blast. It felt good to complete my most difficult bike ride ever (with both natural and personal-stupidity imposed obstacles) and come out safe and sound on the other side. After this weekend, I'm finally starting to feel ready for camping with just the bicycles. And we've even figured out a solid strategy for beating Denver's famous weekend mountain traffic.

The Legend of the Ghost Starbucks

It all started Friday morning, sometime around 6 AM. Meg and I got up, had a quick smoothie and an aeropress, and headed up into the mountains. By 7:30, we reached our intended destination: a Starbucks at Copper Mountain. We picked it as a pleasant looking option for working remotely all day, where we could keep our laptops charged, sit at a patio space, subtly position beautiful mountain views behind us during video chats with coworkers, and not feel too bad about taking up a seat all day.

At least, that was the plan.

But it turns out that despite a very convincing Google Maps listing for that Starbucks, the location itself is now closed. Sometime in the last 4 weeks, based on the last review and images on the listing, that Starbucks disappeared off the face of the planet. There wasn't even a sign left behind!

Anyway, there went our plan to hang out all day at the closest Starbucks to Leadville and work remotely so we could nab a campsite in the early afternoon. Instead, we drove up to new record holder of "closest Starbucks to Leadville," currently found in Frisco. My review as follows:

• they didn't have any bacon gouda breakfast sandwiches left, 0/10 stars

• ample outdoor space (glass garage doors, at a chain coffee shop?)

• OK amount of outlets

• super friendly employees (no offense, University of Rochester campus Starbucks)

• great views of the mountains to intimidate my coworkers in video chats

All in all, it served us well for a morning's remote work.

In the afternoon, we spent our lunch hour travelling down to Leadville to nab some lunch and inch closer to our intended campsite. We ended up eating at the Silver Llama, a touristy yet competent cafe. A burrito and some chicken later, we headed down to our final destination: Twin Lakes.

Double the Lakes, Double the Fun

Twin Lakes has no shortage of beautiful campsites, but seeing as we live in Colorado and everyone constantly wants to hike and camp, we were a little nervous that we'd show up and all the campsites would be occupied, or even worse, that we'd end up at a campsite with no view of the lakes and mountains.

We were pleasantly surprised to find our preferred campground almost completely deserted. I suppose mose Coloradans were tuckered out from a Memorial Day weekend of maskless festivities. We parked, set up the tent at a beautiful overlook of the lakes, and attempted to work remotely. But the view was too damn good, so we tossed the laptops in the car and took the bikes out for a sunset spin.

I've said this before, but let me remind you: Meg and I don't ride mountain bikes. Well, we don't ride modern mountain bikes, which come with dual (and sometimes triple!) suspension, hydraulic disk brakes, knobbly tires, and all kinds of fancy features that let you ride over rocks and bumps and other nonsense without vibrating your bones into dust. My bike, Mandarb, is a steel mountain bike from the 1990s with no suspension at all. Meg's bike, Sully, is basically a modern equivalent with better brakes. They've got chonky tires, but that's about it for mitigating bumps and rocks. Our bikes are awesome for pavement, dirt roads, gravel, and even some light singletrack. But they aren't exactly optimal for challenging mountain bike terrain like you'll find at ski resorts during the summer these days.

Of course, that didn't stop us from taking on 10% and higher grades on rocky, sandy roads near our campsite at the base of Mount Elbert, the tallest mountain in Colorado. But it did teach us some technical skills that came in handy for our long Saturday ride.

So we went on a nice (if steep) ride and were rewarded with sweeping views of Independence Pass, Twin Lakes, and the Collegiate Peaks. The ride down took almost as long, since we had to take those steep grades slowly, but it was beautiful riding through the aspens at sunset, so who can really complain. We got back to the campsite, whipped up some camp macaroni and cheese on our stove, and called it a night early so we could get the maximum amount of time on the bikes on Saturday.

The Saturday Loop

6:30 AM: We got up, made a quick double batch of camp oatmeal and aeropress coffee, and headed out on the first section of our ride: biking from Twin Lakes to Turquoise Lake.

We started out on a surprisingly smooth paved road that snaked its way through even more campsites that I had possibly imagined existed by Twin Lakes. And then we saw one of the weirdest... houses? That I've ever seen.

Soon the trail gave way to gravel as we passed a mine with views so nice, it made me consider working at a mine.

After a short time on gravel, we were back to the pavement and riding through ranch land. But it wasn't long before we made our way to a dirt seasonal road that really wasn't anything more than an ATV trail. (Sidenote: we'd later learn just what an ATV trail can be in the mountains. More on that later)

This ended up being my favorite road of the entire trip: just enough roughage of rocks and sand on the raod to keep things interesting, but generally smooth sailing, peace and quiet, and absolutely crazy views of the Mosquito Range on the eastern side of the valley. All we saw of humanity the entire time was one or two dirt bikes and perhaps one tent at a campsite.

But the lazy dirt roads can't last forever. The last section of our trek to Turquoise Lake brought us back to paved ranch roads and past Mount Massive Golf Course, allegedly the highest altitude golf course in the US. A few more cars here, but not too many, and everyone passed us at a safe distance and speed.

A short climb after the golf course, we reached Sugar Loaf Dam. Damn, it was beautiful. (sorry)

After a brief photoshoot and water break (hey, Colorado is hot and dry!), we started on the loop on routes 9, 4 & 9C around the lake. This was actually our second time around the loop -- we did the same trip on cross country skis back in March! The summer views are just as good, and biking is at least four times as fast as cross country skiing, but there was something special about the pure peace and quiet of snowbound Turqoise lake in winter. At least until the snowmobiles show up.

We rode up and down quite a few hills at Turquoise Lake, and at the very summit of the last uphill segment, we took the opportunity for lunch at Shimmering Point Overlook. This was actually the exact same spot where we lunched when we cross country skiied, though we had a better view this time since we weren't able to deviate much from the groomed trail in March.

Some hard kombucha, salami sandwiches, and cheddar bunnies (the store was out of pink goldfish, in my defense) later, we were on our way downhill, zooming through the last quarter of the lake loop at record speed. We checked out the other overlook points, but they were honestly just lower altitude versions of Shimmering Point with slightly worse views and some moderately fun gravel paths to bike on.

The downhill ride from our lunch spot brought us almost all the way to Leadville, where I found a nice gravel path along the side of the road and we checked out the very unusually organized Evergreen Cemetery, which is very... gridded.

After that quick stop, we headed over to the best brewery in Leadville, Two Mile Brewing Company. It's also the only brewery in Leadville (RIP Periodic Brewing). That's where we enjoyed a late lunch or maybe early dinner, depending on how you define eating at 3:30. A couple of beers, some sandwiches, and some potachos later, we engaged in a modest amount of touristing and stopped by Melanzana to nab some only-available-in-leadville hoodies.

After that, we were ready for the final segment of the ride, which I have affectionately dubbed...

The Meat Grinder

In my last post, I started to make up random names for rides. If I had to make up a name for our travels in the foothills east of Leadville, this would be it. It had it all: large rocks, great views, steep grades, rain, steeper grades, mud, steepest grades, and even some fun historical fact learning.

We began with a ride up out of town toward the Matchless Mine, where rich people decided to leave around a ton of old mining equipment when a mine stopped being profitable.

From the mine, we hopped on Leadville's Mineral Belt Trail, which was just as pleasant for bike riding in the summer as it was for walking and skiing in the winter. Very nicely paved, with great views, and almost too many plaques and historical facts. After the trail, we switched over to mountain roads in the foothills. That's where things got interesting.

The mountain roads of The Meat Grinder started off nice enough: next to no cars (perhaps two the whole paved segment), nice sealed pavement, decent grades. Then it started raining.

Then our path took us on a dirt road. Then that road was very steep. And very rocky. And wasn't really a road, but seemed to be an ATV trail dubbed the "Silverback Trail" that even a beefy, lifted 4x4 AWD vehicle would struggle with. But alas, we continued, preferring the quiet, technical roads to slogging down the shoulder of a 65 MPH highway.

Then it was 7:30, and we realized we were still up in the mountain foothills, 15 miles or so from our campsite, with sunset looming at 9 PM. No problem -- we got out our bike lights for visibility, and picked up the pace a little, remaining cautious on the rocky downhills.

We reached a main-ish paved road around 8:45 and hit our next obstacle: a closed paddock gate. Even though we definitely didn't pass through any gates on our way there.

But fortunately the gate wasn't locked: it was just chained up. So we didn't have to do any fence or gate hopping. We made it onto the paved road without issue, carefully closing the gate for the next confused bicyclist.

But then Meg's front bike light died. No big deal -- I could just light the way for both of us with my front light, and it wasn't even dark yet.

We headed down the road past some cute cows as the sun finally hit Mount Massive in the distance. And that's when we hit our next snag. We were supposed to take the next left to ride down an empty dirt country road, which would let us cross the 65 MPH highway instead of having to ride down it at all. But we somehow missed that turn. Some frantic map-consulting later, we decided to double back past the cute cows to try to find the dirt road to avoid riding on the highway shoulder.

That's when we found that the "country dirt road" was blocked by a rancher who decided that the through-road through his ranch was actually his private driveway. If the fence and the gate wasn't enough, the triple padlock setup convinced us to find another route. We sucked it up, turned around, and passed the cute cows for the third time. And we found ourselves, as darkness fell, riding 1.2 miles down the shoulder of a wet 65 MPH highway. I don't think I've ever ridden faster.

We made it down the highway with no real issues, and started back down the desolate paved ranch roads and the gravel mining road. That's when "dark" turned to "pitch black" and I realized that the moon was nowhere to be seen and cloud cover stopped any starlight from reaching the ground. Fortunately my bike light was fully charged and my panniers are very, very obnoxiously reflective.

By the time we made it back, it was truly dark night, our bikes were totally covered in mud, and all I wanted was to curl up in my sleeping bag. Of course, we still had to set up the tent (it gets windy in Colorado, so I wasn't going to leave it out all day), wash the mud off of ourselves, lock up the bikes, and make dinner. But after 60 miles and 6,000 vertical feet, that just didn't seem like much work in comparison.

Conclusion

Bike touring continues to be my absolute favorite way to explore towns and regions in Colorado. The ample dirt roads, beautiful views, bike paths, and feeling of exploration on the bike all combine to give a sense of accomplishment that's very different (and if you ask me, far superior) to hiking or driving around. You really get to know the lay of the land, and you can just take your time exploring an area. Just remember to charge your lights before each ride.

For our next adventure, Meg and I plan to finally load up the tent, sleeping bags, and other camping equipment on the bikes so we'll have everything we need right there on our ride. That way, we won't have to ride to any specific destination in the dark -- we can just camp whereever we want. No more forced nighttime highway rides!

Thanks for reading. If you have any suggestions or comments, send an email my way!

Interested in our route? Check it out below:

Also accessible at ridewithgps.

I've been riding a modernized steel 90s mountain bike ever since Meg and I moved to Colorado last year. Once we found a sick deal on a Surly Disc Trucker for Meg, we've both been itching for a chance to take the bikes out on some dirt and gravel. You might know that Steamboat Springs is world-renowned for mountain biking and skiing, but it also happens to have one of the greatest gravel biking communities in the world. This was our chance to see what that's all about.

Travel to Steamboat

We headed out to Steamboat after work on Friday. Fortunately, we're getting close to the Summer solstice, so the days are awfully long right now, giving us a lot of daylight for our journey.

Unfortunately, it's the off season at Steamboat right now between prime ski season and prime mountain bike season. Which means that most of the restaurants in town close down at 9 PM or so, which actually means that most kitchens stop serving food at around 8 PM.

Sadly, it's also snowmelt season at Steamboat right now, which means that the Yampa River, which flows right next to the bike path from our hotel to town, is super high right now. Which means that some sections of the bike path are currently underwater. Which means detours.

So we showed up at Steamboat around 7:30, and tried to take the bike path to town (we just drove 3 hours!), but we were really hungry, so the detours were really confusing, and daylight started to dwindle, which made us realize that all of the restaurants were about to close. Note to Steamboat DOT: orange paper is not very visible towards dusk, so you should really mark your bike detours with something reflective.

We ended up driving up to town in the car. Then we:

1. Wolfed down a tasty burrito at Taco Cabo. Bonus points for pressing your burritos, Taco Cabo.

2. Got a beer and a salad at Mountain Tap Brewery, a key lime lager and a coconut brown ale.

3. Split a to-go crowler of Mountain Tap's haziest brew back at the (outdoor!) (heated!) (not populated!) pool at the hotel. Nothing like a nice swim under the stars at the end of a long day.

4. Hit the hay so we'd be ready for an early morning of gravel biking on the...

Sleeping Giant Loop

The town of Steamboat Springs sits in the middle of a big ol' valley. The Yampa Valley, to be specific, if the local bank conglomerate is to be believed. The two largest geological formations in the valley happen to be the two things we looped on this trip. The first of those formations is Elk Mountain, which some folks apparently nicknamed "Elk Mountain". Don't even bother looking that up to see if I'm lying -- it turns out that almost every state in the country contains an "Elk Mountain", because I guess the answer to the question "what do we call this mountain?" tends to be "Uh, I guess elk live there, so maybe 'Elk Mountain'?". Not like "Sleeping Giant" is that original either.

Anyway, on Saturday we looped around Elk Mountain on a bunch of dirt and gravel roads. We got up around 7 AM and immediately biked our way over to breakfast at the Seedz Cafe, which served up a surprisingly healthy (but still tasty) veggie chorizo breakfast burrito and a plate of eggs benedict covered in a phenomenal white pepper gravy. My only regret is not ordering my burrito smothered in green chili -- my favorite local burrito place in Denver contains plenty of green chili already, so the thought didn't even occur to me.

Once we were fueled for the day, it was time to hop on our actual bike route. We began the trip with the most unpleasant section: a 2 mile connecting stint on a medium-high traffic highway with cars blowing by at 45+ miles per hour. Yuck. Fortunately, that didn't last long, and we were quickly dumped out on a side road with poorly maintained pavement and the promise of cows in the distance.

Soon after getting off the main road, we summited a (at the time) pretty huge hill. Our past rides have never really gone above 8% grade or so, so this was our first chance to drop down into the very lowest "granny gear" of Mandarb and Sully to crank out the hill at a slow but steady speed. We passed with flying colors, and moved on ready to crush whatever hills challenged us next.

After a couple more miles, the poorly maintained pavement dissolved into dirt at a suspiciously photogenic "pavement ends" sign. Meg and I finally got our first taste of biking on a totally dirt road, though personally I'd say that the constant roadwork, resurfacing, and potholes in Denver have already treated us to plenty of that.

Once we hit the dirt roads, we barely worried about cars any more. You can only drive so fast on a dirt road, and the small scattered rocks kicked up by any vehicle create enough noise that we were warned well in advance of the one or two vehicles that passed us the entire ride.

The dirt roads also signaled the start of the cute, isolated rural homes of the Steamboat region. The first section of our ride was full of developments, vacation homes, and mansions. But once the pavement disappears, all you see is ranches and beautiful country homes.

Meg and I sometimes ride side by side on empty bike paths, but there's usually enough traffic (and so little path width) that we typically end up single file for most of the ride. Riding on dirt was a huge step up in conversation for us since we were able to ride side-by-side on very wide roads (for a bicycle) without worrying about other vehicles on the road.

Around 9:40, we spotted our first non-domesticated large animal (NDLA) of the ride, a creature that I suspect was either a very large deer or a female elk. Given that we were riding around Elk Mountain, I like to think that it was the elk for which the mountain is named. Cute fella.

After that, it was hard to look in any direction without spotting a prairie dog nestled among the wildflowers. Seriously, there were so many of them. We also spotted a group of what might have been actual deer (or baby elk?) on a nearby ridge.

We tried to get some action shots of both Meg and myself riding up a particularly pretty hill, but unfortunately I'm a little bit too speedy on my bike -- Meg didn't tell me that she hadn't taken the picture yet, so I ended up catching up with her before she could record anything. So instead I rounded the next corner and Meg got some fake action shots of me riding the wrong direction.

Just after our action shot shenanigans, we started to spot wooly caterpillars crossing the road. Naturally, we had to make sure that our caterpillar friend made it across the road safely. And if that meant taking hundreds of close-up photos of the caterpillar... well, nobody's perfect. And I suspect that he enjoyed the photoshoot.

At 11, we enjoyed lunch at a beautiful spot at the top of a pretty large hill at almost the exact middle our our route. At this point, we finally started to see cyclocross and gravel bikers coming in the opposite direction up the hill, clad in lycra and spandex galore. We cheersed them with our 16oz cans of hard kombucha and appreciated the fact that we packed a picnic of salami sandwiches and brownies instead of trying to make the maximum possible mile time.

Around 12:15, we reached a very tiny old cemetery with a breaktaking view. If you're looking to bury anybody, this is a pretty solid location -- you can just take in the mountains while you mourn! Cemeteries ought to be beautiful, and this is among the best I've seen.

The rest of our trek routed us through even rougher dirt roads, several steeper climbs, and -- of course -- a whole lot more cows. It was awfully satisfying to benchmark our progress by our view of Elk Mountain, which was visible throughout the entire ride, but from a slowly evolving angle.

The very last half hour of our ride was slightly spoiled by some significant headwinds near the airport north of town. Fortunately this section was largely downhill, which sort of cancels out the headwind... with the exception of the noise, which was maddening after just a few minutes. We soldiered our way through and made it to our first planned stop of the route: Butcherknife Brewery.

Sadly, Butcherknife was closed the day of our Sleeping Giant ride, seemingly for the entire month of May. Because I guess the off season is literally the most beautiful season to visit, with the best temperatures, the most wildflowers, and the most greenery. We rode another mile down the road and gave our valuable tourist dollars to their competitor, Storm Peak, instead. Shoutout to Moe's Original BBQ for putting damn near the maximum amount of pulled pork possible on their sandwiches -- at the end of the ride, we'd very much earned it.

The brewery was right at the north end of town, so we grabbed a six pack of beer and took a nice ride down the town bike path back to our hotel to enjoy some midday brews and another swim.

For dinner, we originally planned to check out a fancy looking cocktail bar with a solid looking list of pricy appetizers. But by the time we got there, it was clear that you needed a reservation to actually get a table. So instead we ended up eating some grilled cheese bites and much cheaper cocktails at the local distillery. The bartender hooked us up with some tasters of their whiskey as well, convincing me to check them out the next time I run low on rye.

After the distillery, we had another salad to restore some semblance of healthy food after gorging ourselves on grilled cheese bites. I'm not so sure that it was that healthy an option since we also had three beers, but hey, we were at a significant caloric deficit for the day anyway after biking 60+ miles.

We topped off the day with -- you guessed it -- another beer in the pool under the stars.

Green Giant Loop

Our second day, Meg and I decided to map out a custom 20-30 mile route to take it a little easier, since we had a 3 hour drive back to Denver after the ride. We settled on a route that looped around Emerald Mountain, just west of town. Since people in Steamboat just make up nicknames for mountains, I decided on the nickname "Green Giant" for Emerald Mountain, since it's... green. And large.

We started off the day with some suspiciously good bagels for 7,000 feet. Kudos to Colorado Bagel Company for making one of the better everything bagel's I've had since leaving NYC.

By 8, we were well on our way around the Green Giant loop and enjoying the sunrise above Steamboat ski resort. As it turns out, the local biking community has dispersed a fleet of portable toilets on popular routes around town, presumably for photos like you're about to see.

After the portable toilet, we were having a blast. Unfortunately, the locals had other plans. Our original route used Elk Lane to cut down on hills and let us enjoy some forest scenery on our route. But when we got to Elk Lane, the road was marked with a not-so-friendly sign that Elk Lane is PRIVATE and that GPS USERS should BE AWARE that it is NOT a THRU ROAD. So we decided not to deal with the annoying residents (who were lying, by the way, unless satellite view of the road is wrong somehow) and turned our morning into the Extended Green Giant Loop instead. We could use the extra exercise anyway.

A few miles of sweeping pavement roads later, we reached the end of the pavement and our first big hill. But first, we spotted a cute red schoolhouse that it turns out is actually a private residence that you definitely should not take silly photos next to and whose residents you should totally respect the privacy of. Totally.

The first hill on this route was a slog, but the second was the steepest I've ever climbed on a bike. Still, the beautiful views, perfect temperatures, lack of traffic, and low-resistance "granny gear" all worked together to keep us moving all the way to the top without walking the bikes at all. And the views at the top of Elk Mountain in the distance made it all worthwhile.

After a well-earned hill descent, we ended up on another seasonal road through Emerald Mountain park along Cow Creek. Disclaimer: Cow Creek does not have nearly enough cows to justify the name. Shame on Routt County. This section of the route was my personal favorite, though, because for the first time all weekend we actually got to ride through trees! We also got to tackle our first dose of vaguely technical terrain on some rocky sections of the road, where we learned that our bikes are even more capable than we thought. Not planning on taking on any singletrack any time soon, but in a pinch...

Anyway, once we departed Cow Creek, the ride finished very quickly. Almost the entire rest of the route was gently sloping downhill paved roads that required next to no effort. After the hills we conquered earlier, it was a nice break to just sit back and enjoy the valley views.

When we got back to Steamboat Springs, our first stop was -- as you'd expect -- food. This time, we decided to stop by Yampa Valley Kitchen, where I enjoyed the Rösti (which is totally as good as it sounds, paired with a fried egg) and Meg tried the chicken sandwich. We also tried out their Cinnamon Toast Crunch latte and a few other coffee drinks, which I'm pleased to report were all fantastically made. And of course Meg had to try out their soft serve ice cream with rainbow sprinkles, because Meg lives for soft serve ice cream.

After that, we headed back to Denver, taking the long way to avoid traffic on I-70 and enjoy the crazy views of the continental divide from Berthoud Pass.

Conclusion

As of this trip, we've decided that biking is our new favorite way to experience new places in Colorado (and probably damn near everywhere else, too). But just to clarify:

• we're not road bikers (who wants to wear that much lycra and spandex?)

• we're not gravel bikers (again, who wants to wear that much lycra and spandex?)

• we're not mountain bikers (neither of our bikes have suspension, and fast downhill is awfully scary on a bike if you ask me)

• we might be tourers of some light variety (I do use panniers)

• we might be bikepackers of some variety (Meg doesn't use panniers)

• we're probably xbikers, which seems to roughly mean "adventure on a bike"

Just remember: we don't go fast, we don't do hard terrain, and we spend a lot of time eating food and drinking beer. Doesn't sound so bad now, does it?

The Rio Grande trail provides the benefits of tax-dollar-supported paved paths with the beauty of not being surrounded by cookie cutter suburban nightmares and constant traffic. And the beauty of being surrounded by... well, beauty. You'll see in a second when we get to the pictures. Anyway, Meg and I haven't gotten out of Denver for a few weeks, so we decided to drive up into the mountains and do an overnight bike trip. We haven't taken any lengthy trips yet, so we wanted to stay somewhere where we'd pass a town every ten miles or so in case one of us experienced a bike problem we couldn't handle with a multitool and a lot of grit. Which, naturally, happened in the very first mile. The Rio Grande trail seemed perfect: a safe place to park in Glenwood Springs, a whole town to explore and book a hotel in to recover overnight, and not so much distance that we'd hit our limits.

Denver

Our first day started at 5 AM. Meg and I woke up, guzzled a smoothie Meg generously blended before going to sleep, and made a couple of Aeropresses worth of coffee. By 5:50, we were on the road. After 3 hours on I-70, including a drive through the highest altitude point and longest tunnel in the US Interstate Highway System and some gorgeous views of Glenwood Canyon, we arrived in Glenwood Springs.

Glenwood Springs

By 9 AM, we'd finished our last-minute bathroom break at a nearby Starbucks, and I encountered my first Bike Problem. My rear rack, which I had just put on the night before, fell... backwards.

Not really off the bike, but dragging behind the bike. Ten minutes of finagling and Christmas Story-dad-level-swearing and we got the rack just secure enough to start our ride. Unfortunately, the southern side of Glenwood Springs doesn't have a bike shop, so we decided to persevere to Carbondale to seek out a tiny torque wrench.

Carbondale

Thirty minutes of slightly nervewracking riding down a very pretty section of bike path later, we arrived at Carbondale. One wrong turn in Carbondale brought us directly to a very friendly bike shop where I quickly got my rack sorted out pro-bono. To the employee that helped me out: I hope your first house lease works out well!

After wrapping up the bicycle repairs, Meg and I headed over to a well deserved meal. Pretty much everything about our breakfast experience was perfect. There were crabapple trees in full bloom right in front of the restaurant, the workers were extremely friendly, and (most importantly) the food was, to put it lightly, absolutely bomb. They:

• quickly found us a spot on their very cute patio space
• served a macchiato that was appropriately sized, with an appropriate ratio of milk to espresso
• served an americano that actually managed to convey floral light-roast flavors
• balanced egg, hashbrowns, some extremely flavorful cheese, and green chili with just enough tomatillo in my breakfast burrito
• paired Meg's french toast (made with homemade bread, of course) with a raspberry compote topping that made me reconsider my decision to ever waste my time on jam again

Nicely done, SILO. We'll be back.

By 11:15, Meg and I were back on the Rio Grande trail heading through Carbondale. We were treated to some very fine views of Mount Sopris as we rode our way through the Rio Grande ARTway. I couldn't help but appreciate a downtown public space that provides a full bike repair station, a small singletrack bike trail, a gravel bike trail, a paved bike trail, and public parks with picnic benches.

Once we made our way out of Carbondale with fully-functional bikes and full stomachs, the scenery transitioned from scrubby high desert plains to incredibly green farmland nestled between gently sweeping hills. At times, it felt like we were biking through the Austrian Alps -- compared to the last 6 months of brown grass in the Denver metro area, I finally started to appreciate the whole "hills are alive" bit from The Sound of Music.

At 12:05, we passed yet another lovely green farm, this time with a small group of longhorned cows grazing in it. Meg went crazy as some calves caught her eye and we spent another 15 minutes taking pictures of the cute cows and getting weird glances from passerby. Personally, I think it was worth it for the very cute calves. Eventually I peeled Meg away from the animals and we made our way through a very welcome spray of farm sprinkler water as temperatures made their way into the 70s. We also passed a classic Colorado sight -- a downtown core of a schoolhouse and a couple of brick walkups that must have lost their residents when the road they were built on transitioned into a major highway.

Basalt

By 1, we reached the town of Basalt. Everyone waved at us as we biked through town, including the cops. With a track meet and a baseball game going on, the world actually felt pretty normal for the days of COVID.

At 1:45, Meg and I stopped for a beer and a break at a little fishing spot before the final stretch to Aspen. Kudos to Breakside Brewery for a hazy IPA that still tasted good after 7 hours out of the fridge. Thank goodness they distribute to some beer stores in Denver -- they're based in Portland, Oregon.

At 2:05, another animal-based distraction yanked Meg off her bike. Donkeys, goats, cows, sheep, AND horses all grazing together in the same field. Maybe there is hope for the future after all!

At 2:20, we passed some trains that now appear to be used as housing. Presumably these trains used to roll over the railroad that used to be where the Rio Grande trail is now, so... sorry trains, for taking over your territory.

2:30 granted us our first view of the Aspen/Snowmass ski hills, still largely blanketed in snow. Of course, we didn't just stop for that -- our path took us right through an enormous cluster of prairie dog holes. Fortunately, we didn't catch any bubonic plague, but with the number of prairie dogs we see in this state, it's only a matter of time.

At 3, a triple whammy:

• beautiful views of the Roaring Fork river passing through a gorge just before Aspen
• ridiculously fancy second houses for rich people
• views of planes taking off and landing at Aspen's airport

Who doesn't love gorges, multimillion dollar homes, and watching planes take off? After a brief break, we hopped on an optional "soft surface" section of the trail to test our mettle on gravel, and while we did see a lot of cute small animals, I mostly just missed out on views of the gorge. We eventually made our way back to the paved section of trail, which transitioned into non-optional gravel about 100 feet later. Luckily there were good sights of the airport, a water treatment plant, some dangerously loose-looking rock faces, and a small waterfall on the side of the trail to distract us.

The last stretch of trail into Aspen was a killer -- at that point, the constant uphill grade very much had us in the mood for a beer and a burger. We kept trucking for the last few miles of tree-covered trails into Aspen and checked our bikes into the hotel, then headed out to investigate the town (and the prospect of a beer and a burger).

Aspen

Our time in Aspen started off strong. Instead of a beer and burger, we grabbed a pizza and some beers at a local brewery. And then a quinoa bowl, because we were hungry. And then a couple more beers, because we were still hungry. Honestly, by the end of it they didn't seem like they wanted to feed us any more, so I guess we must have eaten a horrifying amount of food or something. The pizza and beer was pretty solid, though.

Aspen is possibly the stranges town I have ever visited. From the park benches (regularly oiled!) to the bus stop bathrooms (spaceous, lockable, and cleaner than the bathrooms at my old office in NYC), everything is really, really nice. There are nice houses, nice streets, nice sidewalks, a lot of nice parks, and nice views of the surrounding mountains. Even the temperature was nice. But at its core, the town felt a bit hollow. Businesses that looked cute on the outside turned out to be soulless overpriced resort town crap, and service employees all had the shell-shocked look of folks who have to deal with a lot of crap from the natives. Maybe it was just a weird off-season vibe since a lot of businesses were temporarily closed for the spring, but overall it just made me feel strange. In Glenwood Springs, Carbondale, and Basalt, it felt like everybody waved and said hello -- not so much in Aspen.

We ended up walking around town until we found a decent beer to split over a bag of Goldfish. The best we were able to find was a craft cider and a can of bubbly wine. Who doesn't love the life of luxury in a fancy town?

The Ride Back

Meg and I woke up at 6 AM and lollygagged until almost 7 before hopping back on the trail. After our afternoon experience in town, we decided not to stick around for complimentary breakfast.

We were treated to an absolutely gorgeous crisp morning.

Blue skies, prairie dogs, and nary a human to be seen on the bike trail once we made our way out of Aspen proper. Lots of prairie dogs, chipmunks, and folks walking their pairs of dogs. That's right, in the span of 2 hours we saw:

• a pair of bernese mountain dogs
• a pair of corgis
• a pair of golden retrievers

Those happen to be the three best kinds of dog, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that folks in Basalt have great taste in dogs.

We also saw a cluster of wild turkeys wandering across the bike path, which really puts the size of turkeys into perspective. It would have been even more impressive if we didn't regularly see a neighbor's pet turkey on our walks around Denver.

We ended up eating breakfast at a cute cafe in downtown Basalt around 8:45. The coffee wasn't the best, but the breakfast burrito and breakfast sandwich were magnificent. They could use some pointers on steaming milk, but maybe they just prefer to focus their talents on steaming eggs.

On our ride back, we mostly stuck to the Rio Grande trail, but took the opportunity to deviate onto other trails to spice things up when we could. Our ride back included stints on the Emma and Old Basalt/Snowmass Trails, and neither disappointed. It seems the valley has solid bike infrastructure everywhere. Even the secondary trail had a tunnel under the highway in an adapted drainage tunnel!

On our way back to Carbondale, we also took the opportunity to ride along a dirt road that's parallel to the Rio Grande trail. I haven't had much experience riding on packed dirt roads before (I've mostly ridden on pavement, concrete, and gravel in the past), so it was nice to find that our bikes feel just as great on dirt as they feel on pavement. Especially in Colorado, it opens up a ton of touring opportunities!

At 10:50, we got back to Carbondale and admired a fantastic lizard sculpture that we somehow missed on the ride out. By 11, we were back at SILO, enjoying a fantastic:

• nitro cold brew (properly done, so it was even a bit sweet)
• iced chai (they nailed the balance of sweet and spicy)
• lemonade (they nailed the balance of sour and sweet)
• burger (all I can say is that it's the best burger I've had in Colorado, and even gave the burger at Tørst a run for its money)
• turkey club (blueberry saba is a bold choice, but it went really well with the bacon. And the bread was a texture I've never had before -- almost biscuity)
• hashbrowns with green chiles and red onions (crispy bois)

At 12, we enjoyed a quick pit stop at Colorado's oldest truss bridge, the Satank bridge. If the sun hadn't disappeared behind some clouds, I definitely would have dipped into those chilly waters for the memories -- maybe I'll wait for June, though.

At 12:53 PM, we finally got back to Clem, our obnoxiously orange Crosstrek. After a 10 out of 10 weekend of bike adventures, I can safely say that we'll be back soon to check out some of the other bike paths, dirt roads, and gravel routes in the Glenwood Springs area. Some friendly folks on the trail even recommended some routes to us at a stop!

Epilogue

After our journey, we enjoyed another well-earned beer at Casey Brewing, a world-renowned source of spontaneous fermentation beers. I've had their beers before, but it was pretty great to finally stop by the Casey taproom and see their (very cute) setup.

I also saw Lauren Boebert on the street in Glenwood Springs, which was... well, I guess it's nice to see representatives of Congress on the street, talking to people. That's all I can really say. And yes, she was carrying. I think.

As a final stop of our journey, Meg and I swung by Westbound & Down, who've made some really well-executed sour beers with my favorite beer bar in Denver, Goed Zuur. Their taproom in Idaho Springs (which is also a restaurant... and a coffee shop?) was surprisingly spacious, and their green chili cheese fries were a welcome snack after our long, early morning of biking. I also appreciate the fact that Idaho Springs has pedestrianized their main strip, so it's actually pleasant to walk around. Their beer list was a little sparse for my liking, but we'd been meaning to visit for close to a year now, so it's good to finally get around to that.

You've probably had espresso at least once or twice in your life. Maybe somebody prepared an Americano (usually a double shot of espresso dilited with water to make it "american" sized) for you instead of a normal cup of coffee. Maybe you ordered a latte or a cappucino at a coffee shop. Perhaps you've downed a black-eye or a red-eye espresso after a particularly restless night or during a long road trip. Whatever the case, you almost certainly had somebody else pull a shot of espresso for you.

I'm a rare (or perhaps just misguided) person who loves making espresso myself. There's something about the hum of the machine, the fizz of the steaming wand, the scream of the milk, and of course, the taste of the espresso, that just makes me happy. I first picked up the habit when I worked as a barista back in high school and early college, the proverbial gateway drug to espresso enthusiasm. I started to frequent a coffee shop near my home back when I was working other jobs -- as a dishwasher, a kitchen lackey, and a retail shill -- and it didn't take me long to start working there. Unlike those other jobs, working as a barista (or "baristo", as I jokingly referred to myself, the only male coffee slinger) was fun.

Perhaps my affection for espresso is really just linked to those memories at the first job that I truly enjoyed. Opening the shop at 5 AM and greeting the morning crowd on a crisp summer morning gave me a sense of purpose that I still lack in my current (much higher paying) corporate gig. Closing the shop at 10 PM and serving up coffees to lightly inebriated folks who needed to sober up before walking home across town (often for very generous mildly inebriated tips) was both relaxing and fulfilling, knowing that it was my responsibility to clean up the shop and get everything ready for the next day's morning shift. And the company was often good, too -- my coworkers were fascinating people from a variety of backgrounds and age groups who taught me a lot of valuable pre-college lessons. I even picked up some baking tips from the folks who worked in the back of the shop. And, of course, I developed a taste for my perennial favorite coffee beverage: a dirty chai latte with soy milk. A double shot of espresso, please.

At college, I continued my love affair with espresso. Freshman year, they forced every student to pay for your typical "unlimited" overpriced, swipe-based, buffet-style dining hall setup. Naturally, the meals were of low quality -- and the hours were awful, too. Want to eat after 9? Good luck. As a rebellious and independent teenager determined to make my own decisions in the college world, I went with the dining plan that offered the largest amount of free-floating "dining dollars" instead of going for the highly recommended unlimited dining plan. Those dining dollars went a long way for me, as I ended up spending nearly all of them at the on-campus Starbucks. In those seats, I made a lot of great friends, drank a lot of decent coffee, and developed a Starbucks twist on my perennial favorite: a (double-shot) dirty chai latte with soy milk, "no water". Why "no water"? Unlike my home coffee shop, which uses a powdered chai mix, Starbucks mixes a liquid chai tea blend with water before frothing the entire mixture with milk. Normally it's kind of flavorless, but if you ask them to hold the water, you end up with a drink that's actually delicious.

After freshman year, I mostly escaped the college's awful dining plans, and brokered access to rides in a friend's car to stock up on food, coffee, and milk for frothing. I also made one of the finest investments of my life: my first espresso machine.

Enter the Delonghi EC155. Stainless steel (some). Plastic (more). Pressurized baskets (though you can mod them to unpressurized). A frothing wand with a handicap. 15 bars of pressure that will vibrate damn near anything, including the espresso machine itself, off of vaguely smooth surfaces. A propensity to drip water and vent steam out of the frothing wand, the group head, and random places on the sides of the machine once it hits temperature. A stainless steel boiler of indeterminate size. No pressure gauge or built-in PID. Less than 2.6 inches of space for an espresso cup. No three-way solenoid, a drip tray that seems purpose-built to spill espresso runoff everywhere when you take it out to empty it (with a hole in the bottom, to boot, so anything you spill ends up on your counter under the machine). A pretty short cord, so you better have outlets above or right beneath your counter so you can actually plug it in. A built-in tamp that provides neither a good angle nor even enough pressure to properly tamp espresso. And of course, so little clearance beneath the frothing wand that you'll pretty much have to position the machine on the edge of a counter to avoid spilling milk everywhere when you try to get your frothing pitcher out from under the wand. But even more importantly, the EC155 is cheap, coming out to something like a fifth of the price of the next step up in espresso machine quality.

...It was love at first sight.

Never before had I owned my own espresso machine. Never before had I been able to put together a double shot when I first rolled out of bed with a college hangover. Never before had I been able to make 'spro bombs myself to keep college shenanigans going late into the wee hours of the morning. I practiced latte art, I developed my flavor palatte, and I had some great times with my college friends. My EC155 (or as I like to call her, "Spro") developed my love for coffee well past college and into adult life, where I learned to lean on Spro for my caffeine needs when I lived as cheaply as possible to pay off my student loans ASAP after college. Nearly a decade after first purchasing Spro, she's still serving me well as my travel/backup espresso machine -- I'm currently writing this post from my girlfriend's parents' house, where I'm staying for the entire holiday season (an espresso machine, of course, is essential to any good quarantine).

Of course, all good things must come to an end. Spro is no longer my primary espresso machine at home. I've upgraded to a Crossland CC1, thanks to the many lessons that Spro taught me about what features matter in an espresso machine and which features you can do without. Which comes to the reason I wrote this post in the first place: sure, the EC155 isn't the best espresso machine in the world. It probably isn't even in most espresso fan's list of recommended home espresso machines. It's awful... in all the right ways. Using Spro almost every day for 5+ years taught me about what kind of grinder I want to use (turns out, I'm fine with using a manual grinder for the small amounts of coffee you need for espresso shots), about what convenience features are worth the investment (a three-way solenoid helps you avoid drippy, wet pucks after an espresso shot... and the splash those pucks create when you release pressure by removing the portafilter from the group head), and about my use case for espresso: one to three shots pulled per day, usually with milk.

Making an espresso every morning makes me happy, bringing back all the memories of working as a barista, of pulling espresso shots back in college, and of finally making it on my own as an adult after graduation. So if you're looking for a low-risk introduction to espresso, think about picking up:

• A Delonghi EC155 ($99 or so)
• A stainless steel milk frothing pitcher ($8 or so)
• A < 2.6 inch espresso cup ($5 or so)
• The cheapest manual ceramic burr grinder you can find ($25 or so)

Hell, you can even skip out on the grinder at first if you want and just buy pre-ground bags of espresso. Just get yourself your very own Spro and see how things go. Maybe you'll find your happy place too.