I borrowed a helmet and took off on my bike this morning to see what I could do on the side of this big hill. The house is up a hill on packed dirt/gravel. It was fine going down with a few places of loose dirt/gravel. I negotiated that fine and got to the pavement and decided to go uphill first. The climb was reasonably gradual. At the end of pavement, I could go straight on some packed dirt/gravel or go right and stay on pavement. I went right and shortly encountered the first hill of the day that I had to walk up. I walked up the hill and found a lovely pasture, a dead end and some good natured kidding from one of the home owners that had witnessed my failure.
Once back to the main road I chose the pavement downhill and came to the spot that we had walked up last night and thought it was not quite as steep so I decided to try it. I almost made it. Walk #2. Back down to the road to continue down hill. I came to the short inexplicably steep part that I thought would be challenging from driving up it but hoped I was warmed up enough to do it. I rode a short distance below it and turned around. I made it exactly to the spot I was concerned about and had to walk a bit. Walk #3. As soon as I got above that spot I was able to ride to where the road changed to gravel. I only had about 3 total miles of cycling at this point so I knew I was going to have to include the gravel. I heard gun shots in the distance and was relieved to discover a sports club along the road. I felt OK on the gravel but turned around before a hill. Back to the pavement and down the hill again. This time I decided I would go even further beyond the menacing steep hill and visualized “the little engine that could”. No such luck – at almost exactly the same spot I had to stop and walk. By now I had about 6 miles. I was hoping to get 12-15 miles but adjusted the goal to 10 miles. Back up the hill and onto the gravel road, past the sports club and up the hill and beyond for another half mile. By the time I got back to the driveway of where I was staying, I was still 1.3 miles short of 10 miles. So I rode downhill .7 miles which was just shy of my nemesis hill and turned around to climb uphill again. I hit 10 miles about half way up the driveway to my destination.
After a bit of a rest we were off to Hogback Mountain where you can see New Hampshire to the east, Massachusetts to the south and New York to the west. The photo does not do it justice.
The day ended with a picnic at an outdoor concert sponsored by Next Stage productions held in a open area behind the Inn at Putney. They had it set up with cones where “pods” of people could sit at a safe distance from other pods and flags marking aisles where people could walk to get to the cones. It was well organized and it seemed to work well at the beginning. By the second set, people were milling around between cones. Masking out of pods was done reasonably well.
Sofia Rei was the latin artist that performed. The music was great. The dancing increased as the evening progressed. The community seemed to thoroughly enjoy the evening as did I. My biggest concern was avoiding bug bites as I am a bug magnet. I was successful.
A truly Vermont evening.
My new helmet and mirrors arrived today so I will be all set for the ride along the Green River tomorrow. And by the way, I did my checklist.
Tamara Unleashed 