Fall Overnight (almost)

Planned to do an E24O (extended 24 hour overnight) with Greg this weekend. Ride ~60 miles. Climb halfway up the spine of the Green Mountains. Hike a bike / ride in to Camp @ Silver Lake. Ride out in the morning through Moosamaloo and The Natural Turnpike for breakfast in Bristol. Ride home.

Greg hammered all week to get a roof on a project he was finishing up… so his legs were toast. At the ~35 mile mark he said he felt worse than when we completed the Lake Champlain 200k. Options were to continue on with a major bit of work in front of us, or slowly head back home. He chose to call it, and offered to ride back to my place solo so I could carry on. Not willing to leave him stranded and suffering (and with no way to carry the 10 year old 3 season tent on my own, and manage to still carry my extra layers, food, and stove) – we enjoyed a leisurely ride home.

A bit of a disappointment – but when I woke up this morning to freezing / sleeting rain and took a short ride to the local cafe I was glad not to have spent a night at higher elevation with a 60 mile wet, rainy, 40 degree ride home.

Bike and gear worked admirably. The tent is something I didn’t carry last year. A bivy and tarp setup is in my future for the cold. All in, a good day out.

2011 Vermont Brevets (tentative)

2011 will be a big year for our local VT Randonneuring rides. We are running a full series here in VT to accommodate local qualifying for Paris-Brest-Paris. Tentative schedule for 2011 pending RUSA approval is as follows:

4/9/2011 Champlain Valley (route TBD)
200k Brevet RUSA / ACP
Burlington

4/30/2011, Lake Champlain
300k Brevet RUSA / ACP
Burlington

5/21/2011 Green Mountains (route TBD)
400k Brevet RUSA / ACP
Burlington

7/15/2011 Montpelier-Maine-Montpelier (route TBD)
600k RUSA Brevet
Montpelier

10/01/2011, Fall Classic
114k RUSA Populaire
200k RUSA Brevet
Burlington

ACP Brevets will qualify you for PBP.
Our 600k will be RUSA certified only – and is being offered as a ‘tune-up’ ride for PBP (or any stateside 1200km). It is also available for anyone interested in a challenging ride from Montpelier, VT to Maine and back via the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

We will be adding our Cafe Cruise as a RUSA Populaire sometime in early spring / summer, and are working on a Sunday ‘training+social’ ride series to leave from the Old Spokes Home beginning later this fall and running through the winter and spring – shorter rides in bad weather, with studded tires, and all – as winter allows.

Fall Riding

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Another great day out on the bike. Spent the first 20 or so miles with the usual suspects then rode solo to meet the family in Cambridge for a harvest festival. Picnic lunch, great scenery and a field full of Trebuchets tossing pumpkins made for an interesting afternoon. Color was perfect. Temps were cool. Sky was blue. Could not have asked for a better day today.