Kingdom Day 2: Moose Alley, then more Highlights

Saturday morning, we wake up and start our first full day on the ground, the first full day we will wake up in Vermont, ride bikes in Vermont, then go to bed in Vermont. This is always a good day for all of us. This is where you queue up the We Are Family song by Sister Sledge. I guess the kids these days say, “We fam.” Indeed, we are.

We wake up to a foggy morning, which we let burn off before heading out.

I make a lot of eggs, almost 4 dozen. Jason makes a lot of eggs, probably at least the same amount. Ryan makes pancakes because he’s vegetarian and Glenn makes sausage because he’s not. The coffee is a bit of a process, with me just making an Aeropress cup for myself and Jeremy (who bought me the coffee beans) while Alex brews cup-by-cup for the long line of people waiting for their caffeine fix.

We roll out, 19 of us at once. The 2 kids (Donovan & Kai) skip the first part of the day, as do Jason and Tim. This is by far the biggest MTBNJ group ride in our 5 years of coming to Kingdom Trails. The plan this morning is to do the Moose Alley loop, which should be a sub-2 hour hop then we’ll go back to the house to regroup.

The crew lines up for the big Moose Alley loop this morning. Possibly this is our biggest crew ever in 1 ride in Vermont.

D lines up for the day, ready to roll.

The ride up is long and a bit wet, so it’s a bit of a bigger slog than in years past. The trail up is Burnham Down, which is the old way down before Moose Alley was built. There is now a new Burnham Down (or is it Burnham Up?) which is what we take, as the old trail is currently closed due to the wet trails. While it is a tractor pull up, this is the roller coaster clicking up before the big downhill.

Looking up at the ski hill at the top of Moose Alley, note the snow still on the slopes.

We slow roll into the start of the downhill then self-select our way down. We’ve done this rodeo enough to know what order to go in, and a few people clear out of the way as I roll through. I ride in a 3-way train down with Ryan in front, Mark in the middle, and myself in the back. I enjoy following their lines but on the middle kick-up they bog down in the mud and I grunt past. After that I find the run downhill less enjoyable, as I don’t have any wheels to follow. Eventually we all run out and collect at the base of the hill.

We regroup at the bottom of Moose Alley, the main part of the morning loop now complete.

While we’re out that way, we also hit Farm Junk, Sky Dive, then Nose Dive. Each of these are fun runs, and since they’re close to the bottom of Moose Alley, we take the opportunity to roll them as well. We head back to town on the relatively new Ware’s Davis, then all make our way back to the house for…

Lunch break!

Rolling into the house for a lunch break.

In the past we typically avoid stopping for lunch because taking a stop at the house is a bad way to keep the continuity of the day. In previous years, we’ve learned that packing a sandwich and eating on the trail is the best approach. But we’ve also never had a house directly ON the trail. So it was a bit more logical this trip.

Alex & Ryan talk during our lunch break.

After lunch we hit many of the highlights again, but not quite as many as yesterday since we did a lot of miles already this morning. But in the end, we did almost the same route as the day before with a few cut-outs to keep the climbing to a minimum, which isn’t always easy to do here.

Starting the second half of the day, we take a quick stop to check on some mechanical issues on the way up & over Darling Hill.

Each year, we like to stop at the snack shack at the top of Sidewinder and D gets a lemonade, and this year is no different. She got lucky on this one as there was exactly one cup left when we got there. I ate a cookie, which looked good but didn’t taste as good. Still I’d eat it every time.

The lemonade stand, something that we need to stop at every year.

We bumps on a log, taking a break at the lemonade stand.

The happy couple, with the big hill in the background.

The Strava link of the day can be found here. The trails we did, in rough order:

Burnham Down up, Moose Alley down – the big loop
Farm Junk, Skydive, Nosedive – fun runs while we’re there
Misc trails to Ware’s Davis to Schoolhouse
Home
Uptown, Herbs, Wood N You – the standard up & over
Tody’s Tour, Bennington, Troll Stroll – 2 of the 3 Ts
Eager Beaver, West Branch – to connect to the usual fun stuff
Hogback, Sidewinder, West Bench Piggyback, Hogback
Up to water, road to the shop
Heaven’s Bench, Rim, Ridge, East Branch
Widow Maker, Pines – because Pines
Riverwood
Kitchel – because you need to finish here

Dinner is on Jeremy tonight, and he makes a solid meal of grilled chicken and steak, plus a killer vodka sauce (recipe). Jason manned the grill while Jeremy wore the apron in the kitchen and between them they knocked it out of the park.

Jason & Jeremy work out the dinner thing.

Nailed it, just nailed it tonight.

Tonight we had our team meeting, which is something we try to do once a year at the very least. We have many irons in the fire and we discussed a lot of things. In time, the team’s direction in the coming year will be something I put on the team blog (link here), but for now, suffice to say that we’re doing a lot. We have a lot of directions and we’re trying to have better focus these days.

And that is a full day of Kingdom Trails. From top to bottom, we nailed this one. With that, it is bedtime.