I sleep 8 hours last night. Much needed after all these days in the saddle. I’m starting to slow down, I won’t lie. This is a lot stacked up all together and if I weren’t in Vermont, I would pull a rest day for sure. We vacation hard, make no mistake.
It was raining when we woke up, which I was not sad about because it allowed me to just rest. And eat breakfast a few times.
This morning we see 4 people leave. First was Mitch, then Brian & Iggy, and finally Dan. It’s always a bit of a bittersweet moment when the crew starts to break up but it’s been a long trip, and a good trip, and it’s not as bad this time around. We’ve been seeing & riding with people since Sunday. So we’ve had a great run of it.
The weather breaks at 9 and the forecast looks clear from 10-2 so we plan to head out around 10. The overall plan on the day is to do a quick ride then hit the downhill park in the afternoon.
We ride from the shop at the top of the hill. We start with NewT, cross the bottom to Hogback, Piggyback, Hogback, Sidewinder and up West Bench to the former Lemonade stand.
We meet up with the others at this point who ride from the house so we are a single group again at this point.
We head up to the top and stop for the first part of the day. We went to the shop to get food, eat our sandwiches, get beer if you so desire, or get 2 double espressos like me. Solid stop for lunch and we hang out and enjoy it.
Glenn joins us at this point, having driven up from NJ today. We later find out that the bike park is not open, so we end up having to go back out and ride some more. No big deal, it’s still bike riding and the trails are likely greasy so it is what it is.
We head up to Heaven’s Bench, go Ridge-Rim to East Branch. And of course a classic picture from there.
We hit the bottom, go up Sugar Hill to Cow Path to hit Jaw. Loop Knob & Culvers Cut then cross the street to the other side. We head over to Sidewinder, do Piggyback to Hogback then Sidewinder again then climb up & out and head back to the shop.
In all we did 17.5 miles in just under 2.5 hours. The Strava link can be found here.
We went back to the house and grabbed our VMBA stuff and went to the bike park to get our free downhill tickets for tomorrow. We just had to fill out the waiver and give them the coupon and we had free tickets. It was super easy.
Then we went back to the house to snack, shower, and chill.
Dinner tonight is Mia with meatballs & sausage plus pasta & sauce. For a 17 year old kid this was a great meal. Solid stuff. We need more cooking kids in the lineup on this team!
Tonight was a good group. Conversation was some of the best of the night, a good mix of people & moods for whatever reason. Solid day, solid night, solid all around.
Day 8 done and in the books.
Traveling Normandy 