Spoke quest

As you know, I've been breaking a lot of spokes lately. As cool as the 31 spoke pattern is, I want my rear wheels to stay burritos and not tacos. So, while eating pho yesterday, Dario and I decided that we should buy new spokes in Berlin. So, we rode down to Berlin Bike yesterday on two of my 63 spoked mountain bikes. Berlin Bike is a good bike shop, because they take the time to sell you the correct length spoke even if you're going to lace it yourself. I really appreciate that.

Vietnamese car cats

Greatest veggie burger ever made

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Getting ready

It's the last weekend before I have to get up at 4am, drive to Deerfield, MA and ride the D2R2. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm still worried. I've been riding my bike a lot, but not exactly in the D2R2 style, a style which is difficult to ride in the greater Hartford area. We've got like two dirt roads and the biggest nearby hill is like 1000'. So, my plan this weekend is to take a place drive out to Salisbury on Saturday and ride up Mt. Riga into the Mt. Washington State Forest. It's a redux of a failed ride from earlier this year when the road was impassible due to snow. It looks to have a little more than 2000' feet of climbing and be at 1/3 dirt. This is it on gmaps pedometer. Anybody want to join me? It's not even a 50 mile ride! We'll go through Bash Bish Falls, which I hear is very pretty.

image stolen from the new england waterfalls website.

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Big hill & Vietnamese food

One thing that I forgot to mention about my trip to Vermont was the big hill I rode up, Burke Mountain. It's really big! Like 3270'! We don't have anything that high in Connecticut. And, unlike that wussy hill climb race they have (just kidding), I climbed half of it on the nasty & unimproved Civilian Conservation Corps Road out of Kirby. Well, anyway, it's not that big of an accomplishment, but I highly recommend it. It has a really pretty view from the observation tower. So, does Monadnock Mountain in Essex County. However, you cannot ride your bike up Monadnock Mountain. Also, if you've never been to this site, you really ought to.

Riding down the mucky Kingdom Trails singletrack of Dead Moose Alley and Moose Alley and all that stuff was also pretty cool. In my opinion, the trail network on Darling Hill is pretty cool in its buff-ness and twistiness, but the Burke Mountain trails are so much longer, tiring and better.

This is the view from Monadnock's fire tower:


I find it weird that two of New England's monadnocks are simply named Mt. Monadnock or Monadnock Mountain. The drumlins of the region aren't all called drumlin. Other places are able to think up more creative names.

Also, the new Vietnamese place, Hiep Phat Vietnamese Fast Food, on Park Street at Dorothy Street is really good. I highly recommend it. Very authentic, or at least, it seems authentic to a guy named Brendan Mahoney.

*I stole that Burke picture from Snow-forecast.com.

ps. Sorry for subjecting y'all to my crappy attempt at a narrative about riding at Kingdom Trails.
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