Friday, June 11
It was inauspicious. The windshield wipers were on steady now, sweeping away raindrops, not the mist which earlier had begun to obscure my view of Rt. 2 and solid grey sky as I headed west towards the start of the Pure Water Ride 2010. The forecast had been gradually downgrading for days-first it was ‘mostly sunny’, then ‘partly sunny’, then this morning’s ‘mostly cloudy’.
I had been checking the weather for Northfield, MA each day for the past week, looking for a good weather day that would fit into my schedule to begin the ride, and had all but decided it would be today. “I should have waited” I told myself -the declining forecast had been warning enough, but this morning I was ready, not just ready, but really ready, and a look at the weather for the week ahead was not encouraging either. I resigned myself to a cloudy, grey day and hoped and prayed it wouldn’t rain. The good news was that I knew this year’s ride would raise some money for pure water-a few sponsors had already spoken to me.
The Pure Water Ride start is the Northfield Mount Hermon school which was deserted of students, although a grounds crew was at work, or more correctly at a coffee break. Which was perfectly understandable because as usual, the gorgeous grounds looked like they did not need any landscaping. This year I was able to see more than a few buildings at a time-no fog, and enjoyed a slow lap around what must be the best view of any school in Massachusetts. Dwight Moody sure knew how to pick a location, his school for girls on the other side of Northfield has a glorious view also. I have a feeling that God has something to do with it. He is the reason Dwight started the Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies in 1879 and Mount Hermon School for Boys in 1881, to give young poor people an opportunity for education that they would not otherwise have. Right now the buildings were locked as it was before the summer session, so I was unable to post a Pure Water Ride sign.
So another year’s ride began. The rain had stopped and just like the weather man had predicted, it was mostly cloudy. The area around Halifax was fun exploring. This year’s route was different-a lot of new roads from last year meaning a lot of unknowns. Sure enough the first unimproved road of the ride was blocked by a blowdown too high to drag the bike over and too thick to cut through. I hadn’t brought my folding saw anyway, an oversight that I was to regret many times during the day. The second was also blocked by a blowdown which I might have been able to cut through…
Out with the maps and improvising a route around gave an opportunity to glimpse the rural scenery so different from the flat and crowded suburbia I’m so used to. Until the next unimproved route which soon disappeared into the wild outdoors. Retracing my route to a junction, I took the other branch, which turned out, after threatening to end exactly the same way, to be a nice old town road, even if it was not the one I had planned to be on. Out with the maps again! I don’t know, because I’ve never tried, but I suspect a GPS out here in the boonies would be about as helpful as trying to figure out which side of the trees the moss was growing on...
This got to be a somewhat of a routine which was nicely broken up by a friendly homeowner in Brattleboro whose driveway I ended up on, having made the wrong choice at a Y at the end of the road. His greeting was “Can I help you find something”? We had a very pleasant conversation and he was very helpful and pointed out the right way to go and assured me that I could make it on my bike-not like the BMWs from NJ that often followed their GPS’s only to end up just where I was. He said he felt like putting a sign at the foot of the road, “It ain’t going to happen” or “You’re GPS is Wrong”. A sign which I actually did see later that day in Dover. If only there was someone like him at every wrong turn… By 2 o’clock I was just in Dover and still a long way from my planned lunch stop in Wardsboro, and being quite hungry, pulled over to the side of the road and had lunch. Only one vehicle went by while I ate a leftover from breakfast Egg McMuffin, which happily had morphed in my backpack to a sausage McMuffin.
The route back was, by design, more straight forward with only one unknown, an umimproved road in Halifax. It was on this final explore that I had a foreboding revelation. It came when I came upon the nth blowdown of the day. Stopping to check it out, I realized the leaves were still green and attached. Yep, it was just a week ago that we had that tornado warning in MA. Hmmm…’wonder if it came through here’? I mused…thinking back through the day remembering green leaves on a good many of the blowdowns of the day. Back roads travelers like myself benefit a good deal from the diligent maintainence of snowmobiling clubs who keep so many of the back roads clear of blowdowns during the winter, but it would likely be fall at the earliest before they tackled any of these.
Oh boy, a summer ahead of blocked routes...
It was inauspicious. The windshield wipers were on steady now, sweeping away raindrops, not the mist which earlier had begun to obscure my view of Rt. 2 and solid grey sky as I headed west towards the start of the Pure Water Ride 2010. The forecast had been gradually downgrading for days-first it was ‘mostly sunny’, then ‘partly sunny’, then this morning’s ‘mostly cloudy’.
I had been checking the weather for Northfield, MA each day for the past week, looking for a good weather day that would fit into my schedule to begin the ride, and had all but decided it would be today. “I should have waited” I told myself -the declining forecast had been warning enough, but this morning I was ready, not just ready, but really ready, and a look at the weather for the week ahead was not encouraging either. I resigned myself to a cloudy, grey day and hoped and prayed it wouldn’t rain. The good news was that I knew this year’s ride would raise some money for pure water-a few sponsors had already spoken to me.
The Pure Water Ride start is the Northfield Mount Hermon school which was deserted of students, although a grounds crew was at work, or more correctly at a coffee break. Which was perfectly understandable because as usual, the gorgeous grounds looked like they did not need any landscaping. This year I was able to see more than a few buildings at a time-no fog, and enjoyed a slow lap around what must be the best view of any school in Massachusetts. Dwight Moody sure knew how to pick a location, his school for girls on the other side of Northfield has a glorious view also. I have a feeling that God has something to do with it. He is the reason Dwight started the Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies in 1879 and Mount Hermon School for Boys in 1881, to give young poor people an opportunity for education that they would not otherwise have. Right now the buildings were locked as it was before the summer session, so I was unable to post a Pure Water Ride sign.
So another year’s ride began. The rain had stopped and just like the weather man had predicted, it was mostly cloudy. The area around Halifax was fun exploring. This year’s route was different-a lot of new roads from last year meaning a lot of unknowns. Sure enough the first unimproved road of the ride was blocked by a blowdown too high to drag the bike over and too thick to cut through. I hadn’t brought my folding saw anyway, an oversight that I was to regret many times during the day. The second was also blocked by a blowdown which I might have been able to cut through…
Out with the maps and improvising a route around gave an opportunity to glimpse the rural scenery so different from the flat and crowded suburbia I’m so used to. Until the next unimproved route which soon disappeared into the wild outdoors. Retracing my route to a junction, I took the other branch, which turned out, after threatening to end exactly the same way, to be a nice old town road, even if it was not the one I had planned to be on. Out with the maps again! I don’t know, because I’ve never tried, but I suspect a GPS out here in the boonies would be about as helpful as trying to figure out which side of the trees the moss was growing on...
This got to be a somewhat of a routine which was nicely broken up by a friendly homeowner in Brattleboro whose driveway I ended up on, having made the wrong choice at a Y at the end of the road. His greeting was “Can I help you find something”? We had a very pleasant conversation and he was very helpful and pointed out the right way to go and assured me that I could make it on my bike-not like the BMWs from NJ that often followed their GPS’s only to end up just where I was. He said he felt like putting a sign at the foot of the road, “It ain’t going to happen” or “You’re GPS is Wrong”. A sign which I actually did see later that day in Dover. If only there was someone like him at every wrong turn… By 2 o’clock I was just in Dover and still a long way from my planned lunch stop in Wardsboro, and being quite hungry, pulled over to the side of the road and had lunch. Only one vehicle went by while I ate a leftover from breakfast Egg McMuffin, which happily had morphed in my backpack to a sausage McMuffin.
The route back was, by design, more straight forward with only one unknown, an umimproved road in Halifax. It was on this final explore that I had a foreboding revelation. It came when I came upon the nth blowdown of the day. Stopping to check it out, I realized the leaves were still green and attached. Yep, it was just a week ago that we had that tornado warning in MA. Hmmm…’wonder if it came through here’? I mused…thinking back through the day remembering green leaves on a good many of the blowdowns of the day. Back roads travelers like myself benefit a good deal from the diligent maintainence of snowmobiling clubs who keep so many of the back roads clear of blowdowns during the winter, but it would likely be fall at the earliest before they tackled any of these.
Oh boy, a summer ahead of blocked routes...
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