I'm afraid this end might be better off dead

 Back in the days of the Friday afternoon club (a quad of bike riders who firmly believed in not stressing our quads), one idle banter that helped us enjoy the increased time between places at "expedition pace" (we firmly believed that 7/8 the fun was getting there, even if we never arrived) was discussion of the difference between "dead end" and "no outlet", two signs we often ignored.  New England has experienced depopulation, which makes for old, discontinued roads, which can make for some pretty fun getting-there!

Improved road after tall, tall grass.

Yesterday, to complete another of my type of triathlon (ride, cheer people running, ride, chat with people who just ran, ride, run, ride, splash, ride back home), I ignored a dead end sign on my roll down from Colrain into Greenfield. Open Street Map showed an old road (I know, cheating with tech, but I still avoid dark rides these days even equipped with hopefully noticeably more lights), so I happily ignored the yellow triangle and then was treated to a 5mph sign when the road changed to grass path.

Then the grass was a bit more so, and the path? It was a bit less so, so I found myself walking through chest high weeds. But "through" is the key word, and through it did go, shaving maybe a half mile off my distance at the cost of maybe only an extra twenty minutes of time. And I still made it home a little after 6:30pm, so I'll call it an profitable trade, even if maybe I won't consistently travel that route again. I took the path less travel, an that, well, I would probably be a bit different either way.