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A good day to mountain bike
As the temperature cools, the slower speed at greater effort of mountain biking can make a warm place in my heart, and my feet, and my hands. Yesterday was a late fall day when I left midmorning thinking I was a wee underdressed, but it would soon warm, and a period of bustle to generate heat would beat having to carry an extra layer all day.
It didn't get warmer, but I was dressed perfectly for mountain biking. Alas, I was riding errands, not on a mountain bike, or is that truly "alas"? Or, is it just an opportunity? My picks for errand bikes the past few years have been the now substantially depreciated hybrids, and a hybrid, given the category name, can do it all, right? I've definitely ridden lots of singletrack on drop bars and 23c slicks.
Before a run on Sunday, Matt had shown me his loop from the day prior that included a stint running along the railroad tracks between Holyoke and Northampton, so that section of the line was already in my mind, and having made my stop in Holyoke, I was faced with the long, cool (figuratively and literally yesterday) descent back down to the river valley on Route 5, which is surprising bike friendly there, with a wide shoulder and most of the cars on the interstate running parallel above it.
The semi gravel, but much smoother than most railroad traprock gravel, service road alongside the rails, however, is entirely traffic free, closer to the warming speed and effort of mountain biking, and easily accessed through the park that Matt had used to exit it. I went a step easier and partly descended Route Five to the dinosaur tracks access point, with that trail crossing the railway before reaching the Connecticut River. I'm proud to say I even walked the fifty feet of dense leaves over slab rock that I'm fairly certain I could have ridden, but that sort of pride might proceed a tumble, and I'm really trying to learn!
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