Happy Halloween!

 I first thought to open with belated Thanksgiving greetings, but figured if I was going for fashionably late, I should go big! 

2025 is an odd year, which means the Lapierres host Thanksgiving a couple miles up the road from where I was raised, and they invite my dad and me. Not only is the food good, but the company of their friends and family is fantastic, so it's well worth generating some extra appetite with the ride down to Connecticut.

There was another Thanksgiving tradition in Connecticut when I was living there, a Friday Turkey Burner ride as Case Mountain, which is conveniently a hour into my ride home, so after confirming that still happens, I planned to travel by mountain bike. Planned, that implies, not just forethought, but foreaction, but I was distracted by other activities and never truly prepped the bike that was what I wanted for the combination of a long road transit with rocky, technical singletrack in the middle.

Thursday morning I was up early, as usual, and tensioning the front wheel I'd laced a couple months ago. It was my first time truing a wheel with a thru axle hub, but luckily, my prediction that I could adapt my old truing stand to the modern hub with no add additional parts and just a slightly awkward hand placement was correct. It worked ok, although I will, eventually, make a less handy, so to speak, adaptor.

With the wheel reasonable tensioned and plenty true for disc brakes, I pirated a rim strip off another wheel, dug up a centerlock rotor and lockring, and then learned that the larger thru-axle axle doesn't allow clearance for tool insertion between the axle and lockring. Oops. Maybe I am, after all that, using my existing front wheel that I'd hoped to swap for the new one with a smoother rolling tire and Schrader valve to match the rear. Oh well, at least that wheel is finally finished, and I've learned there are special lockrings with external tool engagement to clear the larger axles. I've also figured out I can easily grind external wrench flats into one of the many lickrings I already have.

After fighting a worn-nearly-slick (smooth rolling) rear tire onto the other wheel, I left only an hour later than intended. Sometimes the worst laid plans are just the thing. With the delay, I rolled through Wilbraham in time to see the tail end of clean up from the Turkey Trot race my friend Mar had already left, and a couple hours later, I contended with traffic avoiding Main Street, still closed from the morning's Manchester Road Race. When someone rolled down the vacant street on a moped, I realized it was probably fine for me to duck under the rope barrier and traffic-free!

I'll count this as not bad,

 for a photo snapped on the roll.

I did make it to Paul and Sheila's with forty minutes to spare on dinner and enjoyed reconnecting their friends and family. Bonus, I have another friend to tap for hiking adventures in New Hampshire, as Sheila's brother Mark the Spark, who was tending the outdoor fire, lives near the coast when he isn't camping in his sleeping bag under Paul and Sheila's trampoline as a shelter!

In comparison, I was soft, sleeping in the luxury of my dad's "barn" (it's really an equipment garage) a couple miles down the road. Oats and yogurt for breakfast, all the layers I had with me, paper shopping bag insulation tucked into my shoes, the next morning I was on the road early to not rush, and ammend for my tardy, unfasionably late, arrival at the Turkey Burner ride a few years ago. I even had time to ride an extra loop over Case Mountain and avoid extra time getting cold waiting in the parking lot.

The ride went well, by one way of thinking. After the sixth time I stopped for the saddle bag that refused to stay strapped due to a EMS design that was not up to the bouncing of mountain biking, I decided to just fully remove it and stuff it in a pocket. Nope, pockets weren't quite big, so after a minute of fiddling, it went down the front of my shirt. I'd been comfortably closing gaps as needed earlier, but it seems the NEMBA (North American Mountain Bike Leaders Association--Steve, that acronym is just for you) leader didn't know one of the key aspects of a "no drop ride" is making sure the group is together at intersections.

I guessed. By the third intersection, I was pretty confident I'd guessed wrong, so I looped around, which had been my plan already, to have a daylit ride home. I returned to the start and collected my stashed bag a half hour earlier than I'd even hoped. On a bike, I have no issue finding use for an extra thirty minutes, so I rode north on the trails through Porter Reservoir, even reconnecting with the tail end of the old Detour de Connecticut loop! I like old friends.

RIP Detour de CT

This was just off the route,

 would've been hard to direct with cues, 

and missed the lovely roll along the reservoir,

 but wow, 

I love pine needle singletrack!

I did make it home, after taking advantage of the Connecticut law that requires gas stations to provide free air pressure (My friend Brendan taught me, if there's a coin slot on the compressor, just ask inside for it to be turned on), by 3:30, so daylight to spare! In that regard, I'll happily opt for safety over fashionable lateness. As for missing much of the official Turkey Burner, I was a pound and a half lighter this morning than on Thursday. They were calories well spent.