Road harvest

 Late summer is harvest time for farmers, and that may be true for people, like me, who like riding bikes and finding treasures on the road while doing so. It makes sense. More people are willing to do things outside in summer, and they often use outdoor equipment to do that, and after driving to the great outdoors, they find the roof of their car a convenient place to forget things. I come along later to find them.

Yesterday I rode to Greenfield. There's nothing new about that. I like the town in general, but yesterday I had two specific reasons for the trip. One, the lard bike fork I ordered from a shop up there had arrived (more on that once it snows and I try my half-fat, call it 2%, bike that won't force my knees to pedal like a duck), and two, I wanted to scope out potential campsites for before I volunteer with the D2R2 ride at 5:30am on Saturday morning.

The first site I checked was under the Route 5 bridge at the southern entry to town. On the Deerfield side, there is a path heading down to the Deerfield River, and while it isn't my first choice for a place to spend the night, the underside of bridges will still be dry if the actual weather produces the forecast maybe rain. Bonus, I found the floating water thermometer which is the blue stick midway along the inflatable's right gunwale. Of course, technically, that was more of an under-the-road find. The matching, lightweight gloves, a rare size small which will be perfect when I want a snug fit, truly came from the road, a hundred yards apart, just before that.

From there, after a stop at the always friendly (it's Greenfield) bottle and can redemption business, I headed to the bike shop where they saw me arrive, pulled out the fork without me asking, and had me on my way with a new receipt to replace the one I put in my pocket and sweated to tatters the day I placed the order. Hampshire Bicycle Exchange, in addition to being closer, is still my favorite area shop (They sell used bikes and parts!), but the store in Greenfield was super helpful and they sell the brand that had leftover lard bike forks at a 90% discount. Who would want anything so convenient as a wheel that can be quickly removed without tools? Yes, please, thank you, I'll take that!

Now to decide, do I want more than one?

I could have once again opted to skip the ride down the Route 5 corridor by hoping on a FRTA (anagram that!) bus, but the weather was super pleasant for riding, and another option for avoiding the busy road would take me right past Saturday's ride start, so I could do a bit more campsite scouting. I did find my first choice if Friday night's weather is dry, and it had once been someone's sylvan party spot, so I was paid almost a dollar for cleaning up their discarded beer cans. Even though many of those were the jumbo, more than twelve ounce sort, I still had room in my handlebar bag for a bunch of the apples I found before reaching Stillwater Bridge a few miles later.

In a couple weeks, some friends are orchestrating a run of the local ridgeline, starting with Mt Tom, and finishing at the notch visitor center. There's a big river, the Connecticut, midway along that route, and the plan is to swim it. After crossing Stillwater Bridge, I found another option: a one person inflatable boat. I, while not exceptionally good at it, like swimming, but options are good, even if they serve just as a way for me and others to transport dry shoes and socks across the river. Something big and bright orange might also serve as a good warning to those piloting boats with motors. The inflatable was mostly deflated, but the fact that someone had left a stick in the one way valve to make it that way had me optimistic it wasn't simply discarded with a tear. I rolled it up and put it on the increasingly loaded rack.

Yup, the picture is a good testament that the boat is hole free, and it's still holding air this morning. Now it's time to replace the drive-side rear spoke that broke half way up to Greenfield, before I loaded down the rear rack with everything I found. The thirty-one remaining seemed to do just fine.