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To Connecticut 2
We rode! It was fun, and I broke only one more spoke on the rear wheel of my trail bred hybrid, so the 2.1" tire still fit through the frame, and I only slightly regretted not remembering my intention to bring a couple spare spokes. Mary and I rode together off the back, and I'm confident I never hit her with explosively blowing my nose since I was typically following. I don't think we slowed the group too much and they had to search for us only once after they didn't wait at an intersection.
Then we ate! What's not to like about that? Ok, yes, Hohos and Dingdongs aren't so great, but there was nothing like that, except maybe one heavily frosted cake, but I had only a little of that. Both ride groups did finally convene for the feed, and I reconnected with many people I hadn't seen for years, even decades. Upon hearing my name in introduction, Rodger asked if I had a Ibis trials bike. We'd met when he sold it to me, when I was eighteen! I owned it about a year, and it even lived in the window alcove of my dorm room freshman year of college.
It was getting late, well past my dusk bedtime, and others started to make exits. Amy and Brian, who live just to the north on the verge of Case Mountain wished me farewell on their way out just as I was contemplating the same, so I asked if they had room in their vehicle for an extra person and bike, which would allow me to avoid riding busy roads at night. They'd came in a van with room for at least twice me and gear, so my time on the road that night consisted of crossing the end of their cul-de-sac to the trail into the Case Mountain area!
Even better, they told me to stop by in the morning, so my camp breakfast was hot leftover tofu and rice with some fresh egg scrambled into it along with the enjoyment of some more company and seeing Brian's other toys, like the narrow, standup snowmobile that he uses for packing fat bike trails. Of course the danger of something so small and nimble: it might make you question switching to the bike.
Farewell said again, I found my way down through their neighborhood on first guess (down was a good one), and used the new connection to the bike path off the Case Mountain Pond Lot that Brian had let me know finally became official after users created it despite it being left off the original design. Who would want to ride their bike to access a trailhead? Um, yeah, Connecticut DOT doesn't think of questions like that.
The path took me down the hill to the new town pump track my friend Seth had told me about, and I agree with Brian: it's ok fun, but ridiculously short. I completed two circuits of it and continued on my way north a minute and a half later. It was still early for a Sunday morning so I rode Main Street through the center of town, found a porto-let after movement caused my second movement after leaving Amy and Brian, and then pedaled over to the rail trail entry that was the original start of the Detour de Connecticut. From there I saw run group after run group after at least a few more run groups.
Connecticut incentivises litter clean up more that Massachusetts. Over a decade ago they added return deposits to bottled water, and a year or two ago, they expanded that to juices and doubled the incentive to ten cents. I was riding without panniers, so focused my clean up on the more environmentally dubious plastic bottles, and found 90% of my returnables in stops at two woody patches that seemed to encourage litter bugs and weren't long before the supermarket a couple miles south of the border.
I was rewarded for my cleaning efforts, and I don't just mean the $6 and change. In the uncertainty of my health and ability to make the outing, I hadn't given advance warning to Mary Lynn the day before, and I'd failed to reach out to my friend Steve (Just call him Steve, not High Mileage Steve.) to see if he'd want to join me for part, or all, of my return trip. It was ok. Connecticut is a small state, so after feeding the can machine at the market, I finally noticed the bike someone had walked into the bottle return room while I was busy. I also noticed the rider loading the pannier with groceries. It was Steve!
Ok, yes, I've said before that I'm a bad atheist on account of being so fortuitously lucky, but crossing paths with the two people I intended, but failed, to contact before the trip, well, Amen! It was fantastic for both me and Steve to reconnect, and while our paths were heading opposite directions, we did spend fifteen minutes together in front of the market. We'll have to actually ride together again soon. Heck, I might even dip into Connecticut again to do that!
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