By Tim Cary
Published 10/02/2010; Updated 12/05/2022

by apazmany » Mon Oct 04, 2010 8:12 am
It was a crisp, clear fall day, perfect for riding. A small crowd of 7 left Northampton 10 am sharp, including Mike H., Jonathan O., Paul D., Zak, Martin (who moved here last year from norther California – why?!?!). Mike and Jonathan planned to ride the short 25 mi Bikefest loop to check the road marks, and save their legs for the century ride the next day, so Mike decided to skip the warm up and hammered the first few miles out of town – maybe it was a warm up for him, but when I mentioned Zak that Mike must be cold without arm or leg warmers and must be trying to warm up, he replied that he was glad that he was not the only one thinking that the pace was tough. But just as we started to get used to the tempo, some road marks had to be fixed, so we left Mike and Jonathan with their spray cans and headed north towards rt 116 (Conway). My computer has a dead battery so I have no idea how long or how fast we were going, be felt as we were keeping a moderate pace to 116, where Zak broke off to get back to his text books. Paul, Martin and I headed through Historic Deerfield, toward Greenfield and then looped to the return leg of the South Deerfield time trial route. We picked up the pace to the Deerfield bridge, where Paul and Martin continued on River road towards Northampton and I coasted home through Sunderland. Door to door, from Amherst, my ride was just under 4 hrs, around 60 very pleasant miles.