Winter is coming, the dark is rising, the seasons are turning, and the 2025 Monday Night Intro Ride season comes to an end tonight. But not before we eat a bunch of ice cream!

I threw a wrench in our normally orderly progression of ride routes tonight by altering our Northampton loop to include a season-ending ice cream stop. This had a bunch of cascading consequences that I had not really anticipated:

1. On unfamiliar roads west of downtown NoHo, a sudden stop caught Tony by surprise and dropped him to the pavement. "Just a flesh wound", he literally cried, and rallied onward.
2. A couple of big hills westbound on Route 66 were too much for Beth, and she pulled the plug and decided to turn around and return on her own.
3. My slowing down to ride with Beth broke the group apart, and they disappeared up the road ahead of me. "Turn left on Old Wilson", I shouted, but it was far too late.
4. Old Wilson -- turn left or continue on? I think Shelby had the route in her computer, maybe she turned them left? Or maybe they all missed the turn and went straight?
5. I'm gonna go left on Old Wilson. And continue on to the ice cream place. Maybe they stopped there.
6. They didn't.
7. OK, retrace my steps. Maybe they're still circulating somewhere between here and Route 66. This seems increasingly unlikely, but it's all I've got at this point.
8. They're here! At the intersection of Old Wilson and Florence Rd. Angels sang!

Now we're back on track. We proceed onward to Sips & Scoops in Easthampton, which has the most patient ice cream server in New England, as we overwhelm her with nine simultaneous orders.

I go first, and order a "medium" cone. This is a mistake. I wish I had a picture, but it is simply not possible to extract my phone from my jersey pocket while balancing this ridiculous tower of ice cream in my other hand.

The others in our group take notice, and the rest of the orders are "small" and "kids" and "baby-size". Some struggle with those as well.

Suffice it to say that Sips & Scoops offers an outstanding value proposition, and their ice cream is excellent as well (I heartily recommend the chocolate chip cookie dough). I'd link to them, but it looks like they just opened this summer and don't have a website yet, so you can find them on Google here.

We spent kind of a long time at S&S, so I had to alter the plans for the rest of our ride to get us home before dark. Tony had another little crash on the Old Wilson floodplain, without any visible injuries. We continued on through downtown Northampton, where the group did an excellent job safely navigating through traffic lights and pedestrian crosswalks and parked cars, arriving back at Sheldon Field at around 7:15 PM.

Thanks to everyone for a super-fun intro ride season!