Labor Day Camp & Ride

This year's Pathfinders Labor Day campout was another great one.  The continued gracious hospitality of Bob and Marie D. is inspiring.  Each year they host 50 or so dirtbikers and families on their beautiful, pastoral mountaintop property.  This year the loop was expanded to 14 miles, thanks to lots of work by Bob G. and Kevin B.  The usual good food was served up with a special addition from Anthony's portable brick oven for pizza.  Weather was perfect except for a little wind on Saturday that up-ended some EZups and made sleep a little tough with all the noise from flapping tent flies.

Conditions were the dustiest that I've seen in the five or six years that I've been going there.  By Monday, the grass track was throwing up so much dust that it looked like it was on fire.  The trails were plenty dusty too.  You either had to ride right on the leaders rear or hang back 100 feet if you wanted to see anything.

As usual, Rick B. and I had a great time running together on 4-5 loops.  He's probably 10% faster than me, so having him behind me forced me into sprint pace for long stints.  Got some good feedback from him on corner speed too.

Already looking forward to next year!

Something a little different this year, Steve E. and I spent Sunday morning out on the adventure bikes.  We picked up the Puppy Dog Route just across the river in Brattleboro and followed it for about 80 miles to the north.  Lots of cool unpaved roads and nice vistas.  We're talking about maybe using the PDR as part of a multi-day adv ride next year.

Captain Chaos didn't realize his helmet was on backwards.