D2R2 weekend! I dragged (rather pushed) the wife along the new 50-mile paved route and, amazingly, she finished. It was a really challenging one with nearly 5000 feet of climbing. The hills were long and relentless. After tackling some of them I will be laughing at the local offerings we have in the suburbs.
The paved route was rather sparsely attended, I heard that only 20 people signed up. The main event, however, was as busy as ever. We didn't stop too often to take pictures but we balanced that out by stopping for the hills. The roads were mostly good pavement - some were cratered, but few - and mostly empty of traffic. There's amazing riding in this part of the state, and in the Berkshires as well. Wish I was more into road riding in college.
The most exciting part of the day, perhaps, was seeing a mother bear and two rather large cubs cross the road about 300 feet in front of us in the DAR state forest. Not only because it was an 'oh, crap...' moment, but because, from what I understand, it's fairly rare to encounter black bears here in the Northeast even when hiking, but on a bike?
Typical scenery, cool, humid morning was a nice start
The only unpaved part was this quarter-mile hill
On some of the hills you went down
Typical Western MA scenery
The very scenic Bardwell's Ferry bridge which was followed by a long, steep climb in full sun
Deerfield River
After-'party'. Good time for bike-oogling. There was everything: cheapish and expensive MTBs, huge fatbikes, a sea of titanium, custom-made, custom-painted models made by that one maker in that one shed, shiny rando bikes with Brooks saddles and canvas bags. In this sea of variety our road bikes looked fairly boring.
Swag