Author: Seven

This morning’s shop ride started as so many rides start: a handful of riders spinning idly around a parking lot, getting ready. Settling helmets and adjusting gloves and stuffing pockets. Stopping to re-strap shoes. Riding off without water bottles. Going back for water bottles.

And then without saying much of anything we are off, all together, and climbing up the first too-steep hill with our early morning legs. The humidity of late summer blankets everything. Our New England, pine-rich woods feel like a rain forest, and before we’ve crested that first rise we’re all in a hard sweat.

All this heat and moisture are having prodigious effect on the plant life, and many of our regular trails are grown thick at the edges. Thorns rip at our arms. We take extra care to stay in the center line, despite the dew-moist stones that would put us off.

These are the ‘dog days‘ of summer, the hottest, steamiest time of the year. You start warm and finish wrung out. But you’re always glad you rode. Always.