Up Hill

Nope...don’t want to hear that end of summer jive from the TV, my co-workers or the DJ on the radio! As far as I am concerned, we are just getting to the creamy filling, July and August are the cake, and yes, the cake is good but September and October, thats the good stuff. This year, July was dry as a powder keg and August was wet, wet wet. so here we go, into September the time for not so hot and sticky days, clear sky and outside fun. Then the cool crisp weekends of October, the green turning to red and gold! This is the BEST part of summer. We all remember those first weeks of grade school, new blue jeans and fresh skirts masking dirt stained knees. In my option, we started school too early and we missed those sweet days of late summer. I am looking forward to the end of this humidity, I am waiting for the first local apples to appear at Mr Pott’s farm stand. It’s fun to feel like I am making my bike basket useful, stuffed with a bag of Empire apples and maybe a sweater, just in ca

So, it has been a long time since I posted anything up on the Uphill blog. I don’t know if anyone blogs much anymore. Except for the recent, poorly written, post about my adventure at the D2R2, my last post was in the winter of 2011! A lot of stuff happened over the last 7years, some of it was wonderful and some of it was very hard and sad, I guess that’s life. I will try not to go into the whole time lapse but there are times when I wish I had the DeLorean from back to the future. I am looking forward, looking into my 60’s now, there is no sense looking back, but if I ever get my hands on a flux capacitor… I am gonna fix some things!

Last weekend was the D2R2 Gravel Grinder event up in Deerfield Ma. I have been wanting to return to do this event for years but it is almost 3 hours drive...several years ago, I drove up and back in the same day, was exhausted and missed all the parties etc. So this year I made plans to camp at the event, I thought it would also be a good opportunity to do a first time in 35 years since I have camped. In preparation, I bought a 2 man back pack tent, a summer weight sleeping bag and a folding pad. Everything I got was on close out and the whole kit was under $100.00. I packed a small blue tarp to use as a ground cover, my coffee making kit, some food, a “brick” to recharge my phone, some cord, flashlights, borrowed a 3 gallon water jug from work and a medium size cooler to keep beverages cold. The camping was in a hay field and you were right along side your car....easy enough as I did not have to pack anything on the bike. It has been raining for days here and I was worried abou