Look, here’s the deal. As an excercise in finishing what you start, I told myself I couldn’t post any other stories until I finished Nutmeg Part 2. I wrote 95% of this soon after Part 1, then proceeded to Penelope’s Tapestry it for the better part of a year: Start to write, stop, delete, edit a little, hate everything, delete, ignore for weeks, write about other things, edit, decide I’m over writing forever, ignore, write, delete, write, ignore.

But I have a few stories I need to tell. Some old, some new. And Nutmeg v10 is in a week.

So, here you go. Part 2 of the Nutmeg Nor’Easter. From over a year ago.

Sheesh.

SCREAMO

Less than fifteen miles to go and we were all falling apart in our own ways. Personally, I had threatened to scream if we had so much as one more hill to climb. I did a quick toggle on my Wahoo. We had nine more hills to climb. And while the noise I made might have sounded like a sob, I assure you, it was a scream. Deep and powerful. Brimming with strength and vigor. More a barbaric yawp than anything, really.

And definitely not a sob.

Screaming or not, I was still in my good place. The riding was exactly the kind I like. Long stretches of paved and unpaved roads interspersed with deep pockets of trail. Drop bars in the woods. And it was beautiful out. That low and dappled, almost seizure inducing autumn sunlight that makes everything too bright one moment and too dark the next. A bright, golden world touched with reds and occasional and striking pinks and purples.

The last gasp before everything turns to sh*t.

(sob)

Look… I know everyone j*zzes all over themselves for Fall. That the cooling temps seem a welcome respite from the heat of summer, and the turning leaves make everything magical. But for me? It’s just melancholic. The beginning of the end.

Even that melange of colors is somber. Those yellows and reds and purples. These are the colors of a bruise.

A bad one.

I love summer. Love it. LOVE IT. I love the green. I love the heat. I love the humidity. Even in late July and August when the world is an overgrown, blown out mess. When you can smell the kudzu baking on the side of the road and every plant in the garden is either begging for death or getting a terrifying straggly second wind. I love it. I love long hot days on the bike that leave me dehydrated and destroyed. Simultaneously sun bleached and sun burned. Finding random spigots and dumping bottles of water on my head to try and cool down. Early mornings on my front porch watching the sun rise and the world wake up. Late evenings on the back deck, watching the sun set with the bats and fireflies. Cold showers to cool off before bed because we don’t have AC. Drifting off to sleep with the windows open… the hum of an overworked box fan and the cacophony of cicadas.

I love it.

September and October just mean that winter is closer than it is far. That I’ll have to wear sleeves again. That my bulbous nose will soon perpetually run. That my hands will tingle on every ride. That it will be dark when I wake up And that the world is about to turn brown and grey and cold… and stay that way for months.

F***ing. Months.

(sob)

SWEET LIZARD ILL-UMINATI

I had hooked up with James, Patrick, and a few others for the long route. “82 Mile Mixed Nutmeg Grinder” as Ron dubbed it. “The best of Nutmeg Country.” James is from Evansville umm… IN? IL? and I’ve ridden with him for portions of three different Noreasters. Patrick lives in Portland and is, next to Ron, the other half of Ultradynamico Tires. Patrick is also, alongside Ron, a founding member of Team Wooly Mammoth, which alongside Superissimo, Team JVA, Manual for Speed, Embrocation Journal, and OG Ritte Van Vlanderen… was a part of what I honestly feel were some true halcyon days of road cycling.

Funny, absurd, occasionally problematic… but always celebrating the kind of epic days on the bike that hollow you out and fill you up.

In comparison, everything these days feels so… cloyingly earnest. But in the most disingenuous of ways. Like a megachurch. A new trope of hollow, manufactured, hip-youth-pastor-stoke married to weaponized therapy speak.

Real talk? I blame the midwest gravel scene.

(sob)

VAN OF CONSANT SORROW

I made it, by the way. Through the rest of the ride, sure, but I mean to the actual Nor’Easter. With the van non-start problem mostly solved, I had decided to stick with my original plan to stop at Hudson Valley Brewing in Beacon, NY. Discovered by Dar on one of our Vermont or Bust road trips.

Incidentally, I don’t love sour beers. They’re neat-o I suppose. But., enh…I’m ok. And truthfully, when I get north of Pennsylvania, I fall victim just like everyone else to the NEIPA sickness. But f*** me, Hudson Valley makes some good sour beers. And I’m intrigued by places like Beacon, NY – always playing my favorite game: Could I live here?

Real talk: I could probably live in Beacon.

But…

Real talk: I could probably live anywhere these days (even the midwest). At least for a year.

In fact…

Real talk: I yearn to live anywhere else for a year these days. If even just in the vague and vain hope that it might make me feel something remotely close to a sliver of kindness towards my current residence of Greensboro, NC. Or honestly just make me feel anything about Greensboro other than a profound, pervasive, and perpetual disappointment.

(sob)

I pulled into Deer Lake as the sun was starting to set, and after being guided to a scenic campsite on the pond, I simultaneously unloaded my bike, loaded a bag with beers… and went off to find my friends. Some with real names. Some just instagram handles.

LE RON

I forget who told me this, but the story is that back in the early 00’s, he was hanging out in a well known bike shop in Austin when a buff young man with blonde hair came in and at some point during the conversation pronounced that he would one day be the “coolest cyclist in the world.”

True? I have no clue.

But let’s be real… story tracks. And let’s be real… he might have pulled it off.

(If we don’t count Taylor Tot. Obviously.)

I suppose I can see where he can be polarizing. Albeit, almost exclusively to older riders who either faded out or never had their day. Rolling their eyes when they see him talking about luft caps in a sponsored Instagram ad. Or when he starts his own tire line based entirely on a look and “feel.” Or when he eschews the stock sustenance at an event and forages for wild greens instead. Or when in the year of our lord, 2026, he intentionally manufactures a box profile carbon rim… for a rim brake bike. Shaking their bitter heads and going “this f***ing guy.”

But it’s that romance thing. There’s something to it.

I first met John/Benedict/Poppi/Ron at a Specialized launch back when I was barely moonlighting as a journalist.

At the time, I think I likened him to Serpico. He’d created this character and at some point realized he was in too deep. But unlike a lot of the would be cool-kids-of-cycling that I’ve met over the years, the Ron that came out the other side is genuine, humble(ish), self-deprecating, and extremely accessible (to a fault).

And the brand he’s built, coupled with the chemistry that he and Arya have (as well as a banter that always makes me lol), has definitely helped foster and inspire a whole new culture of cyclists.

ALT CYCLING MADE ME A HOMO (SAPIEN)

Because when I was growing up, riding a bike was not cool.

Especially in the southeast.

All cycling was Alt-Cycling.

By which I mean, that even during the 90’s “boom,” it was still just a fringe sport inhabited by weirdos. And I mean true weirdos. Not socially hip and fluid millenials looking for a personality. I mean a sub-culture of proto-neuro-divergents who had found an obsession that no one understood.

If I was lucky enough to meet another cyclist in the 90’s, there was a 1000% chance they looked like this….

And 0.00000000666% chance they looked this…

The roadie pros weren’t cool. Mostly they were an ineffable breed of Euro.

Mountain Biking had a scene though. Norba races were literally the surf competitions of landlocked kids everywhere. Baking in a field or perched trailside while the PA blasted Jason and the Scorchers. A new pantheon: Missy, Tinker, Tomac, Tilford, Furtado, Ned, Jaquie, Charlie, Herbold…. But even they were just a fringe subset of unpopular kids forging their way to popularity in an unpopular sport.

And outside of Helen, GA, 1994, all of that might as well have been happening on a completely different planet from me. Those people lived in Marin County. Durango. Santa Cruz. Not the cultural wasteland of suburban Sandy Springs Unincorporated, Atlanta GA. And certainly not Greensf***ingboro, NC.

Look… what I’m getting at is… riding a bike is borderline cool these days. And whereas it used to be commonplace, it’s rare (rarer, at least) that people yell homophobic slurs when I ride by in tight clothes.

And I think Ron and Arya are a part of that zeitgiest.

WHERE ARE THE PUNKS?

Do I have opinions about “Alt-Cycling?”

OMG, yes.

Because Alt-cycling is as guilty as any scene of wallowing in the kind of prosaic mimicry that is just as boring and cringy as the guy who showed up to the group ride in 2001 on a Trek OCLV in a full Postal Service kit…

Just in this case it’s mullets and mustaches and pizza tattoos in jorts and Bedrocks on bikes with baskets and bags.

The worst person you knew growing up who definitely didn’t ride a bike suddenly reinventing themself as some kind of connoisseur and maven of all things velo. An abrupt interest in photography taking precedence over their previous enthusiasm for stealing vinyl from the college radio station and supplies from the local Food Not Bombs chapter.

Everyone building up similar versions of the same thing. The same brands. The same bikes. The same parts.

(OMG, I literally just googled “alt cyclist” and this is what came up.)

(sob)

But while there will always be an element of cooler-than-thou pageantry from a few too many who know less about bike history and geo than the Bill McGanns of the world have forgotten, there is also an underlying ethos of re-use that I am 1,000,000% behind. A conscious decision not to trash a perfectly fine bike just because the industry wants (and needs) to sell you something new. Or just because that bike happens to ride like complete dogsh*t.

Because have bikes gotten better?

Yes.

(And no. But that’s a post for another time.)

But if bikes hadn’t improved over the years, and fully rigid Univega Alpinas were all we had, there’s no question… I would still be obsessed.

The barrier to entry in cycling is subjective. You don’t need a modern, progressive bike to have the best time of your life. A 30 lb whatever with Dia-Compe cantis and barely functioning Shimano STX is still infinitely better than not riding a bike.

So if that’s all you got, start there. And then, as you progress through the game and defeat the various bosses, one day you too can build up a fully rigid titanium 32″ singlespeed with carbon parts that costs more than your “nice” car.*

Or… a boutique $5000 rim brake bike with bar end shifters and box profile carbon rims.

And wonder who you even are anymore.

The term might be new-ish, but Alt-Cycling has been alive and well for a long time. Certainly longer than I’ve been a part, much less aware, of any of it. In my own narrow story arc, I have to give mucho credit to Stevil for his “How To Avoid The Bummer Life” blog and for being a beacon in the early days of owning my bike shop and desperately searching for remotely like minds in the industry. Hosting his Underbike parties in Vegas to celebrate the true underbelly of passionate alt-proles keeping the cycling industry alive.

These days… I see some of those same faces at Nutmeg. But there are a lot of new faces too. Some are trickledown from the megachurch of neo-gravel. Some are overflow from the venn diagram of the punk and activist scenes. Either way, like Underbike, Nutmeg is about as close to my people as I’ve found in the cycling world these days.

And why, unless the weather is sh*t and I make the spur of the moment decision to chase the sun in another direction… I will see y’all in late October.

EPILOGUE: BROWN MORNING TO LIVE

I’d awoken in a state.

Typically, I have a little time. A morning ritual with a simple predictable sequence of events. Down a glass of water. Flap my arms and hop around in a parody of a “lymph flush” I watched ten seconds of on instagram one time. Start the coffee. Go outside and look at the sky. Start to doomscroll, take my first sip, and immediately need to make haste to the bathroom.

I had no such luxury this morning. I woke up in a sweat. Crawling out of bed and scrabbling in the bulkhead of the van for my trowel and a roll of TP. Stumbling to the periphery of Ron and Arya’s lower meadow and digging a very hasty hole. Missing the mark in my panicked state and using a stick to try and prod the equivalent of baingan bharta into said hole.

And I was ready to leave it at that. Toss the stick in the woods, bury the debacle, and be done. But feeling bad enough about pooping (poorly) in a friend’s yard, I decided last minute to adhere to a modicum of Leave No Trace and at least take my TP with me. Fishing it out of the hole and packing it away for later disposal.

And I promise you… I wetwiped and sanitized my hands for what felt like forever.

But apparently missed a spot.

Damn.

I didn’t touch anything in their house, I swear. But there was a very awkward moment when I was saying my goodbyes, and Shovel Research Sal extended her hand to shake. And despite having gone and washed my hands extensively (yes, in their sink, so I guess I touched something), I no longer trusted myself. And so instead of extending the complimentary hand, which was suspect, I extended the opposite hand… which just led to Sal having to awkwardly clutch my fingers as if I was the honorable Lady Catherine De Bourgh.

There. We did it.

Thanks for reading this far.

Next up: A road trip to Florida that Rich and I took over three years ago.

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