2024-10-29
This last weekend was the eighth annual Nutmeg Nor'easter, a fall bikepacking-adjacent event held in Connecticut. About 500 people convened at the former campgrounds of a boy scout camp in the woods, and camped and biked for the weekend. The event was organized by "Ronnie Romance" of Ron's Bikes and Ultradynamico Tires. The community of bikers that have coalesced in this particular bike niche tend to be focused on steel bikes, a combo of road and off-road, wool clothes, "retro-grouch" bikes. There were a lot of 80s and 90s mountain bikes and custom or handmade steel bike makers. For example, there wasn't a single bike jersey, gel bars, or aerodynamic road bike to be found at the event as far as I could tell. Instead, zines, retro bike products, mountain bike tires, old bikes and plenty of screenprinted bike tees were abundantly represented.
Bikepacking is the increasingly-popular activity of packing a bike for expedition and camping. In the past decade this has tended to differentiate from traditional "touring" by the prevalance of bags that hug hauled equipment closer to the frame, on the bars, under the seat. There are folks that use baskets or pannier bags as well. It's popular to haul your gear (including tent, sleeping bag, food, clothes, maybe a camp chair) on a mountain bike, or maybe a "gravel" bike. There are even bikes built to support this kind of riding, with additional knobby fittings that racks, additional water bottles, bags and other accoutrements can attach to. Without these, people use straps to connect bags to their bike.
This was the second year I attended the Nutmeg Nor'easter event, a kind of annual homecoming for those interested in bikepacking. I signed up with a friend to attend, and knew a couple of other folks from the NYC area bikepacking group that would be going. I prepared the night before by gathering my items and laying them out on the floor in my apartment. Since I had only gone on a previous bikepacking trip two weeks earlier I had a pretty clear vision of exactly what I needed and how it would get on the bike. It's a bit of a challenge to get all of your items on there, and to make the ride comfortable and not too, too heavy. My last trip was only one night, and was a bit warmer weather. So I added in a hand warmer and extra socks to my pile of things, but left the rain jacket and poncho behind.
My packing list:
On Friday I got to Grand Central Terminal around 11:15, grabbed a coffee, ran into a couple folks also wielding burdened bikes, and rolled onto the train to New Haven. There were a handful of trains throughout the day so I have a feeling a bunch of people came this way, trickling up the train system. Once on the train a couple more bikes rolled on in Harlem and then in the northern suburbs of the city. I had packed my ebook reader and downloaded some books from the library but I found myself talking to the other two bikers in my train car. One person was an architect I had met at the previous bike trip two weeks earlier. The other was a fellow that sews and dyes his own clothing brand that is marketed to bikers, a kind of urban cool but very practical clothing. They were friendly and we talked for the 3 hour journey. There was a layover and change of trains in New Haven before heading to a small town in Connecticut that was our destination. So another biker and I rode in New Haven to an asian market and bought some food supplies and I got a rice ball wrapped in bamboo leaves with some cooked beans and mushroom. The final leg of our trip was a pretty short train ride, and when we got off in the small town before biking up the hills to camp there were about 10 or so bikers there getting off the train. A couple folks wanted to go buy drinks (beer) to bring up the mountain, and others wanted to head to a supermarket first. I had a friend coming in later that evening and I had promised I'd bike back to meet her at the train and guide her up the mountain so I decided just to bike to camp and to go to the market later, and I set off with the two other folks I had taken the train up with earlier.
This past summer I had purchased a small Beeline Velo 2, a little bike computer for turn-by-turn directions. I think I should perhaps review this device in another post. It's about the size of an oldschool US dollar coin, maybe that's 5 cm across. I had pulled up the route from the train to camp, and so was able to lead us up the mountain through all of these beautiful back roads full of gorgeous fall leaves and babbling streams.
We arrived at camp around 3:30 or 4 PM and signed in at the lodge hall, the base of operations for the weekend. A former Boy Scout camp hall, it's all wood and has a huge fireplace and many chandeliers. Outside are two lakes and the woods. This (plus my tent) was to be home for the next 2 1/2 days. After meeting lots of people, I biked back into the woods along a precarious and rocky trail looking for a place to pitch my tent. But I ended up heading back toward a field in the woods next to an old rock-benched amphitheater and set up.
That evening I had some snacks with new friends in the hall, then biked down the mountain back to the train station to pick up my friend. Coming in late after dark and biking into the woods alone would be less fun than biking with a friend, so I wanted her to feel welcome and supported. We biked over to a supermarket to buy food supplies for the weekend. We purchase tuna and crackers, nuts, lots of apples, bananas, carrots, snap peas, and some beer. Then for dinner we bought sushi and my friend got a slice of individually wrapped piece of cake with lots of frosting.
We had a bit of a ride back up the mountain, then arrived. At that point a round of karaoke was beginning in the hall. We watched on for a bit and talked with friends while eating our dinner, which got only slightly squished in my bags. Then we biked deeper into the woods where I had left my tent and around 11 or so we went to bed.
The next day we woke up a bit later and headed to the hall to see who was around and would want to ride with us. The structure of the weekend is that the organizers have put together maps for 8 or 9 different potential day bike rides you could take, including offroad, road, gravel, to the beach, across a river, etc. You pick a route and a group of folks to ride with and then head out, with the plans for all to meet back up for dinner again at the lodge. So after some breakfast and cold brew coffee we ran into some friends I had met the previous year and at the handmade bike show and we joined together to form a small group ride to the beach. We chose the route that wound through the mountains, then on a gravel and protected bike path to the beach.
The riding was excellent. Despite hills at times it was overall not too bad, and always no or low-traffic back roads and paths through the forest, with the most incredible hues on the leaves. The weekend date had been selected to maximize fall leafy season, and all the leaves were in peak color brilliance. My friend R was riding a singlespeed bike, but she was able to keep up with us geared riders okay. She had thinner tires so had to be more cautious on the gravel and dirt where the rest of us could roll through with less care.
At one point in the rocky path, hmmm, all of a sudden I could feel something in the back of my bike. A deflation? I pulled over and sure enough it was a flat. I had brought a whole extra bike tube, tire levers, and frame pump, and had everyone near me, so I wasn't too worried. Despite my own experience changing flats, it sure is nice to have friends around when it happens since it's so rare on modern tires and tubes. N is an instructor at a youth bike program in PA, so she said she could change out my tire super fast, and I was happy enough to let her. In a few moments we were back on the road and moving, though I was at a more cautious pace as I hadn't been able to quite pump the tire pressure up to the full amount I like with the hand pump. There was a little bump in the tire as it went around and the bead wasn't quite "seated" exactly where it should be with the lower pressure. When we got down to town near the beach we passed a gas station and I stopped to get air. Despite my tires being presta valves I had recently thought to purchase a cheap schraeder adapter and put it in my patch kit tin, thankfully. This saved me! I was able to use the air compressor with valve on the adapter and it fully pumped up my tire. Phew. Now the rest of the trip was worry free.
We finally popped out along the coast, near Hammonasset Beach, and proceeded along the peninsula on the bike path, away from the cars, hugging the rocky and sandy coastline. We sat on the rocks, soaked up the sun, used a beach telescope that you have to drop a quarter in to use, and talked with folks at the beach. We even ran into a friend who had been on another ride. After some beach hang, eating snacks, and riding along the shore path we got back on our rides and began the journey back up the hills in a more direct route to take us back to camp. We were motivated by knowing they'd be serving pizza for dinner back at the lodge. I used my Beeline to chart us a path and we were back in an hour, with pizza at that point coming fast out of the brick oven. Friends brought us home brewed kombucha and hard ciders, and lots of conversation at this point, and catching up. A friend of mine from college was there, so we chatted a bit as well. That evening some bands played and there were DJs and a proper full-on techno dance party. It was pretty great after a day of riding and eating lots and lots of pizza. I danced til pretty late, and it was good that I did as it kept me pretty warm since I was about to go sleep in a cool tent.
Outside the temperature was 38 degrees fahrenheit (3 celcius). I put extra thick socks on over my feet, and I had that second puffy quilted camp blanket to throw over top as well. I also kept my winter hat on and put a shirt over my head. With all that I was warm enough, but too full of energy from dancing to go to sleep. Eventually I fell asleep but I woke up a few times in the middle of the night so it wasn't the most relaxing sleep. No matter. The next day we got up, packed up our tents and supplies and loaded up everything on our bike, ate or gave away our remaining food, then met up with friends to ride down the mountain to the train. We left before the singlespeed "scorcher" bike race and "bike speed dating/friending" whatever that turned out to be, but we wanted to get an earlier ride back into the city and there were limited trains. My experience the previous year on a later train was that the conductor was upset at how many bikes tried to get on, and I was worried they might make us miss the train back, so an earlier train was a better idea.
With our short layover in New Haven we all got sandwiches at the Subway, which I almost never would eat, but it was convenient. Then we got on our final train of day and landed back in NYC several hours later at Grand Central. We even met some bikers there, said goodbye to friends going a different way, exchanged numbers, then formed a train of perhaps 5 of us to bike into Brooklyn. And with that we started an hour or hour and a half ride home through Manhatten, through to the Lower East Side, over the Williamsburg bridge, down into Williambsburg, then made our way over to Bed Stuy, Crown Heights, dropping bikers off on the way, then eventually there were 2 of us left. I finished riding right, up to the front door, jumped off the bike, took a photo, then rolled in through the basement stairwell door, a very successful biking weekend indeed.
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