As I walked around Plainfield (Plainfield has to be one of the best places to live in VT) I kept hearing reports of big snow the next day so i changed my plans. I wasn't going to wait for good weather, but instead ride as far south as I could. I was ready for some epic pedaling.
I left Erik's just after 7 and pedaled directly to Red Hen. Impressive place with a storefront as good as it gets, i really liked the place a lot. I toured the facility that was in the mix stage of production and chatted with Chollie the mixer. Once again I find that people who work in artisan baking also cycle. Most of the staff at Red Hen commute by bicycle. Owner Randy George, who i have yet to meet, is an avid cyclist who is known to do big rides like D2R2. In fact he rides it with ledgendary baker Thom Lennord from Kansas. I scored some free bread and ate many yummy pastries.
After Red Hen I pedaled up rt 100B in the cold rain, reminicent of the time I rode it with Allen. Except colder, it was below 40F. It turned to wet snow and my hands needed something better than the gloves I had (already using plastic bags in my booties). Waitsfield had nothing good. But then I found some heavy gore-tex gloves at the Warren general store for 40% off, score! And I needed them within 2 miles of when i bought them as the soaking wet snow cooled me off going over Granville notch and 40 more miles of snowfall to go. Brandon gap proved challenging to my drivetrain, icing up my cassette and derailleur. I missed my Rohloff at this point as i moved the derailleur by hand and was frozen out of some gears. Without the new shifting springs in my ergolever i would have not been able to shift at all with the ice, or in my new big gloves. At least the snow landing on the road was still melting.
There was a lull in the precipitation by west Rutland and i continued to charge south, now on the scenic route 133, that along with Brandon gap, was used for the Killington stage race. When I reached rt 30 in the center of Pawlet right there in front of me was a wood fired pizza shop!
I went in and immediately realized this was the real deal. Real pizza just like at pizza night here at OHill. Owner Deana Mach was standing there cranking out 450 prebake crusts for wholesale out of the most impressive pizza oven i have ever seen that her uncle made from 9000+ firebricks. Its solid, 100% firebrick, nothing else, with a fire chamber underneath and a groove in the back of the floor where the flames come up and out. When making prebake crusts she likes it at 1000F and just puts a fire in the back.
Watching Deanna bake reminded me of Noah. Precise and fast, hard to get a picture, especially with my camera lens fogged up after coming inside from the snow. I dried all my clothes at the oven and ate a ramp fiddlehead sausage pizza. Deanna suggested I camp out back so I set up my tent and came back in for another pizza, a masterpiece made from prosciutto, mushrooms and greens. Dare I say it, her pizza is a little bit better than ours. She also has one of those copper top dome mobile pizza ovens. She knows what she is doing.
And once again baker is a cyclist. Deanna told me about her bike tour of Argentina including Patigonia, the coolest place she's ever been. We talked for 3 hours about baking and cycling before I had to go to sleep.
Pawlet must be the other best place to live in VT, along with Plainfield where i left that morning, 115 miles apart. The pizza shop is attached to the general store which is built OVER the flower brook. It's post card perfict. I've been here once before and know that the surroundings are too, when you can see them.
But I didn't stay long, I woke up, ate leftover pizza and duck eggs, and took off into the snow. It was raining in Manchester where I stopped for a quick bite at a heath food store before climbing out of town. In walked a baker delivering his bread and it was Jed from Rupert rising. Jed had called Noah a few times for advice a couple years back so I introduced myself and we talked a while. He makes good bread, Noah approved (note to Jed: that doesn't happen often). Jed is a mountan biker. I cannot emphasize enough how imortant it is to ride bicycles if you want to produce good bread.
The climb out of Manchester proved challenging. A couple miles from the top the roads became slick, I let 40psi out of my tires. When i heard grinding pavement I would dart off the road into the snow and let the snowplows by. I had to take my glasses off because they were all froze up so I had stinging blurry eyes instead. On the descent I tried to stay below 12mph so i held the brakes. But then i heard grinding metal, my front pads were gone! That left me squeezing the icy rear brake the rest of the way at 20mph+ unable to stop. Fortunately the road turned wet before i expected, it had been a scetchy 5 miles.
I fueled up on a Northend Butcher sandwich in Brattleboro (best sandwich around) and gave Kevin a Mach crust sample because Deanna had mentioned she wanted to get in there. I'm Mach's new self-appointed eastern rep who tells potentail buyers that the crust is the best you can get, its just squished from being in my trailer.
But I forgot to fill my bottles, no problem, I'll just stop in westmoreland at my favorite water stop. No Jackie and Kelsey today, Dawn and Alyssa instead. I told them some travel stories.
Then I had a huge headwind to Walpole over the bumpy roads. 260 watts to go 10mph on the flat was zapping me fast so I stopped at Burdicks to recharged. A dark hot chocolate (no milk, all cream) and two rasperry tarts proved too much (or maybe Hannah gave me alcholic tarts to be funny) and I spent the next half hour feeling kinda drunk. I think, not sure because i've never been drunk before. Either way the powermeter said i was still rolling strong despite feeling tippy. By the time I reached orchard hill I felt normal again, but tired, and ready for some rest and some flying cloud milk. The northeast tour in April had been much better than I had hoped it would be.
day 21 115.1 miles in 8:08
day 22 94.6 miles in 6:59
tour was 1665 miles in 18 days plus 4 days off. i wish i had full powertap data, oh well.
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