The farmer said the road is washed out but you are welcome to try it.

I drove up to Durham, NH early for my son's orientation for University of New Hampshire and went out on the Ridley to ride a few dirt roads near the school. The first one was this Class VI road that checked on the NH Dirt Roads Website/Map as a through road but as you can see on the other side of that pipe it's just a choked trail that's washed out in many places.

I think even the cows thought I was crazy

They were looking at me like I was going to feed them, too.

I timed my arrival perfectly with the weather report. It said rain in the morning and then clearing by midday. Granted, the roads were a little wet hear and there.

With my unsuccessful attempt with that road I had to detour around Packers Falls.

Here is where that Class VI road came out - yeah, that was a good choice.

Then came the second dirt road of today's route.

And then the weather didn't want to cooperate any more.

I was cursing myself for not bringing my new rain booties.

The next dirt road ended at a gate but looked pretty good so I continued on.

Then Napoleon reared his ugly little head.

It had stopped raining at least

but now I was riding single track 

and then came the slippery boardwalks.

Except of the boardwalks, the Ridley was riding really nicely. In order to run a 40t cassette I put on a SRAM X-5 derailleur turning the bike into a mullet. I had read this was the best mountain bike derailleur that works with road lever/shifters. My only concern was that there was no barrel adjuster to adjust the cable attention.  Turns out, I didn't need it because shifting was really good.

I wonder if the beaver working on this tree realized that perhaps he bit off more than he could chew.

Also tested out a holder for the Varia today. It snaps over it and has a lanyard loop so it can be dummy corded to your saddle rails so that if it did fall offer during a ride you wouldn't lose. This happened to a friend of mine and I have been paranoid about losing my Varia ever since. It worked great!

The gearing on the Ridley is so good that I did the whole ride in the big ring!

There was more boardwalk to traverse

before I left the Heart of Darkness.

Both my bike and myself were a mess.

With more rain I decided to abort the course and just ride back to Durham and check out the campus.

The University has their own train stop on Amtrak's Nor'easter Line and the smallest platform I have ever seen.

Almost Go time for Brodie!

On the way back to the hotel I stopped at a Farmer's Market and bought some delicious Cheddar Goat Cheese.