Chances are extremely high, the Taconic is a straight shot right up to Chatham. Jason asked who organized it--seems a guy named Jon Stillman is the driving force--we chatted with him for a while, he is all about the ride experience, it's a labor of love. And of course the main sponsor is the local brewery, which puts out a solid IPA called The Farmer's Daughter <http://www.farmersdaughtergravelgrinder.com/event/>. For riders who follow the *Rivendell School of Riding*, and who like a challenge and appreciate otherworldy scenery, I heartily recommend this experience. It's limited to 400 riders, so not the kind of mega event that D2R2 has become. Also it features more woodsy singletrack; not super technical but certainly a challenge yesterday with the rain and mud and slippery roots and rocks.
Other notes: Once again, my 1975 Takara <http://www.velo-pages.com/main.php?g2_itemId=14477>was by far the oldest bicycle in attendance (same as D2R2 last year). I can say I did not see any other bicycle with non-aero levers or center pull calipers or clamped on water bottle cages! The brakes worked flawlessly in the heavy mud and on steep dirt downhills, though they did clog up along the sides, where I pushed the clearance running Bruce Gordon 700x43 Rock and Roads. What this tells me is that the gravel grinder segment of the bike biz has certainly made some market penetration rather quickly. And that I'm an old iBOB. Saw a young woman whose ride sadly ended at the 27-mile rest stop with a broken carbon fiber seat post--broke right where it transitions into the aluminum head. Luckily it happened during a slow section and she was able to walk to the rest area. According to the new Riv catalog, 15 million new bikes will be bought in the U.S. this year, with 800 being Rivendells, so that one in every 18.500 bikes is a Riv. Even cutting that figure in half for kids bikes, Walmart bikes, etc., that means one in every 9,250 bikes is a Riv. Seeing that there were at least three Rivendells at a ride with a max limit of 400, the place was crawling with them! Most folks road some kind of mountain clipless pedals. I saw a few platforms--but no Sambas! Bad group photo from first rest stop, I got my game face on, left the short sleeve Riv wool jersey in the car so as to blend more with the natives (no bikes in pic, though you can just see my handlebars in foreground:( <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-LFcECPTg1k4/WwK0aFPflbI/AAAAAAAAMJw/J8d1jvh070M2b2xdasD9bBQ_lZN0d3AUACLcBGAs/s1600/goofy%2Brest%2Bstop%2Bpic.jpg> Should have had one of my buddies take some shots of the bikes in all their muddy glory! On Sunday, May 20, 2018 at 9:04:33 PM UTC-4, jandrews wrote: > > Now that I think about it... I was driving back from from Great > Barrington, MA to Kingston, NY this afternoon on the Teconic and saw a > couple of nice 1x bikes covered in mud strapped to the backs of cars. Bet > they were returning from Chatham > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
