First things first….When you go on a ride and plan on taking pictures, remember to put the SD card in your camera.  Otherwise all you end up with is dead weight and 2 post ride pictures.

It was stupidly windy this weekend.  Pretty much 15+ MPH constant winds with gusts in the 30+ MPH range.  It makes the idea of running outside or riding my road bike pretty difficult to fathom this time of year.  I had to get out though.  I really had not ridden  any bikes since last Sunday.

The weather this week has been pretty cold and windy.  I think the high’s have barely tickled the upper 30’s and the winds have been pretty constant since Thursday.  At times I felt like Toto and I would end up in Oz.

Anyways, I finally had to breakdown and go for a ride or risk going crazy.  Paul blew me off to go mountain bike on the Cape and something about celebrating his Anniversary, so I grabbed my Salsa Fargo today and headed out to the dirt roads of Canterbury.  I wanted to stay out of the wind as much as possible and I know that the dirt roads  between Route 132 and 106 are very sheltered, and roll up and down quite a bit.

The roads were kind of like riding on a wet sponge.  It was very squishy with a very frozen/firm layer about 1/2″ down.  Thank God it wasn’t slick or super wet.  The bike actually stayed relatively clean for how damp as the roads were today.
I wish I had not forgotten my SD card, I ran into some “hippie cows”, a random dog that wanted to play fetch, and some Alpaca.  Plus the roads I was riding on have tons of beautiful old farm houses and the Clough Tavern just near the center of Canterbury.  It’s one of the bonuses of riding in NH.  We have 150+ year old houses all over the place.

It didn’t take long to clean the bike.  The most of the dirt was on the downtube

It was not exactly a fast ride, but this bike isn’t built for speed.  It was fun to get out and explore some of the back roads nearby.  When they dry out a bit, I plan on hitting them on the cross bike and extending the loop.  Last year I some how made it all the way to Tilton on a mix of dirt and class VI roads.  I’ll have to figure that one out again now that I have a GPS and can map it out this time.