Stage 3: March 10, 2010

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She Says: What a beautiful day!  It was a harmonic blend of all the right ingredients.  Beautiful, sunny pre-spring day, blazing blue sky, a challenging but scenic route with a lot of variety, and two enthusiastic chauffeurs, Isa and Rodrigo, who volunteered for pickup duty at the end of the run.

Lots of uphill at the start, rollers through Searsburg to Rt.9, a sweet but pounding 1.5 downhill - where we were tempted to try out the Runaway Truck Ramp, but passed -- then a scenic (but slightly soggy and sloggy) 6 miles down Somerset Rd to where it turns to snowmobile trail in the winter.

We have driven all these roads and know them pretty well, but I feel I've experienced them in a completely different way after running them.  I kinda feel like I OWN them. Oh yeah.

The sweet finale to the road run was heading a couple miles west from our pickup point to Prospect, for an XC outing with our intrepid chauffeurs. The best ski of the year!  Thanks Isa and Rodrigo.

He Says:  What a perfect day!  So good I'm not sure where to start so as usual I will default to chronologic.

This was one of those blue sky, high pressure, beautiful late winter days.  45 degrees with a gentle breeze.  I really felt like this was the first day of the adventure as it was our first full day in Vermont.  We also started with 4 miles of climbing over Searsburg Pass to make us realize we had made it.  The Searsburg windmill installation greeted us at the top with blue sky behind and snow on the ground - incredible.  Then a couple miles of rolling followed by 1.5 miles of bomb downhill (E was hauling; reminded me of when I took her on her first camping trip in Wyo how she really moved on the way OUT when we had hardly eaten for 3 days). We then followed the Deerfield River north for 6 miles toward Somerset with more gorgeous snowy views.

Even though this ended the run it just started the fun.  Our daughter, Isa , was home from Swarthmore on Spring break.  She volunteered to do the pick up (no 2 car deal for us this time) with her friend Rodrigo from Brazil via Swarthmore.  We all went over to our favorite XC ski area and skiied about for about an hour.  Isa is a downhill fan and Rodrigo had never had skiis on of any type.  They both did great,picked it up fast, and I even think had fun.  Then home for comfort food and vino.  Like I said, what a perfect day!!!!!