AMC Outdoors, September 2008
The clouds hung heavy, white tinged with gray, and the pavement sang under our wheels. I was admiring a barn that looked like chocolate falling-down cake when I felt my rear wheel bouncing under my weight, a sure sign of a slow leak. We pulled off the road near a field of dandelions while an original three-banger Mini Cooper clattered by. As I plied the tire irons under the bead and yanked out the shriveling tube, I took stock of my traveling companions. Tom was a perennial of my cycling adventures. Unflappable and uncomplaining, he was always a star on the long hauls. Jessica, just a young’un, had gotten serious about racing and in the last year had surpassed Tom and me in raw horsepower (and we were proud). This was our first time meeting her new boyfriend, a man who had soloed Race Across America four times. We watched them jibe and parry, and in a quiet side discussion later agreed Ed was worthy. I pondered how bikes had brought us all together, happy to fix the flat, get my fingers sticky on a chocolate bar, and have a short break in their company.
For the next 20 miles, we flew along a branch of the fast moving Ammonoosuc River. By the roadside, a particularly derelict fire engine and a red covered bridge caught my eye. We picked up Route 112, escorted by the swift water, and rolled into the hamlet of Bath.
If you’re a hungry cyclist, it would be hard to find a better small town than Bath, which features a white church, a village green, and a general store (in business since 1790) called the Brick Store because, well, it’s made of bricks. As I stepped off the bike, the fragrant cloud of a meat smoker engulfed me. If the visuals in Bath aren’t enough to throw the switch on your personal time machine or you don’t feel the same way I do about salty, fatty meat (yum), there are homemade doughnuts and brownies to be had. For a good five minutes I stared at a horse collar-sized smoked sausage, but decided it would slow me down when we started back uphill. Tom lounged on a porch bench and some teenagers asked about the price on the ’65 Plymouth Fury parked out front. I thought maybe they’d seen fuzzy dice hanging from a rearview mirror before, but I wondered what they were going to do with the crate of 8-tracks on the front seat. Chuckling, I guessed that somewhere someone had written software to rip 8-tracks to MP3s and like everything else, it was on the Internet, probably sitting next to a digitized version of Lucy Crawford’s History of the White Mountains.
After a good long diversion (can you say ice cream?), it was time to pedal the last 15 miles back to Littleton. Our friends back at the bike shop had instructed us to take the back roads from Bath to Lisbon. This involved crossing the Ammonoosuc over a covered bridge (reportedly the longest within state boundaries—cool) and passing what seemed like 60 snarling dogs (uncool). We did a little climbing up Pettyboro Road and it felt good to get out of the saddle. Then came the best riding of the day through fantastic farmland spattered with dandelions, more melting barns, and what will undoubtedly be amazing fall foliage. Absolutely gorgeous really. Then we flew down Dodge Road, crossed the dam at Lisbon, and found ourselves back in the real world called Route 302.
The road is full of cars and trucks, but for the most part the shoulder is wide and there’s the rushing Ammonoosuc, full of islands and granite boulders that once were the peaks of mountains taller than the Himalaya (or so they say). Unfortunately, the western outskirts of Littleton are prey to big-box stores. I felt the concrete closing in, until we arrived miraculously back in the center of town where human scale returned. As we locked up the bikes, a light rain started to fall. Together our newly bonded group walked to the Littleton Diner on Main Street. We talked about what the day’s ride would look like come fall and started planning our next biking adventure. Then I tucked into seven-grain pancakes and the glorious salty, fatty meat that is corned beef hash.
—When not on his bike or trying to get the last day of winter declared a national
holiday, Sam Nejame is an independent management consultant. He cooks a mean
stew (of salty, fatty meat). >>Leef-Peeping Tours, prev. AMC Experts Pick Their Favorite Rides>> 
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