hikin' and bikin'

Another beautiful September weekend has come and gone. Sadly, this was my last weekend with Kaity in town! We spent Saturday doing some hiking at Mt. Monadnock in Jaffrey, New Hampshire... neither of us had ever been to the mountain, and it was an awesome day!!! We did some scampering, some scrambling, some climbing, and some obtaining summits. There are lots of pictures starting here.

So, after spending some leisure time at the summit, we scampered back down and headed for home. Sunday was yet another cyclocross race, where we headed to the annual Sucker Brook "cupcake invitational" cyclocross race. Richie and I celebrated the highly-anticipated cupcake extravaganza with this mondo pastry...

Sadly, I was not allowed to eat my cupcake before my race... but I did eat it very shortly thereafter.

Wallace Girls in Vermont

After fetching Kaity from the Berkshires on Saturday night and saying a quick hi and goodbye to our brother Dan on his birthday, we headed north for a Vermont road trip en route to visit friends in Waitsfield. We hit up the Apple Barn in Bennington (they were selling pumpkins already!!), the Bennington Monument, outlet shopping in Manchester, a fun store in Killington with unusual clientele, a sweet waterfall on route 100, and then finally made it to Scrag Mountain Road for the night. We caught up with some old friends from Dartmouth bike team in town for the Green Mountain Stage Race, and then left early Monday morning for a journey homeward via a stop at Dartmouth for breakfast and a quick hike. And now, I get to keep Kaity for a whole month until she goes back to Chicago for school at the end of September!!