A few weeks ago, I bought a new disk for my home server: a 160GB drive to replace the original 3GB drive that had been my root partition. Last night, I installed the new drive and installed a fresh version of Debian on it -- I had been running a version of RedHat that originally had been amateurishly installed and then upgraded repeatedly and wasn't working well anymore. I have mail working now, I think, but I still have to rebuild the other services I want to use -- netatalk, apache, and moo are the only important ones, though there are a dozen other apps I want to install too. It was a challenge to install because the CD drive wasn't working. Eventually, I copied the relevant bits of the install CD to the other drive over the network and then booted from floppies. Debian rocks.
This morning, Lucy and I went on an adventure. We packed a picnic lunch and went to the 
Ware River Trail. The trail runs from Barre to Templeton -- about 10 miles. I had been looking at it as an interesting trail since discovering it on one of the rubel bike maps. Unfortunately, as we were getting ready to leave, I couldn't lay my hand on the map! I could find the ones for Cape Cod, Western Mass, and Eastern Mass, but the Central Mass one has vanished. I expect Alisa would know where it was. In any event, I remember that it was mentioned in one of the books of bike trails I'd been reading, so we made do with that and headed out.
The trail is almost exactly on the opposite side of the Quabbin, so we decided to go one way on the way there and the other on the way back. Since it was still early and cool, I decided to south, since it would be warmer. We drove through Belchertown and Ware, then headed up through interesting post-industrial country, through Hardwick to Barre. We made one wrong turn and had to turn round and go back a few miles at one point, but eventually found our way to the trail.
I had been aware the trail was unsurfaced, but the first stretch was particularly tough. I had guessed that since it ran along the Ware river, it would probably be a gradual uphill climb. (I like to do the hard part first and then have it easy all the way back). In addition, though, the first mile and a half were in loose, sandy soil with frequent large rocks (or small cobbles, perhaps). The subsequent part of the trail was open to vehicular traffic and had been packed down, which made it much easier to ride. We only rode three miles out (since Lucy hasn't been riding much).
There were many obvious clues that it had been a rail grade: a few small cuts and several large fills, but only a few ties, bolts and spikes remained of the rail heritage. As I was riding, I imagined the train workers enjoying the solitude of the forest and then remembered that it probably was a cut-over landscape when the trains were running. And, of course, there'd be a train there, which would reduce the feeling of solitude a bit too.
The ride back was much easier, as it seemed clear that it was all downhill. The last leg was tougher with the loose surface, but still easily managable. And after we got back to the car, we went for our reward. Just a half-mile or so from the trail was a nice park alongside the river with picnic tables. We chose one across from a little waterfall where a robin was singing its familiar rondelle.
To carry our picnic we used the Picnic at Ascot set that we'd received as a gift a couple of years ago and hadn't had occasion to use. It was great! We brought the left-over tandoori chicken we'd made yesterday plus some wonderful Madrigal cheese from Traitor Joes that Alisa favors. We had some pickles and olives topped off with some low-carb candy for dessert. And I brought a couple of bottles of Negra Modelo and got Lucy to drink soda pop, so I could relax into a stupor and let someone else drive home. It was a wonderful adventure.
StevenBrewer