2023 was a good year for me and for YellowBird. There was plenty of chaos and stress. Balancing a schedule with a family (Kiddo started kindergarten this year) and a day job and YellowBird has been a struggle but I feel like I am getting better at it. I made a career jump a few years ago from bike shops to aerospace machine shops. The learning curve has been steep and exciting. That has been my biggest focus and now I am letting YellowBird overlap with that. I decided to make a topcap simple project to play around with some of the machines at my disposal. I had no idea that people would respond so well to them. So, that’s been amazing. I even made a trip out to Portland, Oregon for the MADE show. That was an experience. Anyway, it’s been a busy and positive year. With all of this on my plate I didn’t manage to ride my bike nearly as much as I would have liked to. I also didn’t let that fact be a point of frustration. This is a big deal if you know me. I did manage to do a few bigger rides this year with very few small ones in between. Not my typical way, but I made the best of it. Some highlights were a three day bikepacking trip in Vermont, the Higher Ground ride in Pennsylvania and the Nutmeg Nor’easter. Each one was a treat. I was hoping to get one ride in before the season was over that would be solo and challenging. I settled on a Solstice 100K. I chose a short route that I ride frequently and decided to make laps out of it. I could stay close to home and get mostly dirt. When the shortest day rolled around I ended up with some unplanned family stuff. That’s just how life is. Then I found a day in between christmas and new years that worked. So, with a few bottles of water and some snacks I headed out. It was a warm day for late December and we had seen a lot of rain the few days prior. This made for some real spooky fog. I love it. You may have also noticed that I love taking pictures. I decided it would be fun to take my Camp Snap camera along for the ride. I currently have it set up so that it shoots in black and white. I am very excited about this silly camera. So, i decided it would be a fun challenge to see how many shots I could take over the course of this ride. I ended up killing the battery at mile 25 out of the 62 I rode. But that’s fine. The pics I got do a beautiful job capturing the mood of the Connecticut woods on that day. Here they are. Unedited. 2023, one final adventure.

Winter Solstice 100K.