Run home from work, 5.5-miles.

"High Points" along the trails I've visited in January 2020.

• West Suffield Mountain, Metacomet Trail, Suffield, CT
• Hank's Hill, Nipmuck Trail, Mansfield, Connecticut
• 50 Foot, Nipmuck Trail, Mansfield, Connecticut
• "Nick's Hill", Metacomet Ridge, West Suffield, CT
• Hart's Pond Hill, Metacomet Trail, Agawam, Massachusetts
• Spring Hill, Nipmuck Trail, Mansfield, Connecticut
• "Balanced Rock Hill",  Shenipsit State Forest
• "Stonewall Hill", Shenipsit State Forest
• "Bent Birch Hill", Shenipsit State Forest
• The Pinnacle, Shenipsit State Forest, Somers, CT
• Bald Mountain, Shenipsit State Forest, Somers, CT

Black Lizard / Vintage Crime #3 for 2020...  "The Locked Room", continued Martin Beck masterpiece by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, this time from 1973.

Black Lizard / Vintage Crime Edition Cover

Euro Version

Music 2020...

Effort #4,  "Belonging"...  the second piece for the Dark Heart Duo's Sweating Out Demons Sessions of  July 26th, 2019...

When will I belong here

Where will I fit in

Standing alone in this darkness

Waiting for sunlight to shine in

I can't feel sorrow anymore

I don't remember any pain

My life's turned so upside down

Deep inside I feel insane

Northern Shenipsit for 10.6-miles with Wuzzam on a really nice day for late January (mid-forties, dry, sunny).  We explored a bit at the start, completed our normal loop to get to Pinnacle, and then took the old path to the west of Bald rather than the Old Shenipsit Trail directly on the ridge to it.

Balanced Rock

Balanced Rock

Wuzzam at the old Whistling Tree (RIP)

Balanced Rock Hill

Stonewall Crossing

Carved Rock with sunbeam

Carved Rock

Twin Birch north of Pinnacle

At Todd Spring

Climbing Bald from the west

Another run through the Mather Loop, due to light rain throughout the day.  Opposite direction from yesterday (clockwise today), 5.2-miles.

5.2-miles just before dark on the Mather Loop.

The New England Trail (NET) offered another round of the Hike 50 Challenge in 2019, and they upped the ante by offering a Hike 100 Challenge as well.

In 2018, 340 of you completed the challenge, logging over 17,000 miles on the New England Trail! With over 1,500 signups from last year we have the feeling that some of you weren't able to complete your miles in 2018. Good news, we are launching a 2019 challenge! New year! Updated challenge!

In 2019, we are celebrating another important milestone on the New England Trail. March 30, 2019 marks the 10th anniversary of the designation of the NET as a National Scenic Trail. To celebrate a decade of adventures on the NET and to build on your momentum from 2018, we are launching a 2019 bonus challenge! In addition to our Hike50 challenge we are offering a Hike100 challenge where the rules are the same but the points required are doubled. To commemerate this anniversay, we will be offering a new special edition 10th anniversary patch for those who earn 50 or 100 points and complete the challenge in 2019! 

I completed the challenge for the second-year, and received a nice patch and certificate in the mail.

Black Lizard / Vintage Crime #2 for 2020...  "A Hell of a Woman", another masterpiece by Jim Thompson, this time from 1954.

Black Lizard / Vintage Crime Edition Cover

Music 2020...

Effort #3,  The opening to the Dark Heart Duo's Sweating Out Demons Sessions of  July 26th, 2019...

"Intro:  For You Are Dust".

Morning back at St Francis, test for DLV.  Late afternoon, a stop out at Phelps Road to run south along the snowy Metacomet Trail.  Signed in at the logbook, #2 of 2020.  Completed the 3.7-mile out and back feeling well.

Looking off the ledge at the sign-in log area

Enjoyable mid-afternoon 4-mile run along Main Street, once the sidewalks were cleared of last evening's snow (3" or so through the night).

Also, wonderful news -- from the Berkshire Eagle (January 17, 2020) concerning DCR: 

Mothballed Berkshires recreation area to rise again! 

State to reopen Windsor State Forest park area, once power restored.

Windsor State Forest, which was closed in 2009 for state budgetary reasons, is set to reopen this year, after an investment of $1.2 million from Massachusetts has been used for capital improvements. 

The lights already had gone out at a popular scenic destination here when the double whammy came. The popular Windsor State Forest was closed in 2009 to save the state money.

After a decade offline, the forest's recreation area will reopen this year, the state says, first to day use. Overnight camping might return later.

When the commissioner of the state Department of Conservation and Recreation announced in May 2009 that the Windsor site would be shuttered due to budget cuts, he was asked when it might be back.

"I don't think it'll be fiscal 2010," Richard K. Sullivan Jr. told The Eagle.

Turns out, it was a decade.

A spokeswoman for the DCR, says the state will invest $1.2 million to make a slew of capital improvements at the River Road site, located along a fast-moving section of the Westfield River not far from the Hampshire County towns of Cummington and Plainfield.

Work at the remote area, long popular with local families, is expected to start in April and be complete by late summer or fall. The site will open as soon as work is finished, Dorrance said.

Work will include restoring a riverside beach, upgrades to the area's bathrooms and other public buildings, fresh pavement, accessibility improvements and new guardrails along River Road and over the bridge that provides access into the area.

Some of the coming construction will lighten the impact of use on the environment. By rebuilding the parking lot, the DCR will seek to reduce stormwater runoff into the Westfield River, a prized cold-water fishery that carries a federal designation as a wild and scenic river. Similarly, new landscaping will seek to channel and filter water before it reaches the river.

When closed in 2009, the site was one of two state-funded parks in the Berkshires to be affected as the agency moved to cut 15 percent of its workforce in the wake of the Great Recession. That forced the DCR to lay off 330 workers, it said at the time.

Since then, the agency has struggled to operate its facilities in the region due to austerity, a report in The Eagle revealed in 2016. But, recent grants have enabled the DCR to improve trails.

Snow was predicted for mid-afternoon, as well as more very cold temperatures.  I didn't let it intimidate me any.  Finished up a nice 11-mile run through some alternative trails to the Metacomet in Penwood, and a bit of exploring in Talcott Mountain / Hartford Reservoir on assorted trails and paths.

Nice Stone-Crossing of an intermittent brook

Old Chimney Remains below Heublein Tower

Back in Penwood, along the rim

It was going to be cold, and windy, but I had confirmed company for a long run along the Nipmuck Trail.  Wuzzam met me at the Mansfield Hollow Dam (I believe that is what it is called).  We ran out to the "split" just past 50-foot, and ventured south again towards Puddle Lane.

During the run, we saw two really delightful sites;  Schoolhouse Brook was really scenic - I planned to take a few photographs on the return, but the trail extended so much further south that we didn't come back the same way.  Secondly, we ran in the Joshua Trust "Wolf Rock" Preserve, and Wolf Rock is a beautifully balanced rock as awesome as any.

Despite the low twenty-degrees, it wasn't ever cold for us, and we rambled through the trails for a meaningful 11.5-miles.

Memorial Bench at 50-Foot

Entry to Wolf Rock Preserve

Wolf Rock

Wolf Rock

Wolf Rock

Wolf Rock - notice "daylight" underneath the balancing

Wolf Rock

Wuzzam running strong

Table Rock

Wuzzam on Table Rock - giving size perception

Last summer, I stopped talking about commuting to work by bicycle, and did actually achieved it.

During the late 80's into the mid 90's, I commuted by bicycle pretty regularly.  For five-years (1985 to 1990) I didn't even own a car.  For a decade or more since the mid-90's, I would try to ride the bike, but nothing really developed consistently.

But...  in 2019, I managed some success!  I began riding a few days a week to work and back, starting on June 24th.  I stuck with it until August 16th.  In the end, I put 233.5-miles on the bike in 2019, over a six-week period.

I hope to get back to it in 2020.  Once the weather warms of course.  But, during the first month of this new year, it is good to look back to see what went "well".  Bicycling did.