For the past seven years or so, I've been doing a Solstice Brewery Tour in my region on the weekend closest to the summer solstice (for maximum daylight!) It started years ago when I realized that there was a way to ride three of the closest trail systems with only about 20 miles of road (and all of that early in the day when the roads are more or less empty anyway.) I've been snakebit by crappy weather the last few years, seemingly always running into some kind of monsoon rain storm right around the time I reach Wissahickon. I would have preferred to do the ride a weekend ago this year, but family obligations kept me from doing so. Considering the 18th was (1) the start of my vacation, (2) unseasonably cool but perfect MTB weather and - most importantly - (3) dry, I was sure that I would miss my only shot at a perfect weekend and the replacement date of this past Saturday would be a mess of mud, rain and stifling humidity. But turns out I was totally wrong. Sure, it was a bit hot all day, but I'm okay with that. The weather was actually pretty perfect all day. Still, after a week off in which I didn't exactly key on fitness and the fact that my lower back is at this point a 50/50 proposition to leave me weeping on the side of anything resembling an incline, I wasn't 100% sure I could even handle the distance anymore. But I'm a firm believer in the notion that if you're going to do stupid things, you have to go full stupid or don't go at all. So Saturday morning at 6 am, I saddled up and rode out of my driveway to do another trip around the region's best trails while sampling whatever breweries I encountered along the route. I had a mechanical to deal with early on - my BB was acting up and I never got it properly sorted, so I just dealt with creaking all day but I spent a good 20 minutes trying to fix it. As a result, I ended up skipping my first stop at Conshohocken just to stay on track. As a result, only visited 5 of my usual 6 breweries (in order, Manayunk, Wissahickon, Forrest & Main, McAllister's and finally Well Crafted.) All in all, a pretty solild day ...