Photos by Conan Thai, Kevin Gates, and Peter Shrieve-Don

The people who show up to the Nutmeg Nor’Easter, a popular New England bike gathering, could be described as misfits. They sport scraggly facial hair, septum piercings, flannels, and patches that say things like “ANTI-YOU.” They could have emerged from the year 2008, fossilized in a kind of crusty hipsterdom. Their bikes are misfits, too. They are laden with patterned frame bags, panniers, and reflectors that resemble pizza slices. The words “Cordura” and “Dyneema” are widely understood here.

On a sun-dappled late October afternoon, I watched hundreds of these misfits trickle into a defunct Boy Scout Camp in Southeastern Connecticut for the annual event, now in its ninth year. They arrived on vintage mountain bikes, Surlys, Crusts, and Rivendells, glinting with custom paint jobs.

Since its inception in 2015, the Nutmeg Nor’Easter, also known as “the world championship of alt biking and liking,” has grown from two dozen participants to more than 500. This year, tickets sold out in a matter of days.

Some have playfully described the gathering as a cult—a characterization that comes with a compelling degree of evidence. The group overindexes on bearded white men, for instance. Their enthusiasm for bikes borders on fanaticism. They shun the trappings of mainstream cycling culture, such as Lycra, in favor of more unusual rituals, such as traveling in the woods with all of their earthly possessions strapped onto their bicycles.

And the event is centered around two charismatic leaders, Ronnie Romance and Arya Tenzin Namdol, a couple as quirky and endearing as the subculture they have created around them.

Ronnie is six-foot-two, forty-five years old, and as lean as a seat post, with a knotted beard and a mane of sun-bleached blond hair that falls past his shoulders. Arya, five years his junior, is his counterpoint—five-foot-two and Tibetan, with neatly cropped hair that frames a calm, mischievous face. In an email, Ronnie described her as his “unofficial wife,” a designation that seemed to reflect both their defiance and mutual affection.

They both grew up nearby and met twelve years ago on a fateful bike ride. The camp’s hosts went to high school with Ronnie—as did the chefs who cater the pizza party that follows Saturday’s rides each year. “The outdoor experience often gets ignored, especially in Connecticut,” Ronnie said. “The Nutmeg ethos was built on hospitality, welcoming cyclists to our home—the woods of Nutmeg country. We love where we live.”

It was hard to miss Ronnie or Arya as they moved through the crowds throughout the weekend. I imagined them as the alpha pair in a pride of lions. Was it surreal to survey their domain? The event was their world, and stepping into it was like stepping into their love story, which had somehow expanded to include 500 people on bikes in the woods.

I was at Nutmeg on a parallel love story, with my boyfriend Peter, who had convinced me that our New York City commuter bikes would be “fine” for a full day of riding through chunk and dirt. It wasn’t a hard job to do. We share an enthusiasm for adventure and a tendency to never prepare for any of it. “The only person who knows less about bikes at this event than me is you,” he said.

It was my second year at Nutmeg and Peter’s third. We still felt like babies in the seemingly limitless world of alt cycling. Our plan was to tag along with friends, lest we encounter a scenario that required any sort of mechanical know-how.

Each year, Ronnie releases a roster of curated rides on the eve of the event. They span from short rambles to eighty-mile odysseys, on terrain that ranges from buttery pavement to steep, rocky trails. We were there to conquer our white whale, the 55-mile ATB route. Our friend David described it as “canonical,” while our friend Collin declared it the best ride he had ever done. Both of them planned to ride it again this year.

Peter and I had attempted the route twice the year before. The first time, we made a rookie mistake: stopping for a two-hour pizza lunch mid-ride. By the time we rolled out again, the sun was low in the sky, washing the roads in a sinister, ashen light. It was my first all-terrain ride, and I was thoroughly shaken by every span of technical terrain. We lopped off the final ten miles of Ronnie’s loop and high-tailed it back to camp as darkness swallowed the trees around us.

The following weekend, we secretly returned to Nutmeg country, determined to finish the job. We skipped the pizza that time, stopping in town only long enough to refill our bottles and mainline two sandwiches. The sun set anyway. Worse, we discovered that the final ten miles of the route were also the most punishing. What looked like a closing segment on the map turned out to be a crawl through mud, roots and logs, rocky singletrack, and the steepest climbs of the day.

Our lights were laughably inadequate. We had no choice but to continue pedaling, nearly blind in the dark, as our tires bumped over whatever obstacles lay on the trails and our brains shook mercilessly in our skulls. At one point, Peter’s narrow tires wedged perfectly and cartoonishly into the middle slot of a singletrack plank bridge as he attempted to cross. At another point, I fell into a puddle. We marveled that our legs were still moving. We emerged from the final stretch delirious and in disbelief—just in time for Peter’s chain to fall off and lodge itself hopelessly between his cassette and frame.

Photos from the 2024 Nutmeg Nor’Easter by Conan Thai

We ended the night washing our hands in a stranger’s kitchen sink, watching the bike grease swirl away in inky rivulets. All that remained of the route were five forgiving miles of pavement, but instead of closing the loop, we had to hitchhike back to camp, our bikes rattling on the back of a truck.

The unfinished loop gnawed at us. Peter took notes, listing things to fix, to pack, and to dial in for next time. Naturally, I ignored all of them.

Cycling has exploded in the past decade, splintering into tribes that range from aerodynamic racers to dirtbag wanderers. Alt biking exists somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, emphasizing a DIY, adventure-oriented mentality—that there is no one-size-fits-all bike or way to ride. The community’s primary subreddit, r/xbiking, has grown from 3,000 members five years ago to 80,000 today.

Despite the subculture’s any-bike-goes philosophy, those at Nutmeg seem to favor a certain kind of ride. Their bikes often feature sturdy steel frames, supple treaded tires, racks and fenders, and handmade bags. They look functional but romantic, built to survive gravel slogs and still look good leaning against a tree. “The ideal bike for the event is something with tires around 45-55mm wide, and a look that does not contrast with the landscape,” Ronnie said.

Peter and I set out on our road bikes, simply because that’s what we owned. I rode a Salsa Marrakesh with road tires—a Facebook Marketplace bargain I’d left completely unaltered, largely out of ignorance. I outfitted it with a melange of mismatched, snack-stuffed bags that I had recently acquired for free. Peter rode his Surly Pacer, a bike his brother built him 14 years ago with spare parts. It had carried him through various stages of his adult life. We discovered his tires were 27mm wide when David told him so.

On the trail this year, we stood out immediately with our narrow, smooth tires. They drew an almost irritating amount of attention. “Skinny tires, big ambitions!” another rider called out as we passed.

The fifty-five-mile route starts out rocky, with climbs that drain the energy from your legs at the outset. It can feel demoralizing, but those who attempt it are immediately rewarded after the initial push with breezy, cinematic riding. The trail opens into rolling parkland and quiet neighborhoods, the surface alternating between gravel, dirt, chunk, and pavement. Leaves spiraled in the air around us, illuminated in the autumn sunlight. We became separated from our group but soon fell in with Philipp, an older rider we had met the previous year. He inspired us and motivated us to work harder: Last year, he had done the ride on his fixie, a reminder of what was possible.

There was something honest about feeling underbiked. The joy of adventure riding, I was learning, had less to do with the bike itself and more with the willingness to be uncomfortable.

We arrived in the town of Chester, roughly at the halfway mark, feeling a familiar sense of accomplishment. Other routes converge there too, and it’s dangerously easy to start celebrating with other Nutmeg riders—to eat and to linger, knowing that the afternoon unfolds before you.

This year, we set out from Chester knowing what lay ahead. The route doesn’t ease you back in, but throws you directly onto the steepest and longest climb of the day, as if to punish you for pausing. It’s a reminder of what’s to come.

We encountered other riders here and there, exchanging brief moments of solidarity and encouragement. Some turned back toward camp, mindful of the sun slipping lower. This is the part that never makes it onto Instagram: the difficulty, the stubborn forging onward, and the racing against the dying light.

By the end, the lines were hard to read, blurring together into a smattering of shapes that thudded under our tires as our bodies bent and lurched with our bikes.

And then it was over. The rocky dirt spat us out onto smooth pavement. The feeling was indescribable—a miraculous sense of elation after miles of chaos. Suddenly we were flying, howling down empty roads in the night, whooping with joy. Still, we knew it wasn’t over until it was over. We were wild as we rolled back into camp, screaming and depleted. I was covered in bruises, and Peter’s knee gushed blood, but we couldn’t remember what had happened to us.

Being underbiked, I realized, is partly an act of faith. You ride what you have and trust it to get you to the end, accepting whatever happens in between. In that sense, it embodies the spirit of Nutmeg: the joys of imperfection and self-reliance, and the adventure available in the everyday. We found ourselves weaving through a sea of smiling faces at camp, all manner of bikes strewn outside. Ronnie and Arya were among the herd, greeting riders as if welcoming them home. There was nothing left to do but to eat twelve slices of pizza.

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