Bridge Trolls

Today was about 30F and sunny, and we rode our bikes 12 miles on a nice route with easy rolling hills (boy am i out of shape) and over a back road with a closed/condemned bridge going over RR tracks...This photo was from when the bridge was still open to traffic. It's been closed since 2007, but horseback riders (obviously) go over it all the time, so a couple of lightweight bikers should be ok. Since the road is blocked there, the highway dept has not been maintaining or cleaning the road for over a year now, and that section has become a mini-wilderness, with trees down, rocks, leaves, ice, and horsepoop everywhere. Sort of fun to pick our way through the Wild Frontier section of road. We crossed paths with two friendly teenage boys on their bikes going the other way, and we cautioned each other about ice up ahead.

Someone long ago dumped a pair of 3 foot tall plastic xmas lawn figures there in the woods near the bridge. A santa and a snowman. People keep standing them up one at each road block on either side of the little closed bridge, like sentries, surreal plastic bridge trolls. When they fall over in the wind sand roll into the woods again someone always puts them back at their posts.