Ugh, I hate moving. Coming up with a new domain name, memorizing a new password, remembering who all you need to send a change of url to. At least I don’t have to bribe friends with donuts and pizza to help move furniture.

Saturday

4th Annual Triangle Fat Tire Festival & Take A Kid Mountain Biking Day
Mountain bike celebration
10 a.m.-3 p.m.
Harris Lake County Park, New Hill

Forgive me if I’ve told this story before, but I’m telling it again. At this summer’s Huck-A-Buck race at Lake Crabtree, Steve Rogers (who would go on to win the Sport 45+ title in the TORC/Johnson Subaru summer XC series) and I were watching the boys from NC Bike Trials hop their bikes from sawhorse to picnic table to light post and back.

“I don’t know how you would even get started doing that,” I said to Steve. “I mean, how do you ‘ease’ into something like this? It’s like pole vaulting.”

There was a pause. “Actually,"Steve finally said, "I pole vaulted in college.”

We’ve received reports of late that the American Tobacco Trail from Massey Chapel Road in Durham south to New Hill was passable. Not “open,” mind you, but “passable.” Based on a scouting trip this morning, it’s true — if you can bunnyhop moving bulldozers.

Thursday commences a month-long celebration of our statewide trail-in-progress, the Mountains-to-Sea Trail. To find out what all is planned for the tribute, TIONC caught up this morning with Friends of the MST Executive Director Kate Dixon. We’ll share what all is going on with Mountains-to-Sea Trail Month as October unfolds, but thought we’d go ahead and share our conversation about the MST through the Triangle, which was especially encouraging.

“Excuse me,” the woman ... well, she didn’t exactly yell because she didn’t want to excite the snake, which was what she was about to alert us to: A three-foot brown snake that in the last five minutes had stretched itself across the boardwalk. The woman and her boyfriend were headed to our perch, a secluded deck off the half-mile boardwalk at the Walter B. Jones Center for the Sounds in Columbia. Not any more.

The best way to ensure privacy on the trail? Hire a guard snake.

Last week, we touched on why fall — with its cooling temperatures and changing colors — is a good time to launch a hiking program. Here’s more incentive: Snakes are on the move.