Flatlanders in New England have had a long list of venues for them over the years. In the 80's and early 90's it was the King of the Flatland series in New Hampshire. When those went away, David Muggleston and Jesse Hicks put together the informal Pepperell 500 contests, eventually giving birth to the Pepperell Jam. (Strangely enough, Pepperell Jams are actually held in New Hampshire — on the border of Pepperell — but that's just a technicality...)

This isn't some large-scale thing like the York Jam — it's just a bunch of flatlanders gathering in a parking lot in Pepperell, Massachusetts. In addition to skydiving and muscle cars, Pepperell is well-known among riders as a rain magnet — bringing your bike into Pepperell automatically brings the chance of rain up to 50%. Even if it was sunny when you got to Pepperell, the clouds can't be far behind.

This time around, the clouds were already threatening when we arrived; and actually, we drove through a pretty serious downpour for about 30 seconds on the drive up. Luckily, the rain held off and gave us a couple hours of riding time. I hadn't seen Jesse Hicks in a while, and he's still improving. Sick back wheel strings are effortless for Jesse, including missions flipped to switch-b on the pedal, to cross-footed inverted backwards wheelie twisted into a double-footed stick-b.

So, in grand celebration of the loosely-organized riding session, here are some photos to prove that the whole thing wasn't just a cloudy dream...