If you were near Sherwood Island State Park this past Sunday morning, you probably heard it before you saw it. Engines idling in formation, a pipes and drums unit warming up, then eleven-thirty on the dot: kickstands up, and sixty miles of motorcycles rolled out of Westport for the 25th annual CT United Ride, Connecticut's largest yearly tribute to the first responders lost on September 11.
That ride is done for the year. If you assumed it was the only 9/11 tribute passing through this part of the county in 2026, you assumed wrong. A second one, quieter and slower and entirely human-powered, is still ahead of us. On Wednesday, September 9, cyclists in the Livestrong First Responder Ride for Resilience will turn off Black Rock Turnpike onto Wells Hill Road, cut left on Kellogg Hill Road, and drop down Lyons Plain Road toward the Westport line. That's not a Weston that riders glimpse from a highway shoulder. That's a Weston they ride straight through, on the same roads residents use to get to the transfer station or drop kids at practice.
Two Rides, Two Different Kinds of Passing Through
The CT United Ride and the Ride for Resilience get lumped together in casual conversation because they share a cause and a number. Both honor the 343 FDNY firefighters killed on September 11, 2001. Both land in 2026, the 25th anniversary year. Past that, they're not the same event, and the difference matters if you're trying to figure out what's actually happening on your street this month.
The CT United Ride is a single-day motorcycle procession, sixty miles, based out of Westport, already completed as of August 30. The Ride for Resilience is a five-day bicycle ride covering 343 miles from Boston to the 9/11 Memorial in New York City, organized by Livestrong, the nonprofit built around supporting cancer survivors. It started September 6 and finishes September 10. Wednesday the 9th is day four: a roughly 64-mile leg that carries riders from New Haven through Shelton and Monroe, into Easton, through Weston and Westport, on to Norwalk, and finally to a stop in Stamford.
One ride announces itself with sixty miles of engines and a formation procession that starts at the shoreline in Westport. The other moves through in the quieter middle of a workday, on roads with no shoulder to speak of and stone walls close enough to touch.
The Route Through Weston, Turn by Turn
For anyone who wants to know exactly where and when to expect riders, the path through town has been mapped out:
- Riders enter Weston on Wells Hill Road, climbing from Black Rock Turnpike
- They turn left onto Kellogg Hill Road
- From there they descend Lyons Plain Road, which becomes Lyons Plains Road once it crosses into Westport
That's three roads, no detours, and no stretch of Route 57 or Route 136 involved. If you live along that corridor or drive it regularly, this is the one afternoon in September to build in a few extra minutes, or to skip the trip altogether and watch from your own driveway instead.
If you're planning to drive Wells Hill Road or Kellogg Hill Road midday on September 9, expect the kind of rolling slowdown a group ride creates rather than a hard road closure. Riders move in a loose line, not a blockade, and the group will clear through in stages rather than all at once.
Why the Distance Isn't the Point
It's tempting to read "343 miles" as the headline number, but the organizers built the ride around a different figure: 343 firefighters, one for each mile. The route length follows the tribute, not the other way around. Funds raised support Friends of Firefighters and the Boston Fire Cancer Foundation, alongside Livestrong's own cancer survivorship work, and the cause behind the mileage is occupational, not ceremonial. Research from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has found that firefighters are nine percent more likely to be diagnosed with cancer, and fourteen percent more likely to die from it, than the general public. The ride exists to put a number most people never think about in front of the towns it passes through.
That's also why the CT United Ride and the Ride for Resilience don't compete with each other so much as they layer on top of one another. One is a single afternoon of noise and formation riding that starts and ends near the coast. The other spreads the same tribute across five days and three states, threading through inland neighborhoods a shoreline procession would never reach. Weston gets the second kind. Wells Hill Road and Kellogg Hill Road aren't detours from the tribute. For one Wednesday, they are the tribute.
How to Actually Be Part of It
Livestrong has built several ways in for people who have no intention of getting on a bike:
- Register to ride any single day of the five, including the Connecticut leg, with support vehicles, meals, and lodging handled by the organization
- Volunteer to staff a rest stop along the route
- Donate directly to the ride's fundraising page, which benefits Friends of Firefighters, Livestrong, and the Boston Fire Cancer Foundation
- Simply show up along Wells Hill Road, Kellogg Hill Road, or Lyons Plain Road on September 9 to cheer as the group passes
None of these require advance planning beyond knowing the date and the road names, which is really the entire point of a piece like this. Livestrong's leadership has been clear that the ride depends on exactly this kind of local welcome, town by town, rather than on any single dramatic finish line moment. The finish, after all, is in Manhattan. What happens on a back road in Weston on a Wednesday afternoon in September is the part nobody outside the state will ever see, and the part that only works if the towns along the way choose to notice it.
The Ten Days Between Two Tributes
Two rides, ten days apart, both marking the same anniversary, both counting the same 343 names, and only one of them will ever pass a Weston mailbox. If you missed the motorcycles at Sherwood Island on Sunday, that's not a missed chance to acknowledge September 11 this year. It's a preview. The version that actually reaches this town is still ahead, moving slower, closer to the ground, and close enough to the curb that a wave from a front yard on Wells Hill Road will register with every rider who passes.
Weston shows up in a lot of stories about acreage, schools, and open space. This month it shows up in a different kind of story: as one three-road stretch in a 343-mile line connecting a firehouse in Boston to a memorial in lower Manhattan. That's worth knowing before September 9 arrives, whether you plan to stand at the end of your driveway or just want to understand why traffic on Kellogg Hill Road looks a little different that Wednesday afternoon.
For everything else happening around town this fall, or if you're ever curious what a home on one of these back roads is actually worth, the team at Camelot Real Estate has been paying attention to Weston's streets, not just its listings, for a long time. Reach out any time you want a neighbor's read on the market, or simply want to talk about what's happening on the roads you drive every day.
