Archive for the 'Dirt' Category

Hi, I’m David…and you are?

Published
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admin
on March 31, 2008
in Bikes, Brewing, Dirt, Life and Snowboarding
. 6 Comments

Wow, almost 2 months have gone by since the last post, insane. Time to add some air in the tires of this dusty thing. As I’ve said before, most of the time I post is due to getting a moment at work where I can jump online. That becomes much harder to do when you’re stuck in a windowless secure lab for 8 hours a day. Once I’m out of work I end up doing other things than looking at a computer, so I’m behind on posting, behind on reading my newsreader, but not behind on mountain biking through sunsets, brewing kick ass beer, and most certainly not behind in snowboarding into the wee hours of the morning. We’re still living life up here in beautiful New England and while it’s still cold, you can smell Spring all around.

Did my first group mountain bike ride, um, probably more than a month ago now. 5 of us took to the PR to do our part in breaking in the trail after a fresh snow. Good group of guys and girls and I had a lot of fun. Hope to do some more rides with them, especially as we warm up here. I also got in a TNS, while it was on a Monday and it was a solo effort, I’ll still call it a TNS for now. Basically rode out to the bike path and over to the dirt BCT extension and out to Concord. Made it out to Main Streets Cafe, where I had a Smuttynose Old Brown Dog Ale before hopping back on the bike and riding home. The ride was good and the classic American Brown ale was the topping on the cake.

One of my recent night rides with Hog turned out to be an eye opening experience. My lights for biking are old. How old? Old enough that the batteries no longer hold a charge longer than an hour and if the moon is bright I wonder if my lights are actually on or not. So on this night, I just didn’t bring my lights figuring we would ride until dark and then I would get myself out to the road and slum it home. Hog had other ideas and whipped out a NiteRider Minewt X2. This thing is small and bright! An LED light that also comes in around $160 street price and lasts for up to 7 hours…yea, thats a long time, ha. So when it comes time to replace my aging (dying) lights, the Minewt is definitely on the short list.

As most of you know, it’s been a pretty cold and snowy winter. One night Mike and I were taking advantage of a current snowstorm and using our season passes at the mountain and go figure, the mountain has one night a year where they are open for a full 24 hours and that was the night. We stayed out on the snow until about 2:30 AM, riding some uber soft smooth closed trails. Best snowboarding night…ever.

Oh and the beer! I’ve been having some issues with my mash tun lately, so Mike and built a new one out of a 52qt cooler. Figured if we were going to go all out, we should go big time. Just for anyone wondering, a 52qt cooler can hold 33 pounds of grain and around 12 gallons of water…and it’s f’n heavy! We brewed up two IPAs from the one giant mash and seperate smaller mash was used to do up a Belgian Dubbel. 3 batches in a day, not too shabby.

But the biggest announcement on the blog, has to be this:


That’s right damnit, it’s official…

Area Trails

Published
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admin
on December 18, 2007
in Bikes and Dirt
. 3 Comments

Quite simply, the bike trails around here rock. I actually haven’t made it to a lot of the hot spots, but when you’ve got 60+ miles of trail outside the door, it gets a lot easier to not even think about jumping in the car to drive to a mountain biking hot spot. Add to that I was on injured reserve with a cracked collar bone for close to 2 months, which has cut into my riding time for sure, and you have a lack of total spots ridden…not that I’m complaining.

Two blocks from my house is an old reservoir and the area is known as the Valente trails (aka Shawsheen Cemetery trails), which has a nice little main loop around the reservoir and a few little side trails that lead to alternative loops and out to the neighboring streets. After working the Valente trails, you can jump on the street for a couple of blocks and then cut into the Private Reserve (aka PR, Land Locked Quadrant, LLQ, Paint Mine, etc.). This small piece of land is owned by the town of Burlington, but Burlington access to the land was cut off by having a six lane road (Route 3) along one side, with the other sides of the land being bordered by the towns of Lexington and Bedford. At some point people built trails and they did a good job of it as there’s probably 12 miles of trail. It’s a little like Wakefield, except you can’t see the power lines as much and there is probably 1/100th the traffic…hmm, guess it’s more like Lake Accotink if you will, with some of the more technical variety you find at Wakefield. Anyway, it’s a blast riding the PR day or night. I haven’t taken any pictures while riding there, but I found some shots posted on the NEMBA forum here (not sure if you have to register at the NEMBA forums to see those shots).

So those trails are off to one side of the house, but if you go the opposite direction you run into the Minuteman Bikeway, which is basically a shorter version of the W&OD and goes from Boston out to Bedford. I’ve mentioned the Bikeway and the dirt trail continuation of the Bikeway, called the Bay Circuit Trail (BCT) in previous posts…even put up a few photos. The BCT is your average railroad bed trail. It sees more traffic and it’s not super exciting with very little terrain or altitude change, but it’s nice to still be under the cover of trees. As a bonus there are side pockets of trails, usually looped so you can end up back on the BCT and add a couple of miles worth of trail. If you keep going out on the BCT, you finally get to more of the good stuff when you hit Concord. Not that the BCT isn’t good, but at this point it’s more of a way to get from point A (my house) to point B (the tight twisty singletrack). After the BCT, there are a couple of different sets of trails you can ride and the best thing is you can loop them together. I’m not familiar with a lot of the Concord/Acton trails, but hopefully when theres a little less snow, I’ll get a good tour of out there.

Anyway, from the end of the BCT you can loop around right and head over to Estabrook Woods (let me just say, all these names could be completely wrong, I’m new here, remember!). After that you need to jump back on the road for a little bit and then you can hit the Carlisle Town trails, which will get you to Great Brook Farm Park. There are a bunch of looped trails in Great Brook Farm Park. If I remember correctly, I’ve done Acorn loop, Stone Row, Heartbreak Ridge, and Llama trail, which puts us back in Estabrook Woods, which is the path to getting home. If you’re good or you have a guide (check, thanks Hog!), you can make it over to Punkatasset Hill, which is where I cracked my collarbone. I smooth like that.

Anyway, where was I going with this, oh yea, this is all readily available out my door. So you can see why it’s taken me so long to mount up and drive in to the Fells or over to Lynn Woods. Sometimes the hardest part is packing up the car and making the drive to the park, which for the most part I have avoided. Now the toughest part is getting out the door, as the snow is keeping me on the streets for now. I’m going to try and keep biking through the winter, at least keep up the bike commuting even if I can’t get on the trails, but I need to start looking at snowshoeing and xc skiing to see what they are all about. If you’ve got tips on stuff to look for on craigslist, drop me a comment. Also, if you grunted through this entire post, you’re a rock star…

Bay Circuit Trail

Published
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on July 26, 2007
in Bikes, Commuting, Dirt and Road
. 6 Comments

Yesterday was a fun day. Did my normal commute and after work had a little mini photo shoot. The newsletter people at my work were doing an article on alternate commuting and they wanted to get some photos of the bike commuters. I was the only one who showed up, although I know there are several people who ride in. Oh well, my thought was with the shoot at 4:00 PM, I might as well leave work a little early and get some exploring in. It turned out to be a good decision with a little bit of road, a little bit of paved path, and some newly discovered dirt trails. We’ve got a month before we move again, which is just enough time to explore the area and get familiar with it, so when we finally move I’ll know where all the singletrack is hidden.

Click the photo below for the gallery of pictures from yesterday’s ride.
Just Riding Along

I did around 30 miles on the day and was able to really see the area. I hit a bunch of side streets near my work, then over to Shawsheen Cemetery where we’ll likely be taking the dog for some walks. After that I headed over to where the Minuteman Bikeway ends and started searching for trails there. You gotta figure that even though the paved Bikeway ends, there’s probably some dirt trails that have popped up on the rest of the abandoned rail bed. About 3 blocks from the end of pavement I hit jackpot, the Bay Circuit Trail. It turned out to be a little of everything, some smooth singletrack, rocky gravelly dirt path, wider doubletrack, and a little service road action, but never paved. There was one section that even had tiny rollercoaster hills, almost like a mini pump track. It’s hard not to smile when you hit something like that!

I’ll definitely be back, as I didn’t finish the trail. There was still some trail up ahead and a ton of side trails to check out…all in due time. But it’s just great to know that there are dirt trails within a 5 minute ride from the house…killer!

Parts in the Pile

Published
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on July 3, 2007
in Bikes and Dirt
. 3 Comments

So add Chris King to the growing number of parts I’ve been able to break with my sheer Optimus Prime leg power. Yesterday I took off part of the day and decided to do the long loop at Leominster State Park, a 10-15 mile loop depending on how you put it together. I took the time to put the track files into the GPS so I’d be able to see what options were available when I’m out there. The plan was to get in a nice 2-3 hours of riding and explore the far side of the park that I haven’t been to yet.

Now this park takes about an hour to get to from my place, which isn’t so bad, because my boy Mike lives so close to it. So I make the drive, get the bike off the rack, get all dolled up, and head out on some familiar trails out the parking lot to get warmed up. Not far from the lot I notice a lot of rear tire rub. A quick glance back and yea, my tire is all wobbly and hitting one of the chainstays. Damn, I must have really thrown it out of true the last time I rode and not noticed it. No worries, I’ve got a spoke tool in the car, I’ll just ride back and fix it up. Get back to the car and go to tighten a spoke and it visibly moves in my hand…WTF? Look down at the hub and wouldn’t you know, there’s two spots where spokes are pulling out of the hub, cracked like a mofo.

I am Jack's failed hub

Normally this wouldn’t be a big issue. Drop the wheel off at City Bikes and let them deal with Chris King to get it all squared away. Load up another wheel from the shed…oh wait…I can no longer just stop by City Bikes and any and all extra bike parts I have are in storage in some warehouse in Jersey. Damn! Looks like I’m going to have to get friendly with a new bike shop and quick. So at the very least I’m out of the dirt game until I get a new hub and can rebuild the wheel, which crap, all my wheelbuilding tools (stand) is also in storage. Guess a shop is going to have to build it. Ugg, this is going to be a pain in the ass…

Leominster State Forest

Published
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on June 26, 2007
in Bikes and Dirt
. 2 Comments

So here’s the most recent mountain biking ride in Leominster State Forest. I gotta work on the formatting to get the map implemented into the page better, so this is more of a test run, but it’s pretty fun to play with, considering you can also change it to topo maps.

DT

Rosaryville

Published
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on May 31, 2007
in Bikes and Dirt
. 1 Comment

Late post, but I hit Rosaryville over the Memorial Day holiday with Steve and Butch. It was a freaking mad house when we arrived. Evidently MORE had a ride at 10:00 AM. We arrived late enough to miss the ride, but not late enough to miss the massive shortage of parking, ha. Anyway, after everyone pitched in on fixing my flat rear wheel and Butch was done whining about how his bike was going to literally fall to pieces as soon as we hit the trail…we finally made it out on the dirt.

Once out on the dirt, all was good with the world. We only ran into a few people…literally…almost ran into one person. Also passed by a few horses who looked like they were having a good time. Luckily we got some rain the night before, otherwise we would have been riding in a dust storm. But as it was, we rode some super nice dirt singletrack, weaving in and out of the trees, up and down the whoopdees, stopping occasionally to catch our breath (well them stopping for me to catch my breath, ha). Butch and I made the cut and hit up some of the new internal loop of technical singletrack. Right now it’s just mostly logs to cross, but over this summer they should have some nice technical features being put in the trail. I managed to completely bite it on probably the smallest log. Butch was behind me, he yells as he crashes (think Flandiddelyanders), to which I try to look back and cross the log at the same time. End result…me crashing while watching Butch crash, ha. The whole scene was out of some bizarro comedy. I ended up with a nice horseshoe shaped piece of skin flapping in the wind. That didn’t hurt as much as the muscles between my skin and my Ti ankle…now that was sore that night!

All in all an excellent loop for what may be the last time I ride Rosey. The day before I rode the Pimmit Run Trail, probably the last time I’ll be able to hit that too. It’s all starting to hit now…

DT

12 Hours of Lodi Race Report

Published
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on May 8, 2007
in Bikes, Dirt and Races
. 5 Comments

Another year of racing Lodi goes in the books. This year proved to be one of the best years yet. About 4 years ago I had sworn off racing Lodi if it was going to rain. That was mostly due to the fact that it started raining at 11:30 PM and didn’t stop until 12:30 PM the next day…and this was no pansy rain. We’re talking full on crazy flood the creek type of rain or tadpoles swimming in your tent kind of rain. So when the rain started to fall as I left the house to drive down I was a little pissed.

Met Steve and Butch at the Wawa just off the 95 exit for Fredericksburg, VA. We gathered some last minute emergency supplies (mostly ice for the beer cooler) and headed on out to the race grounds. I think we arrived by 3:30 PM, so plenty of daylight left to do a pre-ride if one wanted. We just wanted to get our stuff setup before the rain caught up with us. We managed to get Steve’s truck and my Outback situated nicely with the popup tent joining the two.

Lodi Setup
Photo by Butch

With everything setup and the decision not to pre-ride being made by Mother Nature, there was nothing left to do, but boil up some water for our tasty Mountain House meals in a bag. Steve brought out the big guns with Spaghetti and sauce, Butch ventured into expired eggs and bacon, and I whipped out my Beef Stew. Steve’s meal in a bag was delicious, as was mine, but Butch’s meal looked like one of the port-o-johns after the race…nasty! Evidently it didn’t taste much better. After a fulfilling meal it was time to pull out the cooler and chill out. We got our lineup straight. It would be Butch, Steve, then me. Figure both of them are faster than me, so if we actually ended up going head to head with somebody, they’d be more likely to get the extra lap and be able to do it faster.

At about 10:30 PM, Butch starts to whine, he thinks he has a fever and just can’t get warm. We call him out and a little after 11:00 PM he starts to get ready for his first lap. Talk about a transformation, just put Butch in some woolies and he’s a new psyched up racing man.

At midnight the race starts with a parade lap (in lieu of doing a le mans mass running start). Pretty soon they were off and Butch went on to pull an hour lap. Steve got his stuff together and was there on time to make a flawless transition. The word came from Butch that it was slick as snot with a nice layer of peanut butter, but it was definitely rideable. Steve went on to pull an hour and five minute lap. So I head out for my first lap of the race at 2:05 AM with my one handlebar mounted light. (As much night riding as I do, you’d think I’d shell out for a nice HID, but to be honest, those things defeat the purpose of riding at night. Granted this was a race, but damn, a good HID lights up a trail like a highway…way too much light. I like not being able to see more than 5-10 feet in front of the bike.)

Waiting for my first lap with Gwadz
Photo by Butch

Butch was right, the course was slick, but totally rideable. If you like the occasional two wheel drift, this was the time to ride. I’m sure it was much more slick for my two team mates though. You could tell it was already getting down to the hardpack for some fast paced riding. The first lap was pretty uneventful. Without doing a pre-ride I was really just trying to learn the course (a third of the trails were brand spanking new). I managed to pull my lap in an hour and eight minutes. I was shooting for under 1:15, so I was happy with myself.

Butch grabbed the baton and pulled another hour lap! Then Steve was back out and managed to shave a couple of minutes off for an hour and three minute lap. Then it was my turn again, looked like I had the good fortune of being the sunrise lap rider. I felt really good on my second lap. There were two riders just ahead of me as I left the gate and another one pulled out right behind me. We made a nice game out of passing and pulling each other. Over the lap the group of four broke down to two then back up to six or seven. I managed to pass a bunch of people and I think I only got passed by a couple others. By the end of this lap I knew this was going to be a fun race. People were out there racing hard, but everyone seemed to be in a good mood. People were talking to each other on the bikes, asking to pass, picking a side and actually announcing it…it was civil and it showed. This was good natured competitiveness at it’s peak. I rolled in with an hour and six minute lap. Like Steve, I shaved two minutes off my first lap and finished at 6:22 AM.

Butch went back out and pulled a sub hour lap at only 58 minutes! Steve then battled it out for a 55 minute lap! My third lap went really well. I was passing more people than I was being passed by…always a good thing, ha. I was using a guy up ahead of me as inspiration. He had a red blinky on his back and that became my target. We would start going uphill and he would start pulling away, so I’d start to lay it down and give it everything I had on the flats and downhills. I managed to pass the red light rider and acquired a new target…big Blue. This was an obvious Clydesdale, a big boy, but he was rocking the course. Super smooth until SMACK! The dull thud of his shoulder straight into one tree that made a tight spot. A second later he and his bike were down hard. I stopped to make sure he was ok. He was definitely dazed, but was able to get up and walk around. He said he was alright and that he could probably make it in on his bike. After making sure he was able to ride his bike I sprinted off to let the race organizers know they might need to have the ambulance guys look at his shoulder. It gave me my inspiration to ride hard for the rest of the lap. Unfortunately I was also starting to enter the cramp zone. Not actual cramping, but knowing that if you push a little harder on the uphills, you know you’ll be spending a couple of minutes on the ground working out your leg muscles. I made it back to the start with a lap time of 1:07, not bad considering stopping and being close to cramping. I remember getting back from this lap and telling Steve he needed to get back in before noon, because damn it, I wanted to get my fourth lap in if it killed me.

Butch went back out and managed to pull a 54 minute lap, the fastest on our team!

Butch ripping it on his last lap

Photo by Gary

Then Steve goes out and pulls yet another 55 minute lap!

Steve pulling out his last lap
Photo by Gary

Talk about being a boat anchor…if these guys had a third man that was a little more equal to them, they definitely would have been in contention for a podium spot. But hey, we do what we can do and racing with these guys makes me faster than I would be on my own. Knowing these guys are out there giving it their all really makes you want to man up. I realized I would need some more food, boiled up some water and ate my second meal in a bag, eggs and bacon…not expired, ha. Damn it was good! Fluffy eggs with chunks of smoked bacon…mmm… Grabbed all my gear and waited up at the start line for Steve to roll in. Like clockwork, Steve pulls his second 55 minute lap and I roll out for what should be our last lap of the day. I’m just not capable of pulling a sub 50 minute lap, which is what would be needed in order to get somebody else out before noon. Since we weren’t really going for a podium, that last lap fell in the natural order to me.

Steve handing off to me for the last lap
Photo by Butch

The lap was nice and easy. I pushed it to stay with people, just hard enough to really work it, yet keep from cramping. I followed what would be the eventual winner of Solo Singlespeed. He was on his 11th lap! Seriously, I’m worried about cramping in my 4th lap and he has almost tripled me…talk about humbling experiences. Then I got a little uphill encouragement from FatMarc. Every little bit helps! I was definitely walking more of the hills now, but I still felt good. I promised Steve and Butch a little singlespeed spirit, so with that thought in mind I pulled over before finishing up my lap. They were near the end at one of the tech sections, an oil barrel with doors on either side, fun stuff. They were looking for spirit, so I gave it to them…


Up and over with style!
Photo by Butch

Finish up my lap in 1:08 with the clock at 12:19 PM. So my last lap was equal to my time for first lap, pretty fitting. All in all, it was a great race. The Big MEATS came together and really rode well. We didn’t podium, but we all had fun and we all know we rode the best we could. There was nothing left to do, but enjoy an ice cold beer.

After the race
Photo by Butch

I’m proud of our team and big props to Butch and Steve for kicking some ass out on the trails. Hopefully we’ll get another chance to do it again soon. If you still need more, check out the 3 man singlespeed results here. Check out all of Butch’s pics here and all of Gary’s excellent photos here.

The Big MEATS!

Lodi

Published
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on May 5, 2007
in Bikes, Dirt and Races
. 2 Comments

It’s the return of the Big MEATS! The grass is cut and the chores are done. Just gathering the needed clothes for another wet 12 Hours of Lodi. The plan is to camp out inside the Subaru, instead of trying to keep the tent dry. The last thing you want to do after pulling an hour lap at 3:00 AM is to climb in your tent and push out the puddles and try to find some dry warm clothing. Let’s hope the weather peeps are wrong…again.

Good weather returns!

Published
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on April 23, 2007
in Bikes and Dirt
. 0 Comments

Man, I think it’s 90 degrees out there today! Friday saw the return of Spring and Gary and I took full advantage with a ride out at Colt’s Neck. It gave me a chance to try out the new Evolution setup in fixie mode for old times sake. Took a little getting used to, but once you go into flow mode it starts to come back. Lot’s of people out on the trails, several fathers with their children, which is always good to see! We hooked up with Bender at some point on the Lake Fairfax side. The trails were super dry, surprisingly enough! I managed to make my log again, but this time not so clean. I still have a long way to go before riding the fixie and doing technical features like logs becomes second nature. I actually have to worry about where my pedals are instead of just letting go and having my brain do the work on autopilot. Soon enough, soon enough.

Both Saturday and Sunday were outdoor days. So much to do and such nice weather, it just made for a great weekend. BBQ at Gary’s place Saturday night and we BBQ’d again for lunch on Sunday at our place with JK. Before lunch I got in another ride. Headed over to Wakefield to drop off the MORE trail work tools…last time I’ll have to do that. Decided to rip out a couple of laps and take in the new slalom course. Rich Edwards of IMBA hooked it up. And the Specialized Resolution took it all in strides. Gotta love a tire that only breaks loose one time on an entire ride and even though it broke loose it still caught again before I could or needed to correct.

One more ride tonight, hitting Wakefield with Steve-o and FattyBoomBatty to kick it one more time before flying out to do some work up in the Boston area for a couple of days. No bike, but plenty of homebrew!

DT

Bikes

Published
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on April 19, 2007
in Bikes and Dirt
. 1 Comment

So my boy Jim decided that him and his wife needed to do some biking. It’s been a long time for both of them, so I was more than happy to help them look. After talking with them about the type of riding they planned on doing over a few beers and after doing some research and test drives, they finally decided. Hope they enjoy and use them a lot!

Also, as surprising as it will be to anybody who knows my bike maintenance schedule…I traded out my tires finally. My front tire wasn’t worn at all, it’s probably only got a dozen rides on it, but I hated how it rode. It had a high center profile and tended to roll way to easy. I’m now running a Specialized Resolution 2.3 (29″) that I picked up from the shop the other day on a whim. The test drive around the ride showed this to be a really full super grippy tire. Looking forward to putting it through the paces out on some dirt. I also pulled off my rear Chris King wheel and replaced it with an older Surly single speed wheel and put a WTB Weirwolf 2.1 (26″) on it. Now I just need to go through the shed again and find a wider bar, maybe a riser bar if I have one. Then a nice clean and lube job to the chain and she’ll be all ready for this season’s dirty punishment plan. Interesting side note…I just plugged in “2926″ into Google to see what kind of fun things would come up. Why, because some people call the bike a 69er, some a 96er, and some just call it dumb (I’m not naming any names, Graham). I figured there should be a better name for this and I think I found it…Evolution. So how the hell does 2926 = Evolution? Simple. “2926″ is the EText-No. of a certain book at Project Gutenburg and that book is none other than…”On the Origin of Species: or, the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature“, in other words Evolution. Strangely fitting don’t you think?

Anyway, Evolution should be ready to go hit some dirt this weekend. It’s looking like weather in the 70’s, perfect for getting in some test rides. Get outside and enjoy the lack of rain!

DT