Massive Fallout 2008 v2.0.Robert.666

The route was 115 miles with an 85-90mile option out of Rochester mills brewery. With the precision only Robert has the skill for here was the planned route / time table:

"Mile 0.00 (8:45 am) Roll out from my driveway...
Mile 13.70 (9:45 am) Stop for bagel and coffee at... Panera Bread 2508 S Adams Road Rochester Hills, MI
Mile 13.71 (10:10 am) Roll off for the trails and beyond... (this portion of the ride will cover 41.5 miles (ride time 2:47) 50 to 65 oz of fluid and 660 to 770 calories is sufficient for this time frame per hammer nutrition
Mile 55.20 (12:57 pm) Party Store Refuel Stop
Mile 55.21 (1:13 pm) Roll off for more trails and more beyond... (this portion of the ride will cover 41.5 miles (ride time 2:47) 50 to 65 oz of fluid and 660 to 770 calories is sufficient for this time frame per hammer nutrition
Mile 96.70 (4:00 pm) Rochester Mills Party time with that Massives Burger and Beer (I plan to carry a small cable lock around with me all day just for this stop...)
Mile 96.71 (5:55 pm) Last leg of the ride.... 18 miles to my driveway... Sunset is at 6:56 (safe ride "dusk" till 7:16) bring a blinky
Mile 115.00 (7:10 pm) Arrive back home... "

The Goon Squad:

I apparently missed something when we were rolling out of panera...but I guess my camera captured a little peak into the future of my day...

Rolling out we had 10 people....

Rolling into Rochester Mills Brewery we had 5....

Now here was the real schedule:

Mile 0.0 (9:24am) we are already late rolling out of Rochester Mills Brewery to meet up with goon squad. So we proceed to hammer 4.6 miles in Alan and Paul's draft well into my lower L3 zone. I find it hard to ride in a straight line as I strip layers off trying not to over heat.
Mile 4.6 (9:47am) Late at panera, but apparently just in time to wait in the slowest line in the world as we sweat profusely...the normal patrons glare at us. I guess stinky men with large packages have invaded their Saturday morning sanctuary. They look very confused.
Mile ??.?? (??:??am) Uhh this ride is faster than expected. We've come off the rail trail and hit bloomer, Cruise/Robert/DK/Greg/Alan/Paul lay it down, the weak are killed and eaten in short order...Important fact - I am not the slowest person (yet)
Mile ??.?? (??:??am) Blah blah blah ride stoney, people get lost, hilarity ensues.
Mile ??.?? (??:??am) Somewhere on a dirt road after stoney we've lost josh, jim, and the guy in a Giant Kit. We wait. They show up just in time for more gas to be poured on the fire. I don't know it yet but this is a preview of my fate. Cruise eventually turns around and heads home, he has a dance to attend.
Mile 55.20 (1:12pm) We are 15min behind schedule at our first party store pit stop. Everyone has survived to this point. Devour calories and fluids, Robert is not pleased with chit chat and signs people are having fun, we move on. The clock waits for no one.
Mile 70.00 (Time doesn't matter) Jim, Josh, and guy in giant kit have been shelled off the back in the maze that is bald mountain. I am the straggler of the group now in a heavy bonk state....luckily the pack waits up for me to point me the way to Addison Oaks. They dont look very pleased. I am the weak, they are looking hungry.
Mile 75ish (Does time exist?) I fix a mechanical as we fill up water at Addison Oaks parking lot. I get side tracked trying to find my head unit for my power tap and get left behind. The clock waits for no one. I finally catch up to DK, he is having nerve/neck problems so I follow him out of the trail on the paved path cutting off about 2miles of single track. I stopped caring.
Mile what? (If i don't look at my clock it goes faster) .........blargh
Mile 96.71 (Time to Drink) I'm done riding....time to drink

Great day in the saddle. Nice reminder of why I ride. Also reminds me and my legs that the season is OVER...which is fine by me. more pics here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/yorkadam/MassiveFallout2008

Welcome to mid twenties. population, me

In celebration of me surviving twenty four years with half a brain we did an AA->poto->AA ride on mountain bikes. Though my birthday was on Monday, its hard to squeeze in a 3-4hr ride followed by copious amounts of beer without upsetting the work life balance. Naturally it was pushed to the nearest Saturday. Meeting at 2pm 8/16 we started off by ogling at Alan's new rig:

Completely untested and new we were breaking all the rules (never ride an untested rig long distances or in races)…but hey, rules are meant to be broken. So we rolled on.


Took us about 57minutes on the road (sorry no dirt) to get to the trail head. We had geared up for an "easier ride" but Mr.John Heft begged to differ with our 17-22mph pace on the road. Paul took the lead out of the gate at the poto trail head. He quickly disappeared into the distance. Nothing new, Paul just goes one speed at poto: fast. Alan couldn’t get his new rig to shift and was otb with me. We regrouped every now and again at points on the trail chatting it up as an excuse to slug back more water.

We met an interesting DNR employee who got to sit in a lawn chair and just tell people a parking lot was full. Where do I sign up for this job? Heft opted for the shorter 15mile loop while Paul, myself, and Alan went on for the full loop. We stuck together till the last paved road crossing, and then we all hit our own strides. Eventually hitting the parking lot after . John was kind enough to reserve us a spot on the beech so we could consume flat soda and enjoy the view. I made the mistake in partaking in the American tradition of a hot dog. It was so good I got to taste it the whole way home!


On the way back about we identified Alan's shifting problem as a stiff link (to go with his other two stops: lose skewer, lose headset). Seems SRAM chains have been plagued with stiff links recently. Anyone else notice this? After a few minutes of messing with it we back on the road. The way back was quite a bit faster with periods of 24-27mph. The tailwind helped quite a bit. Paul decided to work on his tan lines a bit also:


Ride Time: 3:31:14
Ride Distance: 58.99 miles
Beers Consumed: ~8.3

Upon return we drank a few brews right in front of Alan's house sitting on the curb. I'm sure the neighbors loved this….



After showering up and it was time to hit up the bars in AA. Grizzly peaks for foodage (mmmm pulled pork sandwich) and an eight beer (5oz ea) sampler. Paul in his competitive nature naturally finished first, Heft second, me in third, and Alan with assistance from Paul was DFL. If you wanted me to recount the complex flavors of each beer good luck…Next up to bat was Ann Arbor Brew Co. followed by Ashley's. Even Mr Stephen Cain of UofM cycling showed:

(This is a rare sighting at best. Drink it in)

Now it's Monday and I'm officially 24. Miller High Life anyone?


(that's March 2008 in TN - good stuff)

Ore To Shore v2.0

that's my buddy from CO, read below for a nice explanation of that.....

We wake up at 730ish to get ready to race. race gun start time was 9:45am. Mid way through packing up a torrential down pour starts in Marquette. Anyone who has raced in sand knows rain is GREAT pre-race. This is not the case when it’s 50F there, so it’s a catch-22. Race fast in the cold, or race in slow in the dry heat. The rain stopped in Marquette after about 15min but followed us to the start. It proceeded to rain right until 30min before the start. This was unexpected. The radar led us to believe it would pass before the race, we got there sans base layers to cold wet rain. Not a good warm up by any standards. A mental note for any future race is to always bring a bag with back up layers in it. Anyway…Alan and I tooled around and did a rough warm up. No one really wanted to get too wet so busting around on the pavement was limited. The weather parted and dried just before the start and things looked up. The pack was definitely smaller than 2007 by about 100-200 riders.

When the gun went off it was nutty but Alan and I managed to stay top 20 part of the pack till the first climb.

Alan proceeded to pull away at the first major grass climb about 2 miles in. I went into smart mode and listened to my legs. I let the top 15-20 guys go and started finding groups of people to pick off or work with. Granted listening to my legs got me shelled back quite a bit more than I had liked. About 10 miles in I finally found my grove after a rough section of gravel about a half mile long. Anyone who has ridden this race knows it as the two level ore pellet ride parallel to the train tracks. It’s famous for its fun crashes as people try to switch between the two levels of gravel. I heard many a crash behind me as I was recovering. I’d guess as they went to pass me. After that it was alternating busting ass, pulling back a bit to recover, then busting ass. Figured I was sitting around 40th place at that point before the dreaded baby head sized hike a bike rock climb.

A little bit down about it since my goal was top 20. So I sewed it up. I got help in the form of an enemy from last year. A guy from CO who i rubbed tires with and almost fought (his choice not mine). He had also called me fat and smelly(yes this was because of the famous state jersey). We exchanged apologies and proceeded to work together for the next 10-15 miles getting a big group together for the roadie section of the course. Probably had a pack of 20 guys together there which is not normal for a mountain bike race. Few guys did most of the work (me included). The likes of Terry Ritter just sat on being leeches. At about 10 miles from the end we were in a nice grove dragging the remainder 15 people from our road pack through the woods trying to pick off as many people as we could. At this point I was out of GU and coming up on the end of my 100oz of water.

We started meeting the stragglers of the soft rock group at this point. Unfortunately being third wheel in a draft line has it’s advantages: you catch accelerations faster and work less, and its disadvantages: you have zero reaction time to pending crashes. We passed one un lucky soft rock guy who got spooked and took me out, and not to dinner. Laying on the ground in a fetal position a Cycle-To-Fitness rider was kind enough to show me how his shoe felt on my ribs. After I was out from under the hooves of the cattle I got up and tried to jump back on the bike...but the pack was now out of sight. Being so close from the end it was NOT a good spot to lose the draft train. Finally catching the pack a mile or two later near the deepest sand pit the two straggling riders biffed in the pit letting me take a nice leisurely 5mph pace into the pit of death. I also biffed as a result of my slow speed. Getting back up I put the pedal to the medal. I only caught the remaining five stragglers of my draft pack 1mile to go. I rolled in at 39th overall and 35th in men’s shaving about 17min off my previous years time. Shockingly only 2 minutes behind alan….and 9 places back.

Trails-Edge Results:
Alan Antonuk 2:49:40 26th overall, 24th men geared, 1st male 20-24
Adam York 2:51:26 39th overall, 35th men geared, 3rd male 20-24
Jon Heft 3:17:51 153th overall, 122nd men geared, 28th male 35-39

more pics here on Alan's Picasa account.

more prospectives from the race here on the trails-edge blog.

Wet Matches

Well my venture into elite has been interesting. I will say this, no matter the race, conditions, or distance there will always be someone to race against in elite. This is not always the case with expert. Also the riders that show are always of a much higher calibre. Not to mention you get an exta lap!

::Ruby::

In short, mud fest. It wasn't an epic race that you come out caked in mud. No this was a different kind of mud. Kind of like axel grease. It was slippery enough to make riding parts impossible (for me), and just slick enough to make running them an interesting experience. Think of a CX race but with circus music. The river crossing also added another level of hilarity. Too deep to ride you had to run/walk it hoping you wouldn't roll your ankle on a rock. Not to mention all the river rocks were kind enough to un Velcro my shoes each time I crossed. I am pretty sure that mr Tanguy didn't stop to fasten his shoes up after every crossing. This might explain the time gap he had on me...

Not sure if it's just me but damn that had a fast start. Definitely my first "welcome to the big leagues" experience when that gun went off. Just hanging on was brutal. Overall a good race. Was by no means a test of fitness. You really couldn't red line yourself with all the mud. First time I've ridden the course...something I'm learning is a big mistake in elite.

::Stony TT::

I'll sum this up for you short and sweet. Suckage. Over the last few weeks I have had almost no gas in my legs. Through a slow process of attrition with work, lack of sleep, bike parts breaking, and food poisoning I've been cached. Showing up to Stony TT was a futile act but I looked to it as a training experience. I brought my geared bike and the single speed out for some suffering.

On the first grass straight away I knew it wasn't going to be a good day. The speed was way too low and my legs HURT. This trend continued to get worse as the race went on. This was by no means how good I felt at Yankee TT....and I knew it. Caught a few wheels in technical sections but couldn't stick it. Took my 17th place in stride, got my single speed entry refunded, and promptly located some beer.

I'm in a funk.

Elite v1.0: the anatomy of a bonk

Woke up at 5:00am to my alarm clock. This is when you question "why do i race?". Fixed my normal pre race meal of French toast and Nutella (just don't eat with less than three hours pre race). Got a call from Jim mid way through my meal prep. Turns out that "chance of showers" was a pretty nasty guarantee. Scoped out the radar for myself and sure enough, it looked brutal. Jim was on the ropes, and I won't lie, so was I. My only drive was that i need to get into the elite scene of riding ASAP. No one wants to start their season out being DFL. So why not get used to it now? Besides, everyone needs a good mud filled suffer fest. Figuring it's been almost three years since I had mine, time to sign up for another. Besides I was counting on some sketchy radar math that it would stop raining 1hr before the race. Gave Jim the out, and he took it. So looks like 3hrs in the car solo.

Beautiful morning...the radar implied otherwise, so I packed up my car in preparations for rain:

Empty roads at 6am on a saturday, go figure:

Drive up was uneventful. Almost got a ticket, but the guy in front of me took one for the team. Rolled into Boyne with 1hr to the start. Weather had just lifted and everything was pretty damp. Though more people would have bailed, but the parking lot was pretty full. The registration line confirmed my fears, I got the number 5 plate. Oh well, time to suffer, with the other four guys :)

Rolled up to the starting line of five guys. Robert "the man" Heriman and Greg Kuhn were the only familiar faces. The other two guys I had never seen before. One did rock a fully rigid 29'er with what appeared to be (and later confirmed) a 38t front ring and a matching 21-11 road cassette. This is never a promising sign. Apparently I didn’t get the memo saying to bring my big boy shorts.

Strange thing about elite racing, the start isn't always as fast as you'd think. Then again we were just five. We motored the first flat parts at about 20mph Greg heading up the front. Greg took a wrong turn, the 29er rigid guy biffed in some sand. So I was sitting in 2nd place behind an unknown rider. Nothing I couldn't handle ( I thought). Now once we hit the first climb, it was strange; they just kept going at the same pace. I couldn't match. They launched me off the back like space trash. 29'er man, Robert, and the unknown soldier blasted up the trail. Greg finally caught back up and gave me the words of advice for the day "settle in and push hard". So I did just that.


Being DFL has its benefits. You always look up the trail with hope and hunger looking for a straggler. For some strange reason I kept seeing Robert just up the trail. This didn't make much sense. He had been second wheel when I got dropped. Sure enough after every hill he was out of sight. Got some split times from spectators but my suspicions were confirmed when they ranged from 30seconds to 1minute depending on the hills. So I dug down and kept motoring. Sometime during the second lap I caught Robert. He too gave me some words of advice to "make sure to keep drinking and eat". That’s when I started doing the mental math, which was not promising. This race was going to be longer and much harder than I had anticipated.

When riding solo in longer races you are forced to make do with your own sag. I had put four bottles by the start finish area. Figured that would be enough for the day. Wrong. My estimated five bottle day ended up being an eight bottle day. (a big thank you to the spectator who filled my bottles and handed them to me on the last lap!) To add fuel to the bonk fire was my lack of proper food intake. During my rush to warm up I had forgotten to pack my food. So in a last minute rush I stuffed only three Gu's and two rice crispy treats in my pockets. Not nearly enough for a 3.5-4hr race. These two factors would come together going into the last lap. I kept looking at my computer on the flats. My speed was dropping. My breath was getting hot, and the hills started to look longer. Out of food and just on water and Gatorade I knew I was hosed. Robert finally caught me at 3:10:00 and that’s when the wheels fell off. Trying one last desperate attempt to catch him my matchbook was empty. The next 35minutes were a combination of dizzy spells and stopping to trying not puke. The final nail in my coffin was an expert rider passing me. Up until that point no one had passed me outside of elite men. All ambition gone I coasted the last parts of trail trying not to pass out (thankfully no one else passed me). Finally I hit the finish at 3:45:00, almost 10min ahead of the 1st place expert in my age group. So moving up wasn’t all bad, even if I only got 5th (of 5).

Looking at my data post race you can pretty much see the downward spiral into bonk land:

PROS:
* Knocked 15minutes off last years time with a longer course and against faster rider
* Dodged the rain and got perfect trail conditions
* Learned how to suffer proper like!

CONS:
* Not enough water / food intake. Rookie mistake.
* Didn’t ride my own race like a silly roadie.
* Got passed by an expert rider. Oops.

MA day 7: finding single track

Mission: ride my mountain bike, find single track.


After many hours of skulking around on the Internet I found some promising places to ride near me. The only catch was the torrential down pour over the last day. After riding through one of the state forests earlier I knew anything in it or low lying areas would be a swamp. So that left me with one area close enough to bother with. All the trail reviews agreed that it was one of the best trail systems to hit up around here. Spent a few hours finding some GPS info and ride descriptions and off I went:





Now ever state has its own style of trails. MA is no different. Here there are four main features. Rocks: There are tons of rocks. Big, small, long, tall. The worst kind is the moss covered monolith which can go for thirty feet of trail. Tread lightly or you are going down...you will never be on a level incline when you encounter them. Moss: This wasn't bad but when added to the rocks, it was a bit tricky. Roots: Again like the moss it isn't a problem, but normally you'd get a large root system in the middle of a rocky section. One screw up and you were hiking. Good day sir. Last but not least my favorite Leaves: You'd assume these guys would be slick, obscure the trail, or all in all just annoy you. Except they were mostly off of the trail. For some reason these leaves were just DEEP. If you went off trail at all good luck. Chances of sinking up to six inches into some unseen rock crevice was pretty much a guarantee.


So are all MA trails like this? Nope, just the hiking or double track. If you hunt hard enough (and they are hidden for a reason) you will find single track. Well maintained, easily ride able (most of the time) single track. I'd say of the 15.5 miles today I only did about 5 miles of single track. According to all the maps and chit chat online I missed another 1-2miles. Now this was if I had wanted to hike-a-bike probably double that distance along a questionable ridge trail. Normally I would be all about that... I found out early on in my ride that bike shoes + slick rocks = no good times. So I passed.

Olivia was nice enough to give me a place to park to start my ride. Parking around here was a bit sparse, but since people normally only stop 5-10min to look at the vista you are pretty safe finding a spot:

Olivia's Outlook wasn't bad...but some NY people did whine about "oh I thought there would be much more of a drop off". I thought It best not to tell them to hike their lazy butts up the ridge to the fire tower for the real view:This is a very vague idea of what MA has to offer for trails. Granted this is a hiking trail, but you can see a little bit of everything it has to offer. The single track was in a bit better shape when I happened upon it:Power line corridors offered up some nice views: Hike-a-biked for this shot. Turns out when the trail said it was just a "hiking path" it was right....unless you were some kind of mountain goat with a trials bike and tires made of a super sticky material. At this point I turned around and started my return trip to the car:
Once I found the single track it dumped you out onto some nice overlooks. Messed with my camera's timer a bit and got this nice Alex style self portrait shot. Note to self, smile next time:Every trip I try to finish it off with a staple meal. In this case some whole grain bread and flank steak washed down with a blue moon. yum:
All in all a good trip to MA. Obviously more for the roadies out here. The single track is too hard to find to just make a mountain biking trip out of it. Ended up skipping my gap ride up in VT so I could scope out the mountain biking trails around here. After all I'm still in my mid cycling career crisis of mt bike vs road.

::::ride stats::::
time: 2:40:18
distance: 15.61 miles
climbing: 2786ft

MA day 6: The Guacamole Report

Well in short. No group ride tonight at 6pm. Didn't realize we were going to be swamped by rain till 1pm. I rushed to get to the trail head but didn't saddle up till 3pm, then the rain rolled in about two hours faster than I had expected. Only ended up getting in 30-45min of saddle time around a park. Luckily I didn't venture over the ridge to the next mountain or I'd have been boned. I needed a rest day anyway...legs are crispy.

Trails around here have a lot more rocks, but they are all ride able. I can't really comment on the true conditions since I was in a well groomed park for the start of my ride. Horses and people co existed here so some trail was way too easy, other trails were poo covered and dimpled with horse tracks. I'm sure the locals have some killer routes around the mountains here. Just no time today to get lost with the rain. Bah.

MA day 5: "taking it easy today" -paul borden

Well with the best intentions I mapped and planned for an easy day. Something like 40miles and 1.5-2k climbing. Nothing hard. Stick to the basics and scope out some roads north east of here near the New York state border.

Rolled out around 4-4:15pm for my ride. A bit late, but no biggie for a 2-2.5hr chill ride. Plenty of light to be hard. Hit a snag looking for my first major left hand turn. Did a little back tracking figuring I missed the turn (or rather got the first and not the third street name it's called off Google maps). While back tracking i saw a cyclist, figured I'd ask the local. Said he would show me the street since he was on his warm up for a group ride. Being a fool I asked about then group ride....blah blah about local hoss's and that it was 40-50miles of eye bleeding. So I figured "why not".

In the parking lot we waited a bit and people talked up tales about "last week was so fast". This got me a little scared because it was my day off and I have a mt bike ride tomorrow with a local shop. I lucked out and all the big cat 1/2 guys were off at a stage race about 70miles away. The other locals however did not get so lucky. About 5miles into the group ride it became apparent when I gased it up the first big climb I was the hoss. Weak.

There were a few "entering city/township" signs we did sprints for. The signs were hidden by over hanging trees so I missed the first two. Asked the other riders the proximity to the next few...and then proceeded to show them that sprinting at the last second was not necessary when we could go super fast for a whole mile! Towards the end of the ride they didn't put up much of a fight. Just some local club guys tried to bridge so I waited up and finished out the last bit with them. Wasn't a terribly impressive ride. Definitely went way too hard for my "day off". Tomorrow should be icing on my crispy cake.

Got the low down on the mt bike ride Thursday from one of the riders tonight. Might be a shaky description based on attendance but apparently I'll get about a solid 2-3hrs in on the saddle. No droppage since the group will be large. I'll see what kind of gas they are cooking with if I've got any left in my tank...which isnt much.

here is the real route i took:


:::ride stats:::
ride time: 3:05:20
distance: 59.56

MA Day 4: the flat route

Well today started off with better planning. I hit up a local bike shop to chat them up for maps and rides. Got a nice map of all the MA roads that indicated hill direction, traffic flow, and paved vs dirt. The last part was definitely key after my beartown state forest experience. Chatted up some family for ride suggestions also. Put them all together and came up with this route:

Was looking for a little easier ride today, so I opted for the route with 'less climbing'. Once I got home and processed my data the reality was I had actually gone harder today....oops. Tomorrow will be a chill ride with my cousin who's not exactly a serious biker. Should be a chill few hours for me....for him maybe not soo much.

Today I was climbing the first major mountain and saw this fun little sign. Sure enough there was a euro style 180 in the road:

Didn't click till I saw this sign at the top that I had picked the wrong side to ascend. In retrospect I would have preferred the longer grinder with the nutty ride down. Alas I was stuck with a short steep grinder then a REALLY mellow ride down. bah. Gravity needs to do more work:

The hair pin turn did afford me a panoramic shot, but it doesn't do the view justice with all the humidity in the air:

Let us not forget to eat our rice crispy treats....GC's orders:

Finally after going down the longer side of the mountain i saw my "fun starts here" sign: Had to take a shot of me rep'n the trails-edge gear:

I will give MA a lot of credit here. If you stick to some of the "major" roads they are very well marked and easy to follow. Deviate at your own risk.:

I guess the circus had come to town this week, but they forgot to remind me I had to perform:

Did I bring my mountain bike? oh ya....oops. I'll be hitting up a local group shop ride Thursday. See what these guys are rocking. Apparently most of the trails around here are hidden / boot legged so that ATV's don't mess them up. I guess surrounding states protect state land / forests so they come to MA and shred the trails. They weren't too keen on giving up their hot spots to an outsider, so I'll have to just ride with them Thursday....

:::ride stats:::
ride time: 3:47:53
distance: 72.40 miles
lost dist: 0 miles (down 100%)
time reading directions and scratching head: 5min (down 83%)
time riding on restricted access roads: 0min (to my knowledge down 100%)

MA Day 3: getting lost...

Today can be described as navigational New England fun. For those of you who have never been here, just know that a road can change three times between street signs. So be ware the level of map you scout your ride with on the Internet. Oh, and there can even be multiple roads with the same name intersecting a road you will be riding on, so make notes on your queue sheet.

The other fun factors were oppressive heat and road choices. How did i plan this route? Yep you guessed it just off a map...almost got me yet again. This time it wasn't the distance, but the quality. Let us not confuse a "road" with a river bed. Evidently the MA State forest funding isn't there anymore. Their roads were questionable at best. Descending at 40mph is cool, some moss might raise a few eyebrows, but doable. The cake is taken by the 10x10ft sections of road that appear to be MISSING. Now those were the 'good roads'. The previous 5miles was something you'd want a raised up 4x4 to bomb down. I did it on my mud slinging skinnies.

Planned route, but add 10miles on for being lost:
Figured I'd do a handle bar shot for you blog freaks:
Now i've seen a lot of things crawling on the road, but this is a first:
First sign it was going to be a fun day, obviously it has no business being closed. Good CX practice if you wanted to have at it.:
Nice dirt roads in MA, or so i thought...Beartown State Forest would prove me wrong: Mt hunger tried to om nom nom nom my tires on the descent. Saying it had some rain erosion would be putting it nicely. First sign that maybe dirt roads are hit or miss here. Beartown still awaits.:

If you ever see this in MA, turn around, no roads are bike able. Just my luck i saw this after I came out of the "oh shit i don't think I'm going to make it out of here" 5miles of road. Then I started the moss covered washed out roads which were paved.:


Let us not forget the ever present pile of crap that comes out of your pockets post ride:

Adam with low blood sugar / high eyes:

Being lost affords you the "hell with it" time to take a quick panoramic of the country side:

All in all not a bad day, just not enough food to get back what the heat took from me.

:::ride stats:::

ride time: 4:26:19

distance: 71.35 miles

lost dist: ~10 miles

time reading directions and scratching head: 30min

time riding on restricted access roads: 15min