Roaring Brook Road, Conway

I headed out Saturday morning thinking of a well-worn route up 116 North into Conway, but decided to turn off a little early onto a byway with the promising moniker of Roaring Brook Road. It did not disappoint -- nay, not in the least.

It's a long road which began with a twisting, steep climb past an impossibly perfect farm with pastures tucked into gem-like hillsides. I got to thinking the 12% grade was about steep enough, which is of course when the road turned to gravel and got really vertical. It went on for miles, lots of hair-raising sketchy descents (especially on 28c tires) and secluded hilltop pastures peeking out through New England's ghostly past.

If you like rugged adventure, go forth (or perhaps, given the holiday, I should make it, "Go 4th.").

Decked out in the national colors for the July 4th weekend (the pedals are also blue…)

Upland pasture with tiny dots for cows

Blow-down from Hurricane Albert added to the rugged goodness

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All Things Green

What I learned this week:

When you do your civic duty -- like attending a town Conservation Committee meeting -- you might find out about some secret access points to the Connecticut River (the center line through the Pioneer Valley).

Using all your skills to maneuver your dirt-road bike along old tractor roads, you might see some beautiful scenery between the access point and the river.

You might find a beach you never knew existed, which you'll plan on returning to in the hot months.

 

On your reconn mission, you might end up poking around a neighboring town, and see a road block with graffitti which says, "Bridge too purty for yr car." (True, by the way.)
 

On your way home, you might even see a convoy of local tractors hurrying to take their places in the town Memorial Day parade.

Help your town save the local greenery, and then go out and ride your bike to see it all.

It might be worth it.

Adventure by Bike

Not feeling ambitious in mind or limb this morning, I climbed on the Salsa Vaya with no destination in mind. A great bike for that, since one can turn down any kind of "road" one finds alluring.

To wit:

Hubbard Road on a pristine spring day

Juggler Meadow Road's eponymous view

Yes, Virginia, there really is such a road name

Valley roads sport an abundance of quirky monikers and appellations

Yum.....

When I see a turn-off by the road, I look past it for a trailhead; all sorts of little treats lie beyond

Even managed a stream crossing with a little log involved, at speed

Later, another hidden trail led to this treasure...

...and a bunch of flowy singletrack, affording fine views of local industrial history

Happy legs at favorite café after the ride

Even happier tummy

The steed awaits patiently, tied up outside the saloon

Don't you wish you lived in the Pioneer Valley?

Icing on the cake: when I arrived home, the neighbors were dog-sitting, with local kids chasing him all over their yard

I can't recommend highly enough just getting on a bike and going where your nose leads. No goal or GPS unit needed. A good friend (and pretty serious racer) does it all the time; he likes to call it "playing bikes."

Whatever you call it, don't lose out on that wonderment that you had as a child, when you could first take yourself somewhere far away, just to see what was there, and to feel the sun on your skin and the burn in your lungs.

Did I Finish That Ride, or Did it Finish Me?

A rough ride yesterday, and I ain't talking road surfaces.

I had mapped out a brand new route on the other side of the river, up through Deerfield into Shelburne, on tiny back ways with names like Sand Gully Road and Lucy Fiske Road (intersecting now, and for all eternity, with Erah Fiske Road... makes you think).

Before the suffering came the bridge over the pretty Deerfield

Many of the roads were gravel. Many -- too many -- were among the steepest actual roads I've ever ridden, more like mountain bike trails.

All of this sounded like a delightful adventure in the morning, but soon after I set out, I began losing power. It felt like a battery was missing. Shortly thereafter, I hit the nastiest hill of the day.
Standing up and jamming down on the pedals for all I was worth brought scrambling, meager progress.

Scramblescramblescramble, stop, heave for breath, hike-a-bike, heave for breath. And so forth.

A third of the way into the loop, the idea of turning back flitted through my mind, but was squashed like one of the gnats flitting endlessly around my sunglasses. Turn back? I might as well give up on the whole day. Turning back is so... depressing.

For better and for worse, I'm not real good with letting go.

This is a road, but only because it says so on the map

Finally, I topped out, at least temporarily. The view was nice, but not nice enough for all the trouble it took to get there. Later, I did get a better reward -- a visit with a local critter.

Climbing does have its rewards, such as the view from the top

Some people find lamas on the tops of mountains; I find llamas

The roads became more rolling, if by "rolling," you mean jagged, nasty sawtooth hills. The scenery picked up as I crossed Route 2 a couple of times and headed through the edges of Shelburne, a classic New England small town.

Pretty much the entire library for the town of Shelburne

Some business owner built this beauty, no doubt. Four chimneys!

It was about at this time I ran out of food and liquids, with nary a store to be seen. From there, it was onward to more ridonkulous hills and forest primeval. The final "road" that completed the loop portion of my ride was three miles of unmarked wet clay and scarifying descents down loose rock. I would have needed more more nutrition, more skills, or just a mountain bike, to enjoy it. Maybe all three.

But I finished. Ragged, barely moving, I crawled into a convenience store about two miles from the car and croaked out a request for a cola and a granola bar. Sweetest meal I've had in a while.

I'm sorry I wasn't in shape to relish the challenge while I was there, but it was, in fact, some of the more beautiful country I've ridden out here. Glad I took photos, 'cause I ain't headin' back there too soon.

Stupid, but Fun

A shorter route today, and on my own. I was quite unsure what I was going to be capable of today, because I felt so tired all week. Yeah, well… it’s amazing what temps in the 70s, blue skies, and a morning of cleaning house will do for my motivation to get out there and bite off a big hunk o’hill.

This week, I made a vow to limit my duration or intensity a little more this season,  because looking back at my logs, I discovered that whenever I go crazy, I end up sick or wiped out the following week.

Though I kept to my mileage limit today, I did a little more than I intended, vertically – 2,000 feet of climbing in thirty miles on the Vaya, all of it on loose gravel, which certainly can add to the toll. This was supposed to be a recovery week ride, but what’s life for, if not making the same stupid but fun mistake over and over again?

Was feeling quite sluggish most of the climb, but I downed my new go-to energy food, an almond-butter-and-honey sandwich, and very shortly was climbing with considerably more élan. That’s the second time that stuff has put much-needed fuel in my jets, so I’m sold. Costs way less than a Clif Bar and tastes three times better than any awful gel, too.

I think I’ll be swapping out the 45 mm Vee Rubber tires for the original 35 mm Small Block Eights on the Vaya. The 45s make my pseudo-single-track expeditions a little more manageable, but everywhere else, they’re just an albatross. I miss the light, incisive quality of the 35s. As for cushioning, let’s face it: Miles of washboard roads is brutal, and five pounds fewer psi does little to ameliorate that. Especially when you’ve paid for that cushion with every turn of the pedals on the climb.

A gorgeous spring day, though a tad warm; temps reached mid-80s. My bod tends to run warm, and my favorite riding season runs from March through May. Typical May that is, if there is such a thing as typical weather anymore. Brooks sparkled and splashed under dirt bridges, birds flitted energetically and sang with brio, and the Vitamin Water at the halfway point really hit the spot.

Here’s to the next dumb mistake!

What I Did for my Labor Day Weekend



Artifact of Tropical Storm Irene: Blocked trail in Monague on Saturday. Time for some hike-a-bike through the woods!



Cranberry Pond in Sunderland, on Labor Day. Dirty roads, dirty weather. I tried to climb the fire road up Mt. Toby (in the background) but didn't have low enough gears or fat enough tires (okay -- or strong enough legs).



When you have a bike that thrives on faux-roads, you have fun exploring under highway trestles.



And you find mysterious inscrptions on stone blocks by railroad tracks.



And you turn off trails or roads onto newly-discovered single-track networks. See that footbridge way at the bottom? Hike-a-bike, from there upward. Fun!



Look to This Day

As I said yesterday, I think the Salsa Vaya is my kind of bike. Today, I headed off for some reconn on a small area in the north of Amherst that I'd recently been told hides some short but lovely trails. Indeed they do -- flat, smooth, well-maintained, and scenic. The pleasure the Vaya allowed was riding up there on the road, then nosing off into the woods until I ran out of trail, then turning on to a gravel road and sniffing around for another trail, and so on. I've never seen a bike more perfectly suited to this kind of advenutre.
Scenes from a Tuesday morning well spent:

Memorial stone in Mill River Recreation Area


 

Mill River riffle




More Mill River trail



Presumably the site of the old mill



I even covered a snippet of the famed Robert Frost Trail (Puffer's Pond on left)

I think the Vaya wanted a souvenir of this lovely jaunt

A Fling Forgiven

Well, when you're pushing 50, these things happen.

We've all heard about the guy who runs out and buys the bright red sports car to compensate for his fading manhood. As for me, I bought a mountain bike. Like, with about 15 minutes of forethought.

I was gonna test ride it -- really, seriously! But this mysterious other buyer was circling around, and my friend selling the bike said I might want to move fast. I figured, what the hey! So I have almost no idea what to do with it. I want to learn more about single-track riding. It's a gorgeous bike. I'll grow into it.

I was wrong.

I rode that stunning beauty four times, and never once had a really good time. It was like being on someone else's bike. The 700c wheels -- my norm -- felt huge with those fat tires sitting on them. I couldn't really get over very much that I couldn't get over with the much narrower tires on my beloved, fully rigid Vaya. Between all that air in the tires and the suspension fork, I just couldn't feel the surface of the trails or roads, which led to worse handling, not better.

Maybe it's just too advanced a bike for me, or maybe I need a 26er; my friends who race say that smaller wheels allow them to pick their way through the rocks, roots, and tight turns of New England more nimbly. Or maybe I just wasn't built for mountain bikes.

Saturday, after another frustrating ride, I called the shop and asked my pal if he'd take the Mariachi back as a straight trade for the Vaya I had swapped. He was very understanding, and to my great relief, said simply, "Sure!"

It's good to have that bike back in the stable where it belongs. I plan to lay slightly fatter rubber on it, maybe 40 or 43 mm, so I can reel in those those nasty gravel and washed-out fire roads a bit more handily. But nothing like the 2.2" tires on the Mariachi. Beasts, they were.



I grew up a road rider, and perhaps I'll always be defined by that provenance. But that doesn't mean I don't like to get dirty. Salsa's Web site says of the Vaya, "Designed to take on any surface that someone might consider a road." In the end, that might neatly describe yours truly, as well.

There Will Be Mud

Scenes from a Saturday morning well-spent. Used the Vaya to explore some gravel ascents on Mt. Toby in Sunderland, then found some of the highly-reputed singletrack up on top. Did a little climbing on that, too; some day, I'll have to get a pair of decently fat tires to put on the Delgado Cross rims the Vaya came with.

For a long-time road rider trying to recover from all the fussiness of that discipline, the joy of intentionally riding through a mucky puddle or sketching out my rear tire is new to me. I felt like a six-year-old set free in the woods.

So, the dreck on my bike (below) might not look like a lot of mud to some of y'all, but it was sure fun for me.

To Texture

Saturday, I felt good. I'd slept two complete nights in a row -- like manna from heaven these days. I just had to go spend my new-found energy.

I cooked up a mostly-gravel ride for my Salsa Vaya; there were some roads I'd learned of from reading the route maps of an infamous annual late-winter ride in these parts, called Cushman-Roubaix. I strung them together with some of the other gravel I've found in recent months, and voila! 37 miles, almost half of it unpave'. Much of that was very vertical, and therein lay the rub; before long, I found myself humping up a 14% sandy grade. There was lots more like that over there in Pelham, and, after an hour of such labors, I was inspired to name the route, "The Tenderizer." The first 40% will definitely soften you up.

The overall ride, however, was so rewarding that the town of Pelham was fully forgiven for dressing its most ridiculous grades in a costume of loose sand and rock. (It seems like most towns do that out here, and it's baffling; wouldn't steep roads be easier to maintain if they were paved?)  Even on the uphills, I had the feeling I was riding on singletrack, so close, deep and verdant were the woods:

 Brooks babbled and burbled through lush roadsides:

I passed a neatly coiffed and perfectly-set house, surrounded by natural beauty...

 

A closer look revealed a 6-foot-high burger boy ready to serve rowers on the pond...

Mists enshrouded fertile hillsides...

And a friend was readily made in an upland pasture.

That was just during the climbing. I was moving too fast to get any shots of the long, exhilarating descent from Shutesbury Center to North Leverett Road and the Leverett Co-op, my frequent lunch stop. I can't recommend Montague Road highly enough, a lengthy, snaking bobsled ride that occassionally found little whoops of joy escaping my lips as my rear wheel did small fishtails around bends. From the Co-op (after a quick field repair of my rear derailluer) came another great gravelly descent, down Hemenway Road all the way to Route 63.

I am loving graveling more and more. Paved roads around here mostly have surfaces chopped up by other weather-related damage. That chop will slow you down and jounce you without remorse -- it's effect is wearing, interfering, annoying. Gravel, on the other hand, while also quite irregular, feels more like texture. It forgives, it lets me lose traction for an exciting moment or two (and I've come to love rather than fear that moment), it keeps me on alert.  

Most of all, it feels real.

These roads are made of stuff you can find on a walk in the woods. They have the same surface our cycling ancestors pioneered the sport on -- first on bone-rattling, precarious high-wheelers, later on the relatively sporty, 28-pound safety bike. They completed the first centuries and cross-country tours on those beastly machines, on roads just like these (maybe worse) probably in times I couldn't beat on silkiest tarmac. They competed in the first stage races, grinding themselves to a filthy pulp day and night for weeks. They were hard, hard people.

But I think they also knew, more deeply than we hard-paved roadies, forever seeking the smoothest, slickest ride, that dirt equals fun. Why do you think folks who ride the looser surfaces almost always post a shot or two of their grubby bikes and splattered legs?

Dirt equals fun. Go ride some.