Big Bikes

July 4th North Shore Ride

“You have prosthetic wings You drive a surveillance van
You're always doing seven things
You write the code for brain implants
There are no papers on you
The law doesn't cover what you do
You and your think tank entourage
Are all counterculture demigods

You're so technical, you go hacking around the world
You're so technical, baby, Are you a boy or a girl? “


-The Magnetic Fields – Technical (You’re So)



The North Shore of Massachusetts is by far my favorite place to ride, period. The combination of low stakes, relentless, technical, hairy moves, and fast, winding singletrack combines to make for a riding experience I just haven’t found anywhere else. So when I got an actually day off which wasn’t a race day I b-lined it up to South Hamilton to meet up with Andy Sanidas
kick ass rider and human Google Map of the trail systems in that area.

Chris MCQueen picked me up at just around 9AM, it was a beautiful summer day, I was hurting after a late night at The Independent and a less than adequate night’s sleep, since Fitchburg I’ve been waking up between 5 and 7AM regardless of when I go to bed, it’s starting to bug me out.
We left from Andy’s place, spinning on the road over to Gordon College to meet up with a couple of his posse, turned out it was Glen and Tim, two brothers I’d met through ‘cross. They rock the Annie’s mac and cheese kits, very cool. I don’t pay attention to trail names so I can’t tell you where we went aside from The Ancient Line Trail, but it was all good stuff, never a boring moment, one bobble would lead to at least two more before you’d have to stop and let your internal “Flow-Meter” bar move back up to 100%.
Chris went down in a corner early, drawing first blood.

Tim took a flyer up this rock scramble, didn’t quite make it, went tumbling, but walked away.


Glen had about the same outcome.

Something I do miss about gears is picking apart technical ascents, I got torqued out well before I even got to this spot. I had the most bizarre crash of the day. A stick lodged in my rear wheel and instead of stopping to deal with it or reaching down with my hand to pull it out I opted to try to nudge it out with my left foot. My foot got caught by the wheel and was pulled into the space between the tire and the chainstay, bringing the bike to a skidding stop. Once stopped I was in a most awkward position, it was very slow motion, "oh no, I am going to...fall...over...now...aah!".
I was surprised at how well the 29er ate up the twitchy, slow speed, technical stuff, it doesn’t get anymore intricate and befuddling than this terrain , I can now say beyond a reasonable doubt that I am 100% sold on the 29 inch wheel thing, like going from skiing to snowboarding or black and white to color T.V..
I have no idea how long we rode for but it was just enough, my legs were hurting something fierce after doing hills the day before on the road bike, I was pretty dehydrated, and feeling some hunger pangs.
That’s it for me, Godzilla Vs. Space Godzilla is on and Evil Space Godzilla is totally getting up in Little Godzilla’s grill, it’s pretty tense.