Big Bikes

Pop's Camp

After the self-imposed blogging vacation during the pre-wedding craziness, I never quite got back at it with the five day a week writing schedule, this is due in part to what I've been doing with my Wednesday nights through Friday mornings. M and I have been heading down to my homeland of Wrentham, MA to Pop's Camp on Lake Archer. Pop was my great Grandfather on my Mother's side. For a brief period in the summer 0f 2006, I occupied Pop's Camp full time and during that period it was referred to by my siblings as "Uncle Thom's Cabin".

Technically I could Remora (shut up spellcheck, it's a parasitic suckerfish, you dumbass) Internet off the neighbor's and keep up the blogging, but we've chosen to make this time at the cabin media free. It's been a good thing.

I wake up, take a jump in the lake, and then head out for an epic loop of Wrentham and Foxborough. The trails are rough, mostly moto-stuff, but I roll on The Remedy (or today, a demo-Roscoe, more on that later) which makes it all a hoot. In the upper right of the photo above you can see how my cousin Christy has transformed my Grandparent's place into a vibrant organic farm. Cutting through there to say howdy is always part of the ride. The wildflowers actually grow along the abandoned rail road tracks, which my family watched the Worcester Tornado travel down back in '53 (of course they also watched Cyclocross bikes travel down it in the winter of '08).


Above: 1.) A ripping descent. You can ride these trails on a hardtail XC bike - you can play on them with a six inch travel trail bike. 2.) The gash in my leg from a failed drop attempt, that's the bastard that ended up getting horribly infected. 3.) Me ten feet from The Roscoe, where I landed after my bike stayed in a slimy moto-rut at twenty miles per hour as my body chose to dive into the trees. 4.) The Bezema Palace...I'm still not sure what the story is with these people but they have some sweet lion statues guarding their front door. If Scarface ran a construction company and lived in Wrentham Massachusetts, I'm pretty sure his house would look a lot like this.


1.) Somehow on every one of these rides, I have to go all "Old School" and get all worked over, bonked out, and generally destroyed. Riding in baggies on a hot, muggy New England day is dumb. The chamois is a joke and you feel like you're swimming in corduroys. 2.) I started out at the top of that slimy, green rock...and went for a slip and a slide. 3.) A bit of trudging through stinking swamps is par for the course. 4.) Always finish with the plummet off Sweatt/Knuckup Hill. Which I actually skied on during its brief re-opening in the early eighties. The J-Bar was terrifyingly sketchy.

After the ride it's nice to take a bath in the lake (with eco-friendly soaps) and then relax on The King Cobra Raft with an ice cold beer. It's much easier to mount The King Cobra when you're in shallow water, but, like I said as I grunted and contorted my body trying to get on the thing, "I have to learn to do these thing myself!".

And that is why I've become a blog-slacker.