Opening Day 2008 at the Fells

Bri and I dusted off the bikes after a long winter and headed to Fells to enjoy our first day of biking this season. The weather was great in the low 70s. Charles pussied out after a long night at Foxwoods yesterday and Steve skipped out to attend the Boston Beer Summit. We parked at the usual South Border Road Meeting House Brook Parking area. The highlight of the trip was our discovery of the prohibited area between the Middle and South Reservoirs. The trail meandered along the water providing some nice views and swoopy riding. We also did some exploring of the Reservoir Trail (orange), which had some good sections to the east of the South Reservoir. While riding on North Dam Road two dudes stopped us to ask for directions to the Sheepfold. Since they didn't seem to quite understand the implications of this inquiry, we subtly directed them to some better riding in the prohibited area. I took a bad fall towards the end of the ride. A cut on my left knee made my entire upper shin bloody. Bri cheered me up quickly, though, falling to a small stream as we tried to cut west to the Bike Loop. All in all in was good day to shake off the rust. More to come soon.

Nickerson State Park

This weekend me, Steve, and Bagge went riding at Nickerson State Park in Brewster, MA- a 20 mile trip in total. It was super sweet. We would have some exciting pictures of the ride except Steve forgot to charge his camera battery.

15 minutes into the ride Steve got a flat tire, and some old guy scolded us for repairing it in the shade where we might get hit by a car. He couldn't have been more wrong, though, because we repaired it on a dumping station access road were no cars came by expect for an occasional ranger at 10 miles per hour. In addition to the jerk old guy, there were a lot of people on the Cape Cod Bike Path who had terrible biking skills. It would have been nice to get some instructional pictures of these characters demonstrating how not to bike.

We went swimming in a pond in the park at the end of the ride. There was a cool rope swing hanging from a tree going out over the water. Bag considered taking the jump, but was too much of a wimp to pull the trigger. The 2 feet of water under the swing would have been more than enough to safely break his fall.

We finished our excursion with a trip to beach to swim for a second time. It was low tide and the crabs were out of control. We couldn't take more than 2 strides without stepping on a crab. When we looked up, everyone else on the beach was also completely occupied with the crabs. Next time we make it back to Steve's Cape house, in the spirit of 10 year old boys, we are going to make a hermit crab torture pit by collecting dozens of crabs and dropping them in a 4 foot hole in the sand where they can't escape until the incoming tide frees them.

The scare of the ride was the rampant poison ivy in Nickerson. If you are ever there in the summer months, watch out. It is a poison ivy festival. It turns out that Bag is a poison ivy expert. He taught us all about the dangers of poison ivy and the possible cures. Fresh crushed stems of the jewelweed plant are what you need, but this is hard to come by. The next best treatment is rubbing you body with alcohol immediately after exposure. Because Bag is highly allergic, when we got home he promptly took a burning hot shower to wash off the poison ivy oil from his skin. I'm convinced that instead of curing him this spread the oil to even more parts of his body. It is only a matter of time until Bag comes down with a severe case that rivals Joe's epic summer of 2001 when he couldn't leave the house for 2 weeks because of the poison ivy on his feet, hands, and ass.

Trailside Repairs

Today Steve and I went biking at Middlesex Fells Reservation and managed to blow through 3 tubes. I got to ride about 2 miles and then walked 3.5 miles to get out. It was awesome.

The GPS device is pretty cool though, check out some of these graphs and maps. On the ride home we got up to 37 mph!

The many repair/walking stops are apparent when speed = 0.

Full ride details at MotionBased.