OD on Trail Riding

When was the last time we had a Thanksgiving weekend like this one? Four straight days of mild temps and sun. I hit trails all four days, including Willowdale, FOMBA, Seavey Hill and the Blackstone River Valley.

Early Thanksgiving Day morning, I hit Willowdale State Forest for a little pre-burn fun. The doubletrack was pretty wet, but most of the singletrack drained out nicely from heavy rain over two previous days. Many riders were out. The first few bridges I hit were deadly. Frosty or black ice. I walked a few.

The annual Turkey Burner fun ride on Friday was a hoot. Hooked up with three others for three hours of root sliding craziness. The FOMBA crew nicely cleared the trails from the October snowstorm damage, but rain midweek compounded the challenge FOMBA's roots already impose. I cleaned the longest trail, 3+ mile Fireline, but didn't fare nearly so well on others. After completing the singletrack, I split off solo for a fast lap around Tower Hill pond.

Lake Massabesic at the start of the FOMBA Turkey Burner

Saturday I headed up to Bath, Maine with my wife. What is in Bath, you may ask? Bath Cycle & Ski, also known as Bikeman on the web. Bath is one of a few local retailers of snow bikes, or affectionately called fat bikes. I do enough winter riding to warrant getting a fat bike. I plan to dabble in winter triathlons too, where you run, bike and ski on snow. 2" wide studded tires might work well for typical Weston boiler plate conditions, but not Gunstock packed powder. I love riding snowmobile trails too. It takes just-right conditions to enjoy riding the sled trails with studs, usually a freeze after a thaw to set up the base. But with a fat bike, almost any sled trail conditions are fair game. The 4" wide tires provide considerable float on loose snow.

My visit to Bath was exploratory. I have never touched a fat bike. I wanted to see first hand the components, feel the heft of the bike (35+ pounds!), and get my numerous questions answered. This is way easier to do looking at a bike than talking over the phone.

I was targeting a Carver Ti frame built up with a Salsa Mukluk build kit. Bath had only one Carver frame left, a 20" frame. It's top tube length suggested it was a tad big for me. Zach at Bath put a fork in the frame with a couple fat wheels to let me assess the standover height. It seemed marginal. The Carver frame came with a $700 premium over the Salsa bike with identical low-end build kit. I'd want to get this frame size thing right, as a Ti frame is not what I would want to upgrade down the road. I had an action to check stand over clearance on my other hardtails later at home. If the 20" Carver frame was similar, I'd go with it. Bath would hold it for me until the end of the day.

A bike shop that sells snow bikes would naturally carry winter cycling shoes too. They had Lake's, Shimano's and Louis Garneau's on hand. They even had my size in all of them! I was totally impressed. I had my eye on the Loui Garneau's.  They looked slick. The fit was good. The uppers were very supple. Almost too supple. If I stretched the upper cuff, I could see light through it. Definitely not waterproof. Then I tried the Shimano's. They went on like a well broken in glove. The fit was perfect. They felt a little bulkier but had much more insulating material than the Garneau's. The Shimano's use Gortex, so at least the lower portion would be waterproof. Then I tried the Lake's.  They felt like an XC ski boot. Tall, very rigid, but probably the most waterproof and warmest. I didn't like how bulky they felt. All the shoes were SPD compatible. I went with the Shimano's. With free shipping, I could avoid the Maine sales tax. I should have them on Monday or Tuesday.

You can't visit coastal Maine without stopping for local seafood. Cathy and I stopped at Maxwell's in downtown Bath for lunch. Cathy ordered Haddock and I got a shrimp and scallop platter. It was wicked gooooood.

Back at home, I was dismayed to see the standover of my hardtails to be much lower than the Carver frame. Bath Cycle could not give me an expected date when smaller Ti frames would come in. Davis Carver, the guru behind Carver bikes, is on vacation for a couple weeks. I didn't want to risk getting shut out of a fat bike this season, so I went with the Salsa Mukluk 3. They had only one medium left in stock, which should be an ideal size for me. They will build and ship it on Monday. I'm selling our tandem to make room for the new bike if anybody is interested. We've ridden it less than 100 miles this year.

Saturday evening I had just enough daylight left to get in a quick trail ride from my house. I made it a bike-run-core workout brick. 67 minute ride in the woods, 4 mile run, 60 push-ups (two blocks of 30) and 100 sit-ups left me pretty ragged that night.  Next week my ankle should be good for full normal activity. Hope we get some more snow.

On a whim, Sunday I headed south to Blackstone Heritage State Park near Milford Mass to ride. I scavenged several MTB tracks from Garmin Connect to put a ride together.  I knew very little about the area, other than some recent comments raving about the singletrack on Goat Hill. That, and a bill before the US senate that could make the park a national park soon. That could end most mountain biking there.

I was pissed to find my tracks wouldn't display on my GPS when I got there. I had no map, just a vague recollection of where some of the trails were. I sensed a lot of aimless wandering was in store.

Brushed out buff singletrack on Goat Hill

The loop on Goat hill wasn't hard to find. In short, this trail is as good as it gets. I'd say in my New England top five good. The trail stewards had blown the whole thing clear of leaves, and it was dry. This was completely the opposite of riding FOMBA a few days earlier. The total loop went about five miles as it meandered up and over Goat Hill and back, around, through and over giant glacial erratics. Finding the other trails was much more difficult. I completely missed out on the miles and miles of trails on West Hill. Next time. I still managed to cover 30+ miles in 3.3hrs, although with a bit more pavement in there than I would have liked.  Going back to work on Monday will keep me from overdosing on singletrack.

Lookout Rock overlooking the Blackstone River Valley. Superb

riding exists on ridgelines on either side of the valley.

Last of the season?

Another great mountains ride this weekend. That makes what, three or four weekends in a row now?  Life is good.  Greg, Dave, Glen and I met up in Campton early Saturday for a four-gap ride in the Whites. It was frigid, in the 20's to start. Planned route was to hit Gonzo Pass (Rt 118), Long Pond road, Kinsman Notch and Thornton Gap (Tripoli Rd). That is two dirt climbs and two paved climbs. Greg had never ridden Long Pond, Glen had never ridden Tripoli Rd. Both were in for dirt road treats.  My work schedule has been oppressive lately, it is getting late, so I'm going to let the photos show how great the ride was.

Glen finishing up Gonzo Pass with the Franconia Ridge and

white capped Mt Washington in the background.

Dave, Greg and HJ at Gonzo summit with snow dusting.

Glen cresting Kinsman Notch.

Dave and Greg heading up Long Pond Rd. Only one car passed.

Numerous rim biters on the way up had me nervous about the

all-dirt descent. I felt probability was high at least one of us would

flat. Yep, Dave, at the bottom. And somehow he managed to find

 poop, which I nicely cleaned off his rear tire with my glove before

I knew it was there.

Dave cresting Tripoli Rd. Surface was frozen hard, mix of sand and snow.

One ice patch just below here had to be carefully dodged.

From Topo. I logged 78.6mi in 4.7hrs riding time. Vert was

probably just under 7000ft. Might be last time this season

to hit these.

Tri-state dirt road randonnee

There's an area of New England I've wanted to explore for several years now. I finally had a chance to ride the northwest corner of Connecticut for some remote, hilly touring. I met up with Alex Combes and Jason Grobbel in West Cornwall on Friday. We were on cyclocross bikes, or nearly so. Jason rigged up is 29er with CX tires and a 1x10 drivetrain.

The planned route contained two significant dirt road climbs. One was Mt Riga, the other Sunset Rock. Mt Riga is possibly the biggest net gain climb in Connecticut, rising over 1200ft. It also passes near the highest point in the state. I've had this climb listed on Northeastcycling.com for many years with a disclaimer about suitability for road bikes. I've had mixed feedback from folks that have tried it. Stating a dirt road is suitable for road bikes is subjective matter. There are riders who would never venture off the tarmac with skinnies.

I figured this ride could take over 4hrs with a stop. Starting at noon put us at risk of running out of daylight. Alex was late. We started later than noon. No fear. I brought my new DiNotte light for the bar and carried a blinky in a jersey pocket. I was looking for an excuse to use my new lights.

We headed north on dirt River Rd into a nasty head wind. The forecast showed minimal chance for precipitation. It should have been sunny and mild. Instead, it was cloudy and cold. In fact, we felt random bits of sleet.  I noted before leaving the house that there were long fingers of lake effect snow peeling off Lake Ontario. I hoped we wouldn't encounter any of that.

Housatonic River where we parked.

It didn't take long before we where in Salisbury, the beginning of the Mt Riga climb.  The grade became quite persistent once the pavement ended. The one-lane road was composed of fairly course gravel. Road bikeable? Perhaps. You have to get back down at some point too. We were going up and over, descending Bash Bish Falls.

Alex and Jason heading up Mt Riga Rd. Rushing stream far below on right.

Alex and Jason disappeared on me. I was working reasonably hard and started estimating time to cramping at this pace. The ride had just begun, and an even steeper dirt climb was coming up after this one. Four hours with 30 minute threshold blocks embedded in the ride would surely do me in.

Above the lake, the grade slackens considerably. This was now high up in the Taconic range. The road surface turned to a very sharp, chunky aggregate. No way would I take a regular road bike up here. Doable? Yes. But enjoyable and worth the high risk of pinch flat? No.

Alex and Jason waited for me at the high point. Just beyond this, the road was barricaded off to through traffic, probably for the winter months. The initial descent was quite sketchy. I feared pinch flatting my 35mm Racing Ralph's inflated to 65psi. The descent finishes past Bash Bish Falls (maybe next time I'll hike down to see it) as it drops into NY.

We stopped briefly at a store at the bottom. A short traverse brought us to the base of the next climb, Sunset Rock. Looking over the valley, the horizon disappeared in sheets of opaque material. Um, looked like lake effect snow squalls to me. They were heading right for us.

Snow squalls in distance at base of Sunset Rock.

We stayed together climbing Sunset Rock into MA. I dug a little deeper on this one, knowing it would be shorter. About half way up, the snow hit. None of us were dressed for this kind of onslaught. Alex didn't even wear booties. It snowed just enough to make the gravel juicy on the descent. So much for cleaning my bike up for this ride.

Snow heading up Sunset Rock Rd.

After Sunset Rock, a long chain of mostly dirt roads took us back south into CT. A few of the roads were bona fide doubletracks. Some were gated to auto traffic. Punchy anaerobic climbs were followed by white knuckle adrenaline inducing descents.  Being on the east side of the Taconic Crest meant the sun would set even earlier, but it looked like I would not get to use my lights. I thought about feigning a flat just to delay us.

We finished with about 57mi, 5000ft in 3.7hrs on the Garmins. Alex put a superb loop together, one I'll have to do again. It reminded me of the Ironcross course.  It was great meeting Alex's teammate Jason too, who placed well at the Iceman Cometh race in Michigan the weekend before.

Gap - Gap - Gap - paG

Gorgeous day for riding today. Dave and I headed over to Vermont to hit some gaps. The White Mountains still have some snow, making a CX ride on forest service roads risky. Ditto for southwest New Hampshire. The Green Mountains have zero snow cover. Clear skies and dry roads sounded like a good deal to me. I need to minimize risk for another four weeks while the holes left behind from extracted ankle hardware fill in.

We parked in Bethel. It got down into the 20's overnight and was only 30F by 10am. Fifteen minute descents at 40-50mph were sure to numb the extremities. Dave failed to bring adequate protection along and concocted a solution with materials on hand.

Full-on winter clothing was needed despite one of the most brilliant skies I've experienced in Vermont. A brief two mile warmup brought us to the base of Rochester Gap. It didn't take long to realize the landscape had been transformed by hurricane Irene. Creek beds took new courses. Rocky banks now exist where none existed before. Many sections of Camp Rd washed out and are now rough gravel. I didn't think to check the state road status to see if everything was open.

Approaching Rochester Gap

We bombed down into Rochester and picked up Rt 73, which goes over Brandon Gap. A big amber signed warned the road was closed. Oh, that would really suck if we couldn't get through. Workers generally don't like it when spandex clad freaks try to weasel their way through construction sites. We motored on anyway.

A lot of cars were coming through, suggesting that maybe we could get through. Again, numerous areas of the road had been washed away and filled with crushed rock and gravel. We were able to summit no problem. On this Saturday, no reconstruction work was going on.

Ledges above Brandon Gap

I was a little tentative on the descents. You just couldn't tell when a random gravel bit was coming up with big lips at the edge of asphalt. Some of these edges could easily destroy a tire, or worse. Didn't need that at 45mph.

12% grade down to Brandon

We hit the climbs with solid aerobic effort but rode casually in between the climbs. We hooked around Lake Dunmore and dropped down into East Middlebury where we topped off water. The Adirondack chairs on the deck in the sun were so pleasant to sit in that I feared our ride was over. The only problem was, my car was two mountain passes away.

Lake Dunmore. Still some leaves at lower elevations.

Middlebury Gap was the biggest climb of this ride, gaining about 1800ft. The upper portion is a spanker. We dropped down into Hancock, then swung south to Rochester. We would be climbing Rochester Gap again, but from the west, the side we've never climbed before. There was still frost on the ground on shady sides of things, suggesting the temp never rose above freezing in places. Windbreakers came off at the bottom of each climb, but they went right back on at the top, along with pulling up balaclavas. We had no trouble staying warm.

Rochester, Brandon, Middlebury, then Rochester "backwards"

We finished the lollipop loop in 4.5hrs with 72.4mi on the odometer. Topo overestimates the vertical on this route quite a bit. I'd say actual climbing is in the 6500-7000ft range. The cold (dense) air, bulky layers and sketchy roads slowed us down a bit, but neither of us cared. It was too beautiful of a day to hammer it away into oblivion.

Foot-plus in October?

Glad I snuck a ride in Saturday afternoon before the snow came. Not really supposed to be engaging in that kind of activity yet, but the way I see it, there is less force on my ankle and less flexion than walking, and I am allowed to walk around. I went over to the Nashua River Rail Trail, which was deserted. Nice quiet 25 mile ride at tempo pace.

Saturday night sucked for us. We live on a hill in wooded area. None of the oak trees have dropped their leaves yet. Wet snow clung to them like black flies to a sweaty body in May.  We have some big ones right above the house. By 6:30pm, our power went out. Later in the evening, the sky kept lighting up in brialliant blue flashes as power lines shorted and transformers blew up.

We normally sleep with a noise machine on in the room. With no power (I didn't want to lug generator out in the dark in a snow storm), it was dead quiet in the house. Every few minutes, we heard a tree come crashing down in the forest. Some hit the ground so hard it made the house shake. I thought surely we'd have an oak tree come through our roof. Not a good sleep night.

We got the generator going in the morning and got our food cold again. My neighbor's husband from across the street is in Germany on business right now. They have no generator and just stocked up $800 food in two deep freezers. Rumor is, some areas could go five days before lights come back on. They helped my wife Cathy out a few years ago during the ice storm when I was down south cycling. I took some heat for that one. Now it was my turn to return the favor by kluging a power cord to a 220V outlet in their garage. Got their freezers and water well going for a few hours. Might be time-sharing my cheap 5kW generator for a while.

Of course, we had little gas. I drove through four towns before I found any power. A little piece of downtown Nashua has power. Merrimack, most of Nashua, Hudson, Pelham, all out. I drove down to Starbucks in Chelmsford this afternoon to find Internet access. No power. Tyngsboro is all out too. Many, many wires are down or shorted out by fallen branches tangling up the wires. I saw zero utility crews in six towns. The Pheasant Lane Mall has power.  I think this is worse than the ice storm a few years ago. Crazy.

We completely lost 4 of 6 trees in our front yard. I've been tending these trees for up to 14 years. Now we have to start over. Makes me cry.

Here's a few pics from this morning around my house.

From front step of my house.

From road

12+" of snow over night.

Down street.

Lights Revisited

My primary night riding light is an old NiteRider HID I bought about 12 years ago. The battery has long since died. A replacement NiMH battery costs almost as much as some new LED based light systems. Plus that battery weighed a ton.

Enter 2011.  LED technology has finally crossed the 100 lumens per Watt threshold. My HID was around 50 lumens per Watt and required heavy ballasting circuitry. Nobody uses NiMH batteries anymore either. They are lithium ion these days. NiMH batteries pack about 100 Watt-hours per kilogram density, while Li-ion pack more than twice that. So with the lights available today, I can get twice the lumens for twice the run time for less weight than my old system. That is a four-fold improvement just over 10 years.

I ordered a new XML-3 and updated 400L+ from DiNotte Lights this week. I was holding them my hands the day after I placed the order. Standard shipping, no charge. Benefit of buying local. Visually, the quality looks impressive. Reviews on the forums are quite positive on any DiNotte light. I spoke with Rob @ DiNotte when placing my order and he was happy to answer all my geeky technical questions.

The XML-3 and 400L+

I bought the XML-3 to go on the bar. It puts out 1200 lumens in high setting. My old HID did 500 lumens, and I thought that was way brighter than anybody needed. The new light weighs a fraction of my old light. The 400L+ will see dual use. Riding, it will go on my helmet. Rob threw in a headband mount so I could also use this light for XC skiing at night. I'd only need to run it on low in snow, so it would run several ski sessions on one charge. You don't want to look into these lights. You will see spots for a VERY long time afterwards.

I updated my metrics table from a prior post. A few other companies have updated their lights. Almost everybody uses Cree XPG or XML diodes. The XML's are newest with highest efficiencies. Performance metrics between lights vary widely. Many companies boast theoretical lumens, as in what some data sheet says is possible under some specific condition. Others will measure their lumens.

Lights to avoid are designs that push an extraordinary number of lumens per emitter. I believe anything over 500 lumens per XPG LED is asking for trouble, in terms of shortened diode life, overheating, and degraded efficiency.

You can see DiNotte compares favorably with the best. I highlighted in green the options I have to work with. I have one 2-cell and one 4-cell battery. You can see just by putting a bigger battery (2-cell to 4-cell on the 400L) on a light, you can improve the performance and cost metrics.

I would have liked the XML-1 instead of the 400L+. The problem is, the XML-1 wasn't designed for headband mount. It is tiny and very efficient. I could probably have cobbled something together, but Rob's headband for the 400L+ is one of the better headband light systems out there. I had to wear my bicycle helmet to use my HID light skiing. Goofy.

Exposure Lights boast some of the highest performance metrics in the industry. With batteries integrated right into light, they save on cable weight. Cost metrics are ok, but not best.

Generally, more LEDs used to generate the lumens raises the performance metric, but lowers cost metric. Lupine pushes this to the limit. They have the brightest, most efficient lights, but for almost $1000. The new DiNotte lights derive their high performance metric from the XML LEDs.

Could be a while before I get to use my lights. Need to let my leg get strong again. I'm walking pretty normally today on no pain meds, a vast improvement from yesterday.  My HR hasn't gone above 60bpm in three days. I was contemplating jumping on the trainer for a bit. But noooo. Apparently Dr Heaps recognized I would be Jones'n for fix before my first check-up next week. While I was in recovery Tuesday, he had a word with my wife. Cathy was instructed to block any attempt of mine to do something stupid. Bummer.

Done Deal

My hardware extraction went well this afternoon. I think I was heading back home within an hour of coming out of surgery. I was given general anesthesia, but very light dose. They gave me a nerve block behind the knee to kill any sensation from knee down. General anesthesia is risky, and deep general anesthesia takes a while to come out of. The after effects of the block suck though. Now seven hours later, I still have no sensation or movement in my lower leg. Touching my toes is the weirdest thing. It is like that limb doesn't even belong to me. Creeps me out. I have to wear my boot cast with crutches for now as a protective measure until I get my feeling back. The only pain I experienced so far in this process was finding the sciatic nerve behind the knee for the block. I laid on my stomach and they told me to hug the pillow. They couldv'e given me something to bite down on too...

Progression from fracture, to pins and plate, to no hardware.

Note large voids left in both tibia and fibula where screws came out.

In the middle x-ray image above, you can see how the two pins protrude from medial bump on my ankle. It was those that gave me the most grief. The right image suggest I may have a more normal looking medial bump when the swelling subsides. Hope this makes significant improvement in XC skiing comfort.

Titanium trophy collection. Scale in centimeters. Plate is shorter than

 I thought it would be. Pretty stuff. Shiny and very light weight. The

pins are hollow, and all screws look just like self-tapping sheet

metal screws.

I now realize there will be a little more down time than I first believed. I'm to do nothing until I see the orthopaedic surgeon in a week, when my stitches come out. Bummer. I was at least hoping to ride on the road this weekend. Oh well, I got in 13hrs of riding, rollerskiing, hiking and running last week, and I had a good 10k run this morning before surgery.

Wonder what I'll feel tomorrow when the block wears off? They gave me a 'script for percocet. Hope I don't have to use it. That is nasty stuff.