All Charged Up about Chargers Pt.1

Early Morning Mini car and Mega Bike

A while back I said that over the summer I might sneak a mountain bike installment into this blog nonsense. What does mountain biking have to do with kiting? I’m not sure to be honest, they’re really very different activities. Biking builds strength and maybe more importantly endurance. Dh’ing (downhill riding) builds a lot of muscle both in the upper body and legs. I don’t do shuttle runs or lift access riding I either pedal up or hike with the bike up on my back.

Anyway I ride bikes. I’m a better mountain biker than a kiter but I have a few more years in the saddle than I do the harness and those years have mostly been spent riding here in New England where we have of some of the most technical riding on the planet.

As the saying goes for pretty much everything that people seem to do outside in New England “I you can do it here you can do it anywhere.”

I used to live, eat and breathe mountain biking. I got my first bike when I was 16 yrs old in a dirty deal with my brother. He bought the bike from a local shop but decided it was too much work to ride or something so I got it in exchange for sweeping a parking lot. No kiddin’, SWEEPING A PARKING LOT. Since then I’ve managed to make a living with bikes and cycling. I’ve been wrenching on bikes for about 20 yrs. Built DH trails for a local bike park for a few years and worked in sales at both the shop and distributor level for the last 20+ years. I started dabbling in road biking when I started working for the company that I work for now but I’m a "dyed in the wool" dirt rider.



New England Technical

 I love technical riding. Riding over terrain where there’s a high demand on braking technique, speed, weight distribution and energy management. High-level technical riding has very similar feel to a martial art sparring sessionn but instead of sparring with a person you’re sparring with the terrain and your own fear. It’s also a lesson in puzzle solving. You have to be able to look at a pile of rocks, a steep section or a burly climbing section and figure out or “read” the line. That is to recognize the best path through a section that will get you through it smoothly and successfully. Usually at speed and on the fly.



Sirius Rocking the Pumptrack

 Not only do you have to ride the line successfully, without crashing or hurting yourself, you do it without leaving hardly a mark on the trail. Preserving the trail is paramount other wise it will eventually be shut down to bikes. Beater’s (unskilled jackasses) skid trails.

Obviously kiting is my newest love. My goal is to get to the riding level on the kites that I’m at with biking and I think I’m on the right track. Kiting has a much shorter learning curve. Kiting is my primary interest right now but put me on a good technical ride and kiting slides into the backseat of my heart and the bike takes the wheel.

A couple of weekends ago I had a whirlwind trifecta of riding sessions. Sort of a “Let’s see if I can do it and see how the new wrist works.” In case you don’t know I had my left wrist fused twice in the last 2yrs. I was given the “green light” to ride (my surgeon didn’t really grasp what it riding entails for me) and the first fusion failed and broke the hardware. I didn’t know and I rode (in a reserved fashion) for a season not knowing that the pain and nausea was from the failure. In simple terms the wrist was broken but I didn’t know it. I had much better range of motion than I was supposed to after the surgery so I guess that and the pain should have been a good indicator that something went wrong. Last fall I had the hardware removed, new (and more) hardware installed and after 7 months the fusion seems to be intact. So last weekend was a big test of the new repair.

Starting Friday I rode Mount Chocorua (pronounced SHA-cor-roo-ah). If the name sounds familiar it’s the big rocky peak just north of Lake Chocorua where we kite. The mountain is only about 3500’ high but when you’re starting at about 400’ above sea level it makes for a big climb. I first rode Chocorua when I was 16 with the bike I got from my brother. It was a steel, fully rigid Specialized Rock Hopper Comp and it was AWESOME. Why did I take it up Chocorua? I don’t know, I guess because I figured nobody else had done it yet and I wanted to be the first. I’m seeing a trend here.


Chocorua in Winter

Chocorua isn’t a place most people would ride a bike. The National Forest Service said that they would likely never shut the trails up there down for bike use because no one in their right mind would ride there. (Again I’m seeing a trend here) The climb up is 2/3 riding and 1/3 carrying your bike on your back. This is a rough estimate depending on your skill level. I started on the East side on the Piper Trail.

On the way up I was stopped a few times to eat some blueberries and take in the view just below cloud level. In one of the valleys I could see a freshly exploded big pine that looked to be struck by lightning.

Just below the summit I got into the cloud layer. Everywhere below was sunny and warm but the summit was cold, windy and misty with light rain, conditions that suck for riding steep slabs of granite. Riding wet, steep granite, out in the middle of nowhere when you can’t see more than 40’ wouldn’t be a good move and I was getting soaked and cold so I got to the summit and got off it as fast as I could. In the thick clouds I got a little off course a couple of times but managed to get down the dome and to the Jim Liberty trail.



USGS Summit Marker.



Wet, Windy and Cold.

The ride down is a burly, nasty technical descent off the granite dome to an 8-foot wide trail of rocks, roots and drops. The round trip for what I call the Piper/Jim Liberty loop is almost exactly 15 miles. This trip took me 4.5 hours and I was hoping to get some footage of the ride but I got socked in at the summit with clouds, drizzle and high winds.


Jim Liberty Trail.  It's like this for MILES!

I managed to ride the whole way down except a few short, really hard sections that I would normally hit but since I was solo and not 100% with the wrist I opted on the side of caution. On the other hand I didn’t crash once and the only mechanical issue I had was a flat tire, which was easily fixed on the trail.

I rode my new Trek Remedy and I have to say I’m very, VERY impressed with how it did. I prefer hardtails (bikes with no rear suspension) but the wrists won’t take it so now I’m on a Remedy, which has 6” of travel front and rear. I’ve been resentful of having been forced to ride a dually but in spite of the 6” dual suspension it climbs and descends as well as any bike I’ve ever owned and I’m getting to really love it. I got it in a size small (15”) because I like a short wheelbase. Think Jeep style.

2011 Trek Remedy

I heard a lot of thunder off in the distance but the forecasted storms held off until I got home. It turned out to be a perfect ride and for the first time in about 5 or 6 years I actually felt like myself again. I may not be riding like I used to but I’m still riding stuff like Chocorua and that’s a hell of a lot better than I thought I was going to fair after the surgeries. That ride really gave me the itch to be on a mountain bike again.

End of Ride. (Chocorua in the clouds)

Which brings us into Saturday. Molly decided she wanted to do a ride called “Red Neck Rock”. It’s another sort of backcountry style ride but not as technical as Chocorua. The hardest part of this ride is the climb to the height of land to start the descent to the actual “Red Neck” rock. The climb is almost straight up and about 1200’. After the ride on Chocorua I wasn’t sure I had it in me but I gave it a shot. I managed to climb almost the entire climb! I had to carry two sections due to mud but that only cut out about 200’ of the trail. There were lots of segments where you basically floated the front end about 2” off the ground and guided the bike around stuff. It was amazing! And it was slow. Molly portaged most of the climb and still beat me to the top by at least 10 or 15 minutes.

That climb was way harder than any of the notch climbs I’ve done this year on my single speed. Seriously, anyone who thinks climbing the notches around here is hard should quit whining and try climbing Middle Mountain. It’s a total bitch.

So I was psyched. I haven’t climbed that trail so well in almost 15yrs. And this was after the Chocorua “Batan Death Ride” the day before so I was really pumped. Tired but pumped. We then proceeded to ride down and found some new bootleg (illegal) trails. We call them “Rake and Rides” because they aren’t actually real, built trails but just raked paths. And people who have the worst eye for reading terrain that I’ve ever seen are building them. You can always tell when a rider with low technical skill has built a trail. Everything is just wrong.

So Molly and I spent about 4.5 hrs climbing back up to the top while exploring the new lame “Rake and Rides” (paths that have been only raked. Not properly built trail) We ate some blueberries and pedaled all over hell and creation. This was way more riding than I planned to do the day after the Chocorua climb but to my surprise I felt pretty good. Molly has had a lot less time on dirt this season than I have but she did awesome and her handling skills are coming back fast. She’s a phenomenal rider, one of the best I’ve ever seen. Not one of the best women, one of the best, period.

Molly in Kamloops B.C.. Just after a bad crash at Whistler.

This ride of course fired up my drive to be on the dirt even more.

Sunday we met up with our friend Curtis Savard over in Vermont to go ride the Kingdom Trails up in East Burke. You may recognize Curtis’ name from some of my other blog entries. He’s a professional photographer that I’ve done some work with. Don’t let his last name fool you he’s not related to Molly. Well, not directly anyway.

We had to leave the house by 5am to meet Curtis for breakfast at the Miss Lyndonville Diner. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem except for our inconsiderate, rude and disrespectful neighbors raising hell all night and well into Sunday morning. At one point someone called the cops and that quieted things down at around 1:30am but they didn’t really stop until 2:00am after I called one of them and complained.

Anyway, so we had to meet Curtis for breakfast in Lyndonville. I was in a complete daze, trying to stay awake for the drive up there but somehow we managed but I was a little concerned about how I would ride after 2 big days of riding and getting only 3hrs sleep Saturday night. (Thanks to some of our inconsiderate neighbors)

The Miss Lyndonville Diner has been our “go to” eating-place when we’re in northern Vermont ever since we were old enough to drive over there. I’m a huge fan of greasy, tasty, comfort diner food and this place delivers the goods. They have a kick ass chicken fried steak, biscuits and gravy and awesome pies. I was hungry so I ordered up the Biscuits and gravy breakfast AND the Big breakfast. I didn’t want to risk running out of steam out on the trail. If I did, with the lack of sleep on top of it, I would’ve had a short day.



The Bike Shop

The Kingdom Trails (www.kingdomtrails.com) are located in a small town called East Burke. The place is beautiful, with all the cliché beauty you’d expect to find in northern Vermont. Rolling hills covered in patches of woods punctuated by big green pastures. The nice thing about this part of the country for me is you actually get to see the sky. Here at home we’re always down in some valley filled with woods so all we usually see is the sky through the tree canopy. We don’t get that “Big Sky” sense like you do in other places, Vermont for example.

Molly and I haven’t ridden the Kingdom Trails in about 5 yrs. It was impressive then but they have really stepped up the quality of the riding there. All kinds of places like to tout that they’re the “Next Moab” or the “Mecca” of mountain biking for a given region but the Kingdom Trails seriously deliver the goods. The Kingdom Trails are more of a cross-country oriented trail network with miles of fast smooth single track to just rip on.



Floating the Kingdom Trails singletrack.



We rode after breakfast for 3.5hrs on all the sweet single-track goodness the KTA (Kingdom Trail Assoc.) had to offer. Molly rode her Soma Groove, Curtis was on a Gary Fisher 29’r that has a 21” frame, which I rode on it and looked like a 6yr old. We weren’t sure how Curtis would ride as we’d never ridden together. We were pleasantly surprised that the boy could rip.

To start off we got to ride a new trail called “Troll Stroll” which in spite of being freshly cut was a great ride. Fast and swoopy with some nice neat little features here and there to make it interesting. The thing about the Kingdom Trails is that they for the most part are smooth and fast. Great for beginners or XC racer types and thought they aren’t especially technical the technical level rises with the rider’s speed. You go faster, you have to have your wits about you to keep from crashing. After riding a ton of sweet single track we found a trail that wasn’t there last time called “Sidewinder” and the trip is worth it just for that trail. It was unlike any trail I’ve ever seen here or anywhere. Think of a giant half pipe descending through the woods. I can’t explain it. Molly described it as not so much a trail but more of a carnival ride. Seriously that’s the feel you get from it. As you enter the trail it seems very much like any other semi swoopy XC trail until you hit a berm to the left and drop into the ravine then the roller coaster ride ensues. You just let go a whoop and holler your way to the bottom.



Railing Sidewinder.



It’s a beautiful bit of trail work and a credit to the creativity of the trail builders over at the KTA.



Sidewinder

After the morning riding we stopped in East Burke for some lunch. We met up with Curtis’s friend Aaron who lives local to the Kingdom Trails and headed back out, this time with Curtis’s cameras and rode back out to “Sidewinder” to get some shots. We rode the hell out of that trail until we almost couldn’t ride anymore. We actually finished the day with a ride back on the road because I didn’t have any legs left to ride trails back to town. We had been out for another 3hrs or so. And to be honest, a ride back on a back road in Northern Vermont countryside is a hell of a treat in itself.

Map Mis-reading.

We got back to East Burke and said our goodbyes and headed back to home with a stop at Miss Lyndonville again for some food and their kick ass pie. It was a perfect way to end a perfect weekend of riding. I was psyched at how well my body held up and how well the Remedy performed. I love testing my endurance. Makes me want to see how I would fair in a 24hr race.

A lesson in Self Hate?

We'll talk about that next time.

Thanks to Curtis Savard (www.curtissavardphotography.com) for the sweet shots and the great company.  Thanks to everyone else who suffers through this installment even though it's not one that covers much in the way of kiting. 

I still hope you found it interesting.

Until next time......