It’s January in Massachusetts. Snow and ice cover most of the trails throughout the state. And even if the trails were clear, riding bans preclude us from riding on many of the trails nearest to Boston. Road riding just sort of blows incredibly — the roads are bombed out with pot holes and the gutter is filled with detritus and debris. So what do we do? We get another season of “The Wire” from Netflix, order a pizza and buffalo wings, and drink beer until we forget about riding our mountain bikes altogether. What’s that? That’s not what we do…because we’re PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES (sort of). Oh ya, I forgot about that. You’re right, we should probably get off the couch and go ride our bikes. But where?

Cape-freakin’-Cod, that’s where!

Now I want to make one thing perfectly clear, it is not “The Cape Cod.” It is “Cape Cod” or simply “The Cape.” I just want spell this out to the people from MTV in case they decide to do a Cape Cod-based spin off of  “Jersey Shore.” According to an article I read recently in The New Yorker (You might not be able to deduce it from the quality of my writing but I do occasionally read stuff.) no one calls The shore of New Jersey “Jersey Shore.” They refer to it as “The Jersey Shore” or “The Shore.” The folks at The New Yorker can relate to this sort of name-messing-upping. Nothing gets their dandruff up more than people referring to The New Yorker as “New Yorker” or “The Yorker.” Except of course when people say things like “gets their dandruff up” instead of “gets their dander up.” That’s the stuff work-place shooting sprees are made of.

I’m glad we got that cleared up.

For some surely scientifical reason, Cape Cod does not  receive nearly as much snow as the rest of Massachusetts. Therefore it provides Massachutians That’s what we’re called, “Massachutians.” Call the next guy you meet from Massachusetts a “Massachutian.” He will smirk, raise his eyebrow (and possibly kick you in the nuts) which is just the Massachutian equivalent of a smile and a nod.

I have no idea why the trail system down in Barnstable, MA is called “Trail of Tears.” I’m almost positive that these trails were not used by Native Americans during the massive relocation movement in the early-middle part of the 19th century. They are not particularly brutal trails either. They don’t make me feel at all like a Cherokee marching to Oklahoma while watching 4,000 of my people perish. Maybe whoever named these trails “The Trail of Tears”  was also responsible for the naming of another popular Massachusetts riding spot: “Vietnam.” Perhaps he was going with a theme of naming riding hot spots after embarrassing episodes in U.S. history. I blame Kevin Sweeney. Look at him in the photo below, he just looks like a big ball of trouble rolling right at you with his wee-bitty wheels doesn’t he? All dressed in black like that. He’s evil, you can tell.

But all of that is beside the point. Way beside it. I don’t even think we can see the point from here, hold on, (Sound of running, a car starting up and revving, screech of brakes, jet taking off and landing…) and now we’re back in the vicinity of the point. The point is that through the magic of the thing called “The Facebooks,” a group of people who usually only see each other at the races got together for a social Sunday ride with the promise of piles of pancakes in our near future.

Local Brian Hughes acted as our guide early on, but the pace he set proved too grueling for the buddies he’d brought along. We would part ways. This left us leaderless. I had been to Trail of Tears exactly once, and had spent my day crashing and bonking and generally being vexed, and I was our next best hope. We rolled around for close to two hours and just when I was beginning to feel entirely lost, we came back upon the spot where we’d parted with Brian’s crew. We were back on track…then we were back off track..then we ran smack dab into Brian, who lead us out with conviction. This was just what I needed. I had hit my “faking it in January ceiling” and my legs had given out entirely.

I haven’t even mentioned how awesome the trails were have I? These are some special trails, especially for the east coast. So fast, and twisty, and swoopy. And with the frozen conditions, even that much more of a speed-fest. That’s right — frozen. But you wouldn’t know it from looking at Nathaniel Williams (upper right above) there. It was barely 40° and he was sporting fingerless gloves and SHORTS. He’s one fast 6 1/2 foot tall 16 1/2 year-old too. Mike Loranty (above left-front) showed us how to lay it down and how (Ratt)  on an icy corner. He rolled it off and proceeded to demonstrate how real endurance guys do things by riding an hour each way from his house to the trail head and back.

The rest of use went to ihop for pancakes.Which is equally impressive. No, you’re right, I suppose it’s not. But pancakes taste way better than base miles.

Ride Reports, Trails
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