Thursday, December 22, 2016

Your Bucket List is Weighing You Down: A Harvard-Boxborough Study Proves It

Sweet, sweet, singletrack descents.
The perfect is the enemy of the possible, dreaming is the enemy of doing, and the bucket list is the enemy of a life filled with adventure.

Thursday, October 6, 2016

The Other Side of Highland (September 2016)

A hint of Fall on the trail.
It was all starting to look the same.  I muddled along a trail I was hoping would lead me northward and onto my planned route, but discovered yet another dead end as the trail began to loop back in on itself.  Gunshots echoed in the distance and the forest began to darken in the mid afternoon light. Freshly fallen twigs crunched under my tires as I rolled downhill and back to a familiar looking trail junction.  I loosened my elbows to absorb the logs and rocks hidden in the tall grass that had sprouted up under the break in the forest canopy.  As I watched the sharp broken stub of a branch roll under my tire, it occurred to me that my spare tube was sitting miles away in the back of my truck.   My anxiety level, already high, was now thick and suffocating.  I was running out of time.

Friday, September 23, 2016

Moosalamoo's Leicester Hollow & Chandler Ridge Loop (August 2016)

Sun, bike, singeltrack and water: a winning combination.
"Just beware of the stinging nettles."  Those were the words of Chas, co-owner of Frog Hollow Bikes in Middlebury after recommending that I check out Leicester Hollow/Chandler Ridge loop in Moosalamoo National Recreation Area.

I'm no stranger to brambles, having stumbled through more than my fair share of bushes over the years.  I regularly fished for baseballs in rasberry bushes wearing only shorts and a t-shirt when knee high socks and parachute pants were all the rage.  Heck, you'll still find me waist high in thickets of prickers looking for hidden singletrack.  I've picked more thorns out of my body and cursed more burdock than I care to remember.   So a warning about "stinging nettles" didn't phase me, until he repeated with any hint of a smile now gone from his face: "Really, watch out for those stinging nettles."

Friday, September 16, 2016

Fat Biking and Finding Humility in the Adirondack Backcountry (July 2016)

Big wheels keep on turnin'.  
Until recently I was particularly proud of the fact that I couldn’t remember the last time I shit my pants.  I knew it must have been thirty-five plus years since it last happened, because, really, who forgets a thing like that?