Three Minutes of Herb's

Here's a run down one of the my favorite trails: "Herb's" at Kingdom Trails.  Taken back in August, I did my best to keep up with Brad, who set a pretty good pace.

Harold Parker State Forest: Merrimack Valley Meets North Shore

A Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of Mountain Biking

The trails of the North Shore of Massachusetts have a discernible character:  rocky, technical, bold, and with lines that have a high penalty for failure.  There is no better embodiment of this style than the trails of Lynn Woods.

To the west you'll find the trails of the Merrimack Valley: Great Brook Farm, Russell Mill and Lowell/Dracut. There you'll find majestic singletrack, which incorporates the occasional boulder, rock garden, or root, on a rolling journey through loamy soils.

In between these two very different worlds sits Harold Parker.

Bear Brook State Park: Return of the Flow (Epic Day Part II)

"Now where did I drop that damn camera?"

Have you been missing the flow?  Too many days at Lynn Woods or Harold Parker got you thinking that mountain biking is all about rock gardens and sketchy lines?  I think I have just the place for you.

FOMBA: Trail Judo (Epic Day Part I)

Pine Forest or house of mirrors?

In the age-old martial art of Judo, you constantly push, pull, and maneuver your opponent, keeping them off balance until you wear them down into submission.  Where they expect to zig, you make them zag.  Where they want to zone out and relax, you make them snap-to and work hard.    

If mountain biking trails are the haunts of ancient warrior-teachers, then I know where the zen master of Judo lives. Lucky for us, it's in southern New Hampshire.

Leominster State Forest: Revisited and Revealed

This summer's third trip to Leominster State Forest recently allowed me to revisit some of my old favorites, as well as explore a corner that I hadn't touched in the years that I had been biking there.

Bradbury Mountain State Forest: Maine Attraction

Maine: New England's blueberry stained flannel shirt wearing drunk lumberjack uncle,
covered in mosquito bites, who likes to go fishing and play pond hockey.

A short drive north of Portland, just outside the L.L. Bean mothership in Freeport lies the little town of Pownal, Maine.  There you'll find a sleepy little hamlet with a blinking traffic light, a church, and a country store.  If you're a mountain biker who likes to camp, you'll also find the best fucking mountain biking destination northeast of Sebago Lake.

Yeah, that's right Acadia... I just threw down the gauntlet.

New England Ski Movie Premieres

 "Solitaire" from Sweetgrass Productions

In the next few weeks, skiers will gather in bars, theaters, and auditoriums to pay homage to last year's ski season.  This rite of passage marks the beginning of the new ski year, and helps us all survive the waste of a month that is November. (Well, at least for those of us who don't have hunting licenses.)

I did a little research to figure out where we can catch the premieres of some of the sexy looking new films, and my needlessly obsessive research is your gain.

Russell Mill Town Forest: Packed Full of Flow

Follow the bedrock road.

Recently I had a chance to make the trip up Route 3 to Chelmsford, MA and explore the offerings of Russell Mill Town Forest.

I discovered what many of the Metrowest mountain bikers already know.  Russell Mill has some of the best singletrack in the region.

Ten Favorites: The Pantheon of New England Mountain Biking Trails

Old Webs: Just missed the list.

Everybody loves top ten lists.  There's nothing better to liven up a boring conversation or start a flamewar like a good old list of favorites.  So in that spirit, I've come up with my favorite mountain biking trails in the East.  Given that I've still got a good number of trails to check out, you can consider this my rough draft.

So without further ado, here are my ten favorites.

Beyond the Minuteman: Great Brook Farm

Pavel's Bridge.

Yeah, you read that title right.

Hybrid bikers rejoice.  Great Brook Farm is within reach of the Minuteman Trail!

Beyond the Minuteman: Arlington's Great Meadow

The Great Meadow is neither great, nor a meadow.  It is, however, a pretty good place for some smooth singletracking right off of the Minuteman bikeway.

All Your Trailers In One Place

Labor day is gone and there's a chill in the air.  That can only mean one thing.  Ski movie season is here.

Freeskier Magazine has been collecting all this year's ski movie trailers in one place.  Check out these four pages for a fairly comprehensive list of ski porn for 2011-2012.  Thanks Freeskier!

Big Time Trailer List

North American Trailers

European Trailers

Best of the Rest

Buying a Full Suspension Bike

After ten minutes of internet research, the inside of my brain kinda looked like this. 

So you’re thinking about buying a full suspension bike.  Maybe you’ve been riding a hard-tail for a few years now, and have worked up the courage to conquer some drops, dips and other more technical terrain.  Maybe you’ve decided you have way too much money lying around.  Or maybe you’re just tired of coming home from Leominster feeling like you’ve been kicked in the ass all day long.  Whatever your reasons, if you’re like me, you probably need a road map to navigate what seems like a foreign language of parts packages, bike names, and bike styles.

The Green Mountain Showdown

If you like mountain biking and photography, boy do I have something for you.

Last weekend, before the unwelcome arrival of Irene, five photographers duked it out for the right to be the winner of the First Annual Green Mountain Showdown.  Okay, maybe it was less of a fistfight, and more of an artistic display, but you get the picture.

Each photographer was charged with putting together a portfolio of work to represent Vermont bike culture.

While only one winner was named (Bear Cieri), we all kinda won with five stellar collections of mountain bike photography.

Check out the stunning final slide shows here.