Today was a bonus for me. After doing a good hard mountain bike ride yesterday with my friend (and teamate) Jamie Tosca. It was looking like I had no ride mates today. Jamie had other plans and my pal (and also teamate) Kevin Hines was racing out in the western part of the state, or so I thought. I was lazing around early eating french toast and trying to figure out which bike to ride today when Kevin called. I figured he was gonna ask me if I wanted to drive out to Easthampton to race with him, but to my delight he said he was thinking that 6 hours of driving and 45 minutes of racing wasn't the best plan for the day. I said "ya, plus you'd get home way too late for a proper Sunday night decompress". He agreed and we decided to ride mountain bikes over at his place in Wareham. I happen to live about 10 minutes ride time from one of the best mountain bike areas around, The Trail of Tears in Barnstable, MA. It's all conservation land and has an amazing and growing network of trails. But.....there's always a "but", I ride there all the time, and Kevin's trails are a different sort of animal. They're mostly motorcycle trails and powerlines. The singletrack is a blast, LOADED with woops, the powerline sections are loose sand and big hills, that always equates to some good suffering. It's endless out there and I'm far from sick of it. It's huge so we always ride different stuff, and Kevin sets a perfect tempo for whatever group we have. Today it was just he and I and his young buddy Jake Morrison. Jake is a 22 year old national level moto-crosser. So ya, he can ride a bike. We did a little over 3 hours with some good suffering along the way, a long section of sandy powerlines in the middle third of the ride drained all our energy, water and food. We rode another hour after that at a civil pace and finished with just what we set out to do.
Kevin and his girl Laraine then put out a nice feed for us which really hit the spot. We had chicken and portabella sausage, pasta, and yummy homemade soup. We spent the afternoon trying to figure out why the mallards in the pond were actually diving under the water for food, and then Jake and I both took off. What a bonus for me. I was looking at riding alone in the cold for 3 hours, and instead I had 2 great ridemates and different terraine, and oh ya that feed! Kev and Laraine are 2 of my best friends and I'm WAY behind on puttin' out post ride feeds like they do. Thanks guys! I got sushi next time.... JB
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