Independence Day(s) — Heady Adventures

*Excited to try my new Salsa Cutthroat!*

On Thursday July 2 I left my home in St. Johnsbury VT with the intention of riding solo, self supported to my summer home in Weare NH to celebrate Independence Day with my family. The route I had mapped out followed the Vermont Super 8 course clockwise on the Northern Lobe (the opposite of the normal way) towards Montpelier, then jumped on the Southern Lobe in the accepted direction. I was planning on exiting the course around Brattleboro then heading east to Weare. Total mileage planned was 250+ and the S8 is anything but an easy ride. Mostly gravel, with not much pavement, the cornerstone of the ride are the class 4 roads.

With class 4, you never know what you are going to get. Some are beautiful easy dirt roads though the woods, and some are indistinguishable from washed out river beds going straight uphill. Many times you feel like your trespassing as they pass through somebody's back (or front!) Yard. It really leads to a sense of adventure, and the world looks very different from what you see anywhere that has substantial population.

On the Super8, no matter what type of road/trail you are on you can be sure that it is about to go up. And up and up and up. Which also means that the descents are blindingly fast and exciting. It’s not uncommon to hit 40mph+ (if you have the guts to stay off the brakes) on your loaded bike down a winding loose gravel dirt road with blind corners!

Many roads are exposed to long stretches of direct sun. And in VT, the summer months mean 85 degree days and 90% humidity. So your sweating a lot. And one more thing to expect in the summer is bugs. Mostly mosquitos and deer flies. Deer flies make me question if God is really benevolent. But pushing your bike in 90 degrees up what feels like a 90 degree pitch while being ravaged by bugs is a real character builder. Thats how I justify it, I guess.

*At the “official” starting point of the route at the VT state capital building in Montpelier.*

Day one found me in Montpelier at the official start, 70 miles after I left St.J that morning. I was already doing math in my head with the miles I had covered and how many I still had left to go to get to NH by the fourth. I was starting to put pressure on myself that I wasn’t moving fast enough. This was a topic for a lot of rumination, as I had two goals in mind when I left for the ride. The first was to just have fun and live on my bike for three days. The second was to wrap my head around what it would take to do a really long trip, like 2 to 4 weeks. I wanted to treat this ride a practice run to see how my body, mind, and bike would hold up if I was completely on my own.

I had set another soft goal (I thought) of taking it easy by only traveling 100 miles a day. When I told this to the guys at Village Sport Shop (who build my new badass Salsa Cutthroat), Jake said that it sounded pretty ambitious. I thought it was a lay-up. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t put that pressure on myself.

After traveling 100 miles (mile 30 on the course), I found myself in Chelsea VT. It was around dinner time so I ate a burger, and then restocked my supplies. As I headed back onto the course it went uphill again and I was pretty spent. I spotted a little Super8 marker on a tree and noticed that there was a path that led to a nice little spot. It wasn’t posted, and the field wasn’t visible from the road. I had planned to camp in the Cobb Forest, 8 more miles down the road, but it was 5:45 and it was such a perfect spot I decided to call it. I was excited to be finishing early, not pushing, but just enjoying the journey.

I set up my tent, configured my bear bag and changed into my clean shorts. I found a stream right down the road and got naked and cleaned up. There is something so incredibly liberating about relying on nature for all your needs. But as romantic as it sounds, it's a lot harder than day to day life.

Back at the tent I called my buddy Jeremy to see if he could help me diagnose the creaking that my bottom bracket had developed. I was working on the bike, talking to him on speaker phone when I heard someone come up from behind me and say “What do you think your doing here?”. It wasn’t a friendly voice. But after I explained what I was doing, and apologizing, he gave me permission to camp. Which was a big relief because I am super careful about trespassing. If there had been any signage I wouldn’t have set up in that spot.

*Sunset on the first day, from my tent spot.*

As I watched the sunset, I was discovered by two dogs who proceeded to bark at me for over 1/2 an hour before they decided something else was more interesting.

As I climbed into my tent I realized how badly I had actually chaffed in my groin area. I needed to air things out in hopes that it would be settled down before I left in the morning. As I lay on top of my sleeping bag, with my shorts pulled down to my knees, holding my ballsack off to one side so it didn’t stick to the raw exposed skin on my crotch, I could only imagine what someone would think if they walked up and saw me like that.

In the middle of the night I was awakened by footsteps right outside the tent. It sounded like a fairly large animal, so I gave a few claps. I heard the telltale heavy exhale/snort of a deer, and I decided to get out of my tent and scare it away. As I tried to climb out, my left quad seized up in a wicked cramp!! I heard the deer scamper off and make a loop around the field, snorting the entire time, then disappear. I slept great the rest of the night.

The cramps were due to the gearing on my new bike. Last year when I did the North Lobe Grand Depart I used my hardtail mountain bike. You can read about my setup here. That bike has MTB gearing with a 30 tooth front sprocket and a 11-50 cassette. With the bike loaded up and the relentless steep hills, I used that granny gear a lot. It allowed me to keep spinning without having to push the pedals too hard on the hills. My new bike, because of a last minute issue with some parts, has a 36 front sprocket and a 10-42 in the rear. To better explain, the new bike gearing allows the rear wheel to make one full revolution every .86 revolutions of the crank. The MTB gearing takes .60 times. In simple terms, The MTB takes a half of the rotation of the pedals to turn the rear wheel in its easiest gear, while the bike I was on takes close to a full rotation of the crank to do the same thing. In laymen terms, the gearing is a LOT harder. So I had to stand a lot on the hills, which really wore me out.

I woke up at daybreak and took my time breaking down camp. My excitement to have a cinnamon roll and a Starbucks espresso double shot for breakfast was tempered a bit by having to put in my contact lenses without a mirror. It only took me a few tries, which was a good omen for the day. After struggling to reconfigure all my stuff, I finally was ready to ride out after an hour of packing up. If I ever decide to take a serious stab at a fast time on one of these big courses, I’m going to have to figure out how to pack up quicker or pack lighter. I have a bivy that sets up and packs up super fast, but I hate it. It is too small to move around in, let alone sit up, and my tent is much more comfortable.

I set out for the day feeling great. Chaffing was better, I wasn’t cramping and I was excited to be seeing more of the S8 course. It wasn’t long before I realized that the gearing was really slowing me down and I was pretty beat up from the day before. It took me almost 1.5 hours to get to Cobb forest, where I had planned on camping, as it was a ton of climbing. I was glad I didn’t decide to push to there the previous night.

The trail was tougher than I thought it was going to be, and I would have been much more comfortable on my MTB with easier gearing. I was also starting to get frustrated mentally because my bottom bracket was creaking so badly. I was trying to treat it like an opportunity to practice patience. I thought a lot about the days when I used to run 100 miles. I firmly believe that the physical part of endurance events isn’t as difficult as the mental part. Speaking only for myself, I can handle being extremely tired and sore, or severely fatigued. But it’s the little mental issues that will crush you. For me with running, it’s blisters that are my nemesis. With biking, its mechanical issues.

I noticed that on the course there was a bike shop in Woodstock. So when I rolled into town after riding 41 miles, I was ready for a break and hopeful that the shop could help. In town I was surprised at how many people there were in the street. It looked like a usual summer day in a quaint VT town. But with one difference. Everyone was wearing a mask. Every single store was following best practices and had hand sanitizer out, masks available, social distancing signs, etc. When I dealt with the shop we all wore masks and kept our distances, but outside of that it was a normal transaction. I saw the same type of behavior in Montpelier, and I can’t help but believe it is one of the reasons why the infection rate is so low here. Nice job VT.

Speaking of the shop, I have to give a shout out to Woodstock Sports. I’m really sorry I forgot his name, but the mechanic that helped me was awesome. On the spot, he took apart the bottom bracket, cleaned the bearings, regreased everything and torqued it all down. And it fixed the problem. Also turns out that he is a Enduro Racer and we know a lot of the same crowd. As he said to me, the bike community is such a small world.

I got a delicious cheeseburger from a street vendor of a local farm, filled up on more supplies and headed out towards Bridgewater back on the course. It was so good to have a quiet bike again, and riding a stretch of road felt lightning fast. It’s nice to have a break from the tough stuff once in a while to get some more momentum going.

I stayed on the course, frustrated by my slow pace and sore legs, until I got to Chester. I had ridden 80 miles so far and it had taken me almost 10 hours. My plan was to try to get to “Petes Camp” at mile 121.4 on the course. From where I was, on mile 109 of the course, I would have to ride another 1.5 to 2.5 hours. Then from there, if I followed my original plan, I would still need to cover 98 miles the next day to be with my family. Since we were planning an afternoon bbq I realized that it wouldn’t be possible to get home on time.

So in what felt like both a defeat and a victory, I decided to exit the course and head towards Bellows Falls, 7 miles away. It was a defeat because I wasn’t able to follow my plan. And it was a victory because I was totally ok with my decision. I reminded myself that I was doing this for fun.

As I rolled down the hill into Bellows Falls I passed a Chinese restaurant and actually said outloud, “mmm, that smells f’n good”! Now that I had decided to bail, I wanted to find a hotel to stay in so I could clean up and recharge. I felt only a tiny bit of shame for doing this, and that lasted about 2 seconds. Again, this was about having fun. I found a great little place called the Harvest Barn Inn via google, called and found that they had one spot open until they hit the mandated 50% occupancy.

*NOT the Harvest Barn Inn. A deserted Motel down the road.*

I rode a mile back up the hill to the Inn, where the Inn keeper welcomed me as if I was family. I said hi to the family of bikers who were eating Chinese food from Joy Wah right across the street. It was the same place I had ridden by when I came into town and I was psyched. After changing out of my bike shorts I ordered take out and then walked down where they were happy to serve me a few beers while I waited for my food. Hard to beat, for sure. And it was excellent. Shout out to the Joy Wa for the great service.

It turns out that the other guests were a family of 6 or 7, in three generations, who had biked the 23 mile rail trail from Keene NH to the Inn. I thought it was incredibly cool to see a family doing that type of activity together. One of them told me that they ride as many of the rail trails in NE that they can. When one of the young boys asked me how many miles I rode that day his jaw dropped, literally, when I told him a little under 100. He was wiped out from his big ride and he just couldn’t believe it. I get the same feeling when I see someone like Ted King ride down the entire state line on similar terrain (300+ miles) in under 24 hours!! It blows my head apart! After laying all my stuff out for the night, I ate a small edible and slept like a baby.

I woke up a little before 5 and felt rested enough that I decided to get a move on. The Inn Keeper had left out a banana and a banana nut muffin, and the Kurig machine brewed me a nice cup of coffee. I was excited. I was rested, and I knew (thought) that this would be a quick 55 miles. To start the ride, I made my way over to the Cheshire Rail Trail and headed towards Keene. It felt good flying along the rail trail, and it was amazing to see the gigantic stone walls that were carved out in order to put the railway in.

After riding 25 miles of rail trail in 2.5 hours I was feeling great. I had been taking a lot of breaks to take pics, eat, etc as I only had 35 miles left to ride till I was eating awesome food and off my bike. Mental math had me home before noon.

All of my plans went out the window when I left Keene. It seemed like an endless climb out of town just led me to more climbing. For the next 10 miles I just went up. All of a sudden things weren’t feeling so good. In some of the woods sections, it was simply ridiculous. I had to do a lot of hike a bike as I pushed up endless rocky steep stream beds. And the bugs in NH are substantially worse than in VT. It was brutal. Of course, it was hot too. But I didn’t mind that. In the last three days I had seen almost zero rain. Even though there were pockets of thunderstorms all around me I never had to use my rain gear. The trade off was humidity.

I had never ridden the course that RidewithGPS had plotted for me. And as the trail got less visible and more ridiculous I had to remind myself that I was looking for an adventure, and I was getting one. I had to let go of the idea of knowing what time I was going to finish, and just stay present for the journey. I use RWGPS to create gravel routes by clicking a starting point, then an ending point and using the “walking” setting. I have never been let down, as it almost always sends me on some type of adventure. Again, it did not disappoint. It took me 7 hours to cover the 60 miles home.

Heres what I learned on this ride.

My pinky fingers are numb. This has never happened to me on a MTB handlebar. I have not decided what to make of this yet.
I will not do a multiday ride again without my favorite chamois cream. They are not all equal.
Either race it or ride it for enjoyment. But get it clear in your head before you start.
I need to reconfigure and add some tools to my kit. I should have been able to service my Bottom Bracket without help.
I need still work on my sleep setup. I’d like to pare down my kit.
Fuck my current gearing.
I’m not as fast as I think I am.
I worry too much about how fast I am.
I worry too much in general.
I love riding bikes. (actually, I already knew this)