go up to fly down...

longboarding and mountain biking with kevin and owen in the north country. i went up to visit the fieder-sullivans last weekend and brought my mt bike. i got there friday afternoon with the sun shining (side note, i went the back way without making one wrong turn!) and for mid november, it was warm. we broke out a couple of longboards and went out the drive. their house is just at the height of land on old county road so there is a choice: to the north, straight and steep, perfect for speed; to the south, gradual curves and alternating hills with flat, allowing for cutting speed or even stopping. we went south.

i hopped on and pushed a few yards until gravity took over. carving back and forth with a big smile until i picked up some speed and noticed the trucks were setup much looser than on my boards. this one seemed prone to some crazy 'speed wobble' if i didn't stay right on it. still, fast was fun! i took a screen shot off google maps, just down the steep section. i am including it because i love the way they blend multiple images in street view. tell the truth, did you notice the 'anti-gravity' wires?

on the second steeper section, i felt the wobble just the 'other side' of each turn and wondered what that would mean when the car coming at me would force me into a single lane, straighter line. the car went by and i managed to make it to a flat section before taking one last hill, with no more cars.

at the bottom of that last steep--seen looking back up in the picture above--was a paved, side road that i remembered. it was often sandy and gravelly right at the turn, definitely a hazard, but offered a good uphill which would slow me. at least that was my theory as i turned. my rear wheels cut loose and slid without much of a prompt. the excitement was brief as i shot around the corner and swung a full 180° before i lost too much speed. now, cruising back to county road i gave a little victory slide in the sand at the corner.

it always amazes me at how lost in the moment i get when indulging in such downhill pleasure. i can focus and feel enormous joy at the same time. but as i stepped off the board i realized, i was alone--where was kevin? i got up one hill and still didn't see him. halfway up the next section he appeared, helmet first, carving deep turns across the road, shoulder to shoulder. he swept by me with a classic kevin wave, accompanied by his own wide smile. he stopped before tipping over that last hill and i knew he had been walking the steeper sections. helmet, elbow and knee pads, gloves, long pants, and solid shoes marked him as more cautious. maybe he was more sane too, compared to my shorts, tee shirt, and crocs.

we walked up together and took another run, then another, and then several others. i took that last hill three more times and even got kevin to try it--from a cautious, part way down start. both of us managed to avoid sliding out! we finally turned back to the house as the sun sank lower and the roads grew shadowy.

coming over to brownfield was always good for some gravity time as well as food, which we got right at after stowing the boards. after dinner kevin even made a dish of brownie-cake with kidney beans--that was new and different, "lil' kevie's moose poop brownies!"


saturday dawned equally clear and perfect for some more gravity time. today it was to be pursued on bikes and owen was coming with us. after breakfast, fixing a flat, and loading the bikes in the truck we drove over to new hampshire to the marshall conservation area kevin was raving about. the parking area was still fairly open but a large group of people were there, getting ready to hike. we unloaded the bikes and set out up the road towards the top of the singletrack.

the first trail we took down was the shumway! (the blue line on the map above) oh my gosh...this was heaven. the track was laid out incredibly sweet, with banked "technical turns and rock elements" galore. at just over a mile it didn't last nearly long enough, so of course we went back up--twice! we did another trail first but finished repeating the shumway on the final run. my goal that last trip down was to flow as natural as possible and hit a few of the lifts without breaking that 'stream of gravity'. i made it almost the whole way before my front wheel slid out from under me in a pile of leaves. back at the truck i watched the others skid about in the leaves and suggested with all that energy we hit another area.

kevin had another trail already in mind, sticks and stones. we loaded up and headed to a second round of 'flow' biking. before we took to the actual trail, i watched the other two again, this time circling round and round a pump track put in for practice. sticks and stones itself was two miles of fairly flat, compared to the downhill of the shumway, nor did i remember any built up bermed turns. but it was definitely full of highly technical turning. the track wound through the woods, with a scattering of stone elements designed to give bikers a challenge, usually by launching them into the air.

it was a fine day for playing outside! and why not follow that with some equally fine food and youtube inside. kevin and i each created a pizza for dinner: bacon blueberry on his; and beets and goat cheese on mine. we ate way too many pieces while watching danny macaskill videos.

if you have never watched macaskill work his magic on two wheels, i highly recommend it. videos always seem to look better following your own personal session with the outdoors. find some mtb trails if you like to bike, some smooth paved road if you longboard. maybe this winter will be snowful and allow us to get out to ski the backcountry, if not perhaps the ice on a lake near you will be smooth and thick.

whatever you do, when gravity starts to pull, let yourself go...!

hiking local...

with pam and MOC! i have been home nearly a month now and have enjoyed getting to see the end of peek foliage...

a week of teaching physics and chemistry for my dear friend ann--despite a cold...

and a couple other weeks of the usual tech support work: plugging in computers; blowing dust out of cpu's; resetting memory sticks; futzing with smart boards--including plugging them in; giving students email addresses; reconnecting chromebooks to wifi--basically plugging them in; all sorts of various and sundry low-tech tasks.

thank goodness for 'mountains'--it is harder to use that term after spending time out west. the sunday after 'that tuesday' pam and i were both hike ready. given a scheduled MOC event, we stayed local. we went over to wolfboro road and hiked up the back way to the AT between the north and south peaks of moose mountain. it was a lovely mild day with plenty of sun and no wind to speak of. about half a mile from where we parked, a tractor of some sort had come over from the hanover side and scraped, making a bit of a mess. i had not been up on wolfboro in ages--the last time was on skis over feet of snow. this grading was fresh, maybe just done, pushing aside a foot of leaves. it had been such a dry summer, maybe they thought they could avoid the usual mud. turned out, even in very dry weather, wet trails don't ever drain completely.

while i was dreaming of a deep snow smoothing it all out, i sunk--a wee bit over my crocs--into a mud pit, hidden by a deep layer of leaves. at the height of land, we crossed the AT and turned off headed for the south peak. the trail was leafy but not 'graded' so there was no mud or loose rocks. i don't think pam had ever been up there so she was quite pleased with that section. we stopped at the top for pictures and lunch.

from our lunch rocks, there was a good view to the south beyond the high school and mud pond and to the east past goose pond and cardigan. if you knew where to look, you could just make out our upper field over on west side of town hill.

when we came back down we crossed right over the road going toward the north peak. pam wanted to see the shelter about a quarter mile up. the view from there was not nearly as grand, more what they call 'local!' the shelter though is sturdy and i started dreaming of snow again, thinking about coming up in a storm, laying in while it built up, then skiing out in trackless powder.

back down to the road i pointed out a few spots where i remembered skiing and even biking once. we avoided the mud hole and had a very pleasant descent especially when the trail paralleled closely the brook draining the area we just hiked through. new england may not have the mountains the west has, but the woods here are places of wonder. and a late fall day was a perfect time to take a hike.

a late-fall evening, with a super moon rising at about the same time the sun is setting would be just as perfect. i have been trying to do a hike--once a month--for a good number of years now to get above treeline and catch the moon and sun doing their thing. it started when i took some folks i was teaching with at sead up cardigan, aptly dubbed the moonrise-sunset hike. when mascoma started that year, i kept promoting the hikes with MOC and it got somewhat popular--depending on the weather.

the weather was still really fine and though there was some wind coming up, it was dead clear. i got up to the cardigan parking lot where a couple of students were waiting. before we started hiking, three more showed up. not the biggest crowd, but they were enthusiastic.

and they hiked quite fast. we made it to the top in about 30 minutes--young legs. that gave us a bit of wait time, but it was so beautiful out, nobody complained. there were a couple of other groups up there and two MOC parents showed up just as the super moon crept above the horizon. it was indeed super and doubly rare to see it directly at the horizon.

after snapping a picture of the crew with the moon, we moved over to the west side and got a shot of the sun sinking into the green mountains.

as we gathered our packs to head down, one hiker from another group announced, "i'm freezing! i was not prepared for this." i was glad our group had the equipment needed to stay warm. we made it back to the parking lot just about as it got dark enough to warrant a head lamp.

in the words of wallace and gromit,
it was a grand day out!

or as MOC says,
go outside and play!