29er Single Speeds at Rocky Neck

The bike on the left is a Chumba with an EBB and a Rockshock 100mm
The bike on the right is a Niner Air9 that weighed 18 lbs!

Beers and Gears - Helmet Cam

I know it's a little light, that's because I had the exposure set to +2.0 stops by accident. Didn't realize how bright it would be in the woods midday.

Gears and Beers

CT NEMBA's Bikes, Brats and Beers Ride was held on Saturday and it was AWESOME!  We had 15 riders show up for a fantastic 2 hour tour of Rocky Neck State Park, which by the way was holding up nicely after a hurricane and a tropical storm in the past two weeks.  This event came about while I was vacationing at Giants Neck earlier this summer and after settling in at the beach house I went out to the local Packy to see if I could find some BBC (Berkshire Brewing Company) and while the closest Package Store (Divine Wine) didn't carry it, ironically, the owner had been contacted by the local BBC rep about stocking BBC.  

Thom Lamourine, who is local to the area (lives right around the corner in Old Lyme) and a complete bike mechanic wizard and whom I spent a lot of time riding with during the vacation, and I got to talking about trying to do a Mountain Bike Ride event coordinated with a beer sampling (BBC of course) at Rocky Neck.  Since Divine Wine is located across the street from the trail head at Rocky Neck, it was the perfect set up!  

First time out on the diSSent with gears!

Rocky Neck State Park might not be the most challenging of riding locations in Connecticut but it certainly is fun.  We had 15 riders in our group ranging from Free Riders riding monster free ride bikes to rigid singlespeeders on 29er wheels.  Just about every type of bike was represented on this ride, including a full suspension 650b from Jamis!

I was really surprised with the turn out and where everybody came from.  We had people from the western part of Fairfield County (Shelton & Newtown), Oxford, South Windsor, Deep River, Rocky Hill, Middletown, Brewster, MA (I think he was vacationing at Giants Neck this week), and a handful of local NEMBA members!

Steve Eldridge (l) was our ride leader who, along with Corey Stiff and Thom Lamourine, are local CT NEMBA Trail Ambassadors and did a phenomenal job opening Rocky Neck State Park after Hurricane Irene and getting ready for today's ride.

We rode just about everything there was to ride at Rocky Neck.  On the Red and White Trails there were quite a few blow downs and with this big group of riders coming to a halt at the obstruction it looked like a conga line of people trying to get around or under the blowdown.

After the ride we were treated to a beer tasting supplied by my favorite brewery, Berkshire Brewing Company!  We also had frankfurters and bratwurst to go with the beer at the same time drool over hand built bikes from a local bike builder, Andrew Watson, Watson Cycles.

Riding Neck'ed

Saturday Morning Eye Opener @ Rocky Neck

Map of today's ride (Blue) and last Sunday (Red)

My last hurrah on the Southeastern shore of Connecticut was an early morning ride with Thom, Steve, and Cory at Rocky Neck State Park.  Thom put it out on CTNEMBA.com forums that we were going to ride early on Saturday and both Cory and Steve, and one other guy who didn't show in the end, all said they would be riding with us.  Seeing that I had a 10 AM departure from the rental and with everyone having later plans for the holiday weekend, riding early was perfect.

From left to right:  Thom; Cory; Steve (r)

There was a mixed bag of equipment, from Thom's full suspension Voodoo Canzo 29er, Steve's full suspension Jamis 650b, Cory's silver hard tail Trek, and my Soul Cycles Dillinger hard tail 29er.  We did the standard stuff, the rollers from Balance Rock, Slick Rock Trail to the Cliff Side Trail.  These guys showed me how to ride the Little Nose Drop.  Then it was up to the Pavilion for admire the shore and then back to the cars.  Nice four mile jaunt.

Thom on the Little Nose Drop

Steve on the Little Nose Drop

3D Map of today's Ride (Blue) and Last Sunday (Red)

Thom and Steve

Cory

Left to right:  Steve; Cory, Me; Thom

The Bikes

Riding with my daughter at Giants Neck

After riding Rocky Neck, my daughter and I rode Giants Neck, where we are spending the week on the beach.  In fact, the house we rented is about 20 yards from the beach and has an excellent view of the water.

Giants Neck looks like many summer vacation cottages that are slowly transforming into make overs for summer rentals.  The house that we are renting is now rented all year.  Our rental located across the street from one of three private beaches, which is only 20 yards away and basically the house overlooks the water.  Nearby is Rocky Neck State Park, where I have already been mountain biking, which has a really big beach and camping area.

This was Katie's longest ride on her bike, 4.5 miles.

Granted, it didn't have any trails but it was beautiful none-the-less.  There are some really nice looking homes on Giant's Neck.

There is something really intriguing behind the house we are renting.  It's a road cut through the ridge that makes up the peninsula that makes up Giants Neck.  It makes absolutely no sense.  There are no houses on this section of the road which led me to believe that it must have been part of a trolley line or perhaps a spur line that would bring passengers to Rocky Neck State Park.

It just looks too much like a railroad went through here!

According to the East Lyme Historical Society, there was a single track running through Rocky Neck State Park before it was a park:

 In 1852, a single track was cut through the property for the new railroad.   This was widened and realigned in 1889, and the stone excavated from the ledge to accommodate the new tracks was used to build a pier for the quarry operation.

The Railroad cut through Giant's Neck looks like it could only accommodate one track but then again trains back then, while still using standard gauge were a lot smaller back then then they are today or even in the 1930s.  I say this because if you look at the maps below, the top map is from the 1893 Groton topo, UNH LIBRARY, Government Information Dept. Historic USGS Maps of New England & NY, compared to the 1938 topo clearly shows the tracks moving further north.

Another day in Geared Paradise

Needed to stay local on Tuesday so I headed over to Rocky Neck State Park where I met Thom on the trails for another tour of Rocky Neck.  My last visit here was in about 6 inches of snow around Christmas.  On the way there from where I was staying in Giants Neck there was this bike at the trail head that looked pretty sweet, but my kids have enough bikes.

I brought the Helmet Cam and took some videos riding.  There isn't anything too difficult at Rocky Neck.  There are some great rock features, too.  Unfortunately, quite a few of the trails need to be cut back as you can see in this next video what happens to my camera after not bending low enough to go under a particularly low hanging Mountain Laurel.

Watch out for Doggers (above) and Joggers (below).  If you stick to the single track, however, you won't see a sole.

While it's hard to see, looking down, the camera really kills depth perception, but it's about a 30 foot drop down the side of this cliff.  Thom calls it the Cliff Side Ride and there are some fun rollers on this trail, too.

On one trail we found an old, rotted tree blocking the trail we got to work lowering the log so it could be a nice up and over.

If you don't have saw, use your body weight!

Or brute strength

Not being a frequent rider of these trails but enjoy their flow, I wonder if this should just be removed so you can enjoy the flow.

Great view but the slick rock is closed to bikes in the Summer - that looks fun!

Another balance rock.  There is a nice series of rollers from here down to the main trail.

Green Addiction: Grün ist Geil!

Photo Courtesy of ECTRR.com

After the pounding we took here in Western Connecticut earlier this week my riding plans for the week that I have off were literally blown away.  However, a buddy of mine who lives in Eastern Connecticut offered to sell me his Velocity Blunts so I drove to Old Lyme to pick up the new wheelset and to try the front wheel out.  Turns out the eastern part of Connecticut got much less snow than we did in the western part of the state and seeing that this is probably my last opportunity to ride in 2010 I was pedal to the metal!  What I didn't expect was how close the color of the rim would match the Dillinger.

Snow depths ranged from three to six inches of snow, some places were deeper due to drifting, but what made riding the hardest was transitioning between where people walked and the loose powder.  Still, it was a lot of fun and a great workout.  Thom and I met another mountain biker out on the trails, John W., but he was having a hard time pedaling and was walking more than riding.

This was also the first time riding with my new HD video camera, the Drift Inovation's HD 170.  I shot some ski vids the other day with it but I was out of power on Monday and couldn't edit any.  The files, however, are huge!  Above is an edited (shortened) clip that I loaded to YouTube.  It turns this unit takes DVD quality videos at a resolution of 1280 x 720, and that's just the medium setting!  The data file has a lot of overhead data in it, like stereo sound, and it's uncompressed, that I found from talking to Thom, if it were compressed it would be a much smaller file.  The other thing I need to ensure is that my helmet is on my head really tight.

We started riding around 3:45 pm and as you can see the sun was starting to go down but there was plenty of light for riding.  Still, it was really cold with the wind.  Initially, I was going to ride with my CT NEMBA Trail Ambassador Jacket, however, the wind was so strong I felt that wasn't going to keep my warm enough, so opted for a polar fleece North Face jacket that also acts as a zip in for another jacket.  I got pretty hot in the jacket but was able to vent most of the heat through a combination of zip pits and the main zipper.  I also had on Bib tights, and over pants.  That was a bit of overkill but combined with my lobsters, skull cap, and winter riding booties I never got cold.

Thom at the start of the Ridge Ride

Here is a slightly shorter clip of riding down the ridge towards the Pavilion at Rocky Neck State Park.  It's a really cool descent there are many rollers and rocks to roll and huck.  Of course I took it easy because of the conditions but looking forward to coming back here again when all the snow is gone.

Giant's Neck

We rode the board walk along the beach over to Giant's Neck where I will be renting a house this summer with my family.  Looks like I will be hitting Rocky Neck every morning and then doing the bike trails with my boys and daughter in the afternoons, besides lounging on the beach and building sand castles.

Photo courtesy of ECTRR.com

We tried to find the house that I will be renting but had the wrong address.  Thom took this picture of me and you can see the camera atop my helmet.  I originally tried mounting it on the side of the helmet but it was too heavy.  Whereas with my skiing helmet, the fit is more snug and I barely noticed it there. On the Mountain Bike helmet, however, it doesn't fit as snug and I could feel it pulling to one side.

Sunset at Giant's Neck

For these kinds of conditions, the Qball would have been perfect but it's still in the process of getting rebuilt.  The Dillinger performed beautifully in the snow.  Climbed just about everything and got a tremendously good workout!  Of course the snow softened a lot of the trail and the new wheel performed beautifully.  I might have to consider some Orange Blunts for the Qball.  Below is a little 3D map of the single track riding area of  Rocky Neck.  It's not a huge place but according to Thom there are many more trails in there to ride.  I am going to try to get back here in the spring to try them all and to familiarize myself with the area better so that when I am spending my week here, I know exactly where to find the goods.