Mass trip day 2/Willowdale

After I left Dan's, I headed up to Willowdale to attempt to ride at least the first half of my enormous 17+ mile total loop. I brought along my Gopro camera too, to see how it could handle the twisty turning jerky bumpiness of mountain biking. The clouds were threatening rain, my stomach was threatening worse (great idea mike, eat Burger King for lunch and then try to mountain bike), and my back decided to do its thing where it shoots piercing pain through my body for no reason. It somehow tweaked it when I was putting my bike shorts on in my car, and I (now that my back is still weird a week later) stupidly rode anyway. And it was awesome. I was exhausted immediately, but it was extremely humid, so, through all of my sweat and panting, I actually could breathe better than normal. I managed to ride all but the last mile or so of the loop (I was pretty dead) and I had more to do, so I headed out after about 10 miles. It was awesome. I love this place to death and finally hit up one of my favorite sections of the trail this year. This section was the first place that looked like fall last year, and I remember having a fall freakout while riding there with Joe (OH MY GOD IT'S BEAUTIFUL AHHHHH). I love Willowdale.

So tired, I got a lazy eye

Someone got a bit excited

Yes, you have to weigh nothing and have an 8,000 dollar bike to ride stuff like this. This has NO place at Willowdale- it's hilarious that this exists.

I call this Gnarnia. You ride down an endless hill (literally, you don't have to pedal for like 20 seconds) and then come into a huge section that is just green everywhere. It's great. 

This was one of my first triumphs in mountain biking- getting the balls to try and ride up and over this. It's bigger and thinner than it looks, and it's kind of straight up and straight down- an upside down V. I was TERRIFIED the first time I did it, and now I do it every time. Baby steps.

This beat up car is in the middle of thick woods and has to have been here for several decades. I love this car.

Swamps. Pretty, buggy. Pretty buggy.

My legs after 10 miles. Dirt sticks to sweat very well.

Here is the video. I shot nearly 2 hours of footage. After viewing it, I realized a few things. First, I should probably turn the camera off when I'm collapsed on the side of the trail. What a great way to fill up an SD card. Second, nobody wants to watch me ride slowly uphill (including me). Third, apparently I twist my handlebars A LOT, both when pulling on them on a climb, and to avoid roots and rocks. This makes for interesting riding, but very ugly footage (I'm going to try the helmet mount next time). And fourth, nobody wants to watch 10 miles of riding (including me). I decided to edit it in pieces, as I usually divide Willowdale into sections anyway. And I decided to include only the good parts- the downhills and more interesting and technical sections. So here is the good stuff from the first section, somewhere around 10 miles.

I apologize for the blurriness of this video- I spent hours trying to make this work, and no matter what settings I save at, and no matter how good the final video (this is 1.7 gigs) looks on my computer, youtube just seems to smear vaseline all over the video to assure it looks as bad as possible. If anyone knows any tricks on how to make videos you post on youtube actually look the same as the videos look on your computer, let me know. 

After riding, I changed in the woods and collapsed in my car. I headed up to Beverly to try and do 2 of my goals for the summer- one, driving around the ocean up there (more on this in a future blog), and hit up Nick's roast beef, a place that is regarded by Yelp.com and many beefheads in Mass as the best roast beef place on earth.

On the way to Beverly, driving through the beautiful backroads of Ipswich, I saw quite a beautiful tree in the middle of a corn field. All I could think of was The Shawshank Redemption. There was no rock wall, but this tree still felt like it belonged in the movie. Absolutely gorgeous- so much in fact, that I became super tourist and pulled over and took a bunch of pictures. 

come on

Then I drove through Beverly, which is quite the town. It started out with everything you could imagine on gross and busy streets, and turned into a small town, full of winding roads and one ways, traffic and tourists, and the ocean. I made my way to Singing Beach, which was pretty much like any beach, but, as I'm from the land of lakes, was a least different. 

I then ran out of time to venture any further, as I had a date with beef. I met my beef buddy Sean back at Nick's, and we feasted.

the joy that can only come from beef

I decided to try zucchini sticks on the side, which was a mistake. They were ok, but the beef was, as promised, the best roast beef I've had. It was a perfect mixture of super rare red beef, cooked brown beef, some chunks, etc. The roll was somehow way more delicious than other places and a little buttery and crispy, there was tons of murder (sauce mess), and I tasted cheese all the way through (which is surprisingly rare in beef sandwiches). Thank you Sean, it wasn't even a year ago when you introduced me to the world of beef. "WHAT!?" you said. "You've lived in Massachusetts this long and have never eaten a roast beef 3 way?" "um.. yea dude, what's the big deal? it's just meat, cheese, mayo and bbq sauce..." Boy was I wrong. Thank you for teaching me, Sean. This was so good that I stopped bothering with the zucchini sticks, and manned up and got another sandwich. I am a MAN. 

Oh my god so good. I literally get instantly hungry every time I look at this.