Reservoir Dogs

Hey gang,

I got a call from an old friend the other day, someone I hadn't talked to in quite some time. But I think of Jack Chapman often, because he helped build one of the sweetest urban singletrack networks in all of New England, on the outskirts of my old hometown, Manchester, N.H. So, on this absolutely splitter day here on Boston's North Shore, I'm pulling one out of the archives ... (this is the unedited version of a story I wrote a few years back for the crew at Bike magazine) ...

Reservoir Dogs
The water-method mountain bike association

Ten minutes into my social call on the serpentine trails surrounding Lake Massabesic on the outskirts of Manchester, New Hampshire, an unshakable sense of deja vu strikes - I've seen drawings of this maze before. No, not drawings - sculpture. Molded, in color-coded plastic. In sophomore biology class, tucked neatly in some dusty corner by the Bunsen burners and element charts. There, in life-size scale, was a cut-away model of your basic Homo sapien, his large and small intestines coiled tightly like an organic Slinky. That's where I've seen these trails before, the trail system Jack Chapman and his band of trailbuilders have wrought.

Chapman is the driving force behind FOMBA - the Friends of Massabesic Bicycling Association - a model fat tire advocacy group. Four years ago, no biking signs were posted on much of this property. Today, Chapman is introducing me to the Long Trail, a wet noodle that has me turning so often I accept that it's only a matter of time before my knees get impaled on my barends. Right. Left. Right. Right again. On and on and on.

"People ask me if I even know what a straight line looks like," laughs Chapman.

As you pedal deeper into the second- and third-growth forest that surrounds Massabesic - a Native American expression that means "The Place of Much Water" - sunlight is forced to squeeze through the dense canopy of leaves. These are not "epic" rides. No lung-busting inclines, startling vistas, or forever downhills. Climbs are short, and steep. Descents are inviting but treacherous, littered with endo-inducing stones and muddy sinkholes. Your heart will be pumping. Each corner is a new surprise, another obstacle in the trail, another gift tucked under the Christmas tree with your name on it. And like any holiday, there's a big emphasis on fun.

"We really lead a charmed life here," says Chapman, his cherubic face again breaking into a trademark grin.

Indeed. Manchester will never be a "mecca." But cyclists here love to ride the dirt side, and they'll take whatever singletrack they can get. During the last four years, FOMBA has pulled off a neat daily double, building more than 10 miles of choice singletrack while creating an ideal relationship with the quasi-public agency - the Manchester Water Works - that owns more than 8,000 acres of woodland surrounding Massabesic.

###

Manchester - the Queen City - is a rough-cut city built on the textile industry and the broad backs of Irish and French Canadian immigrants. At the turn of the past century, according to local lore, the two groups, fueled by ethnic differences, economic necessity, and a healthy dose of John Barleycorn, used to beat themselves half to death on the bridges that span the Merrimack River to see who would work the mills. It's not a great stretch to imagine those donnybrooks as a harbinger of today's trail-side tangles. Today, the combatants are trail users - mountain bikers, hikers, equestrians - all lobbying for their slice of the pie. In the role of the mill owners are land owners or managers, deciding who stays, who goes.

Confrontation still exists in Manchester, like any city with growing pains. And confrontation still defines many trail negotiations, no matter where you look. The folks at FOMBA took a different tact. Instead of clashing with the Manchester Water Works, they sought out and forged a working partnership.

Massabesic is the water supply for Manchester and a half dozen surrounding towns. The 2,500-acre reservoir, and the corresponding 42-square-mile watershed, has been a refugee for outdoor enthusiasts and lovers of solitude for decades. The shade of tall pines and eastern hardwoods, the lapping waters, and the cool breezes that spill off the lake conspire to entice those weary from their workaday existence.

Shortly after buying my first mountain bike in the mid-1980s - a stealth-looking Trek Singletrack 970 - I rediscovered the trails alongside Massabesic and branching off the abandoned rail bed that runs past the reservoir to the New Hampshire coast. The old fishing paths near the lake were typically too wet for unskilled novices such as myself, so I headed up to nearby Tower Hill Pond. But more adept riders enjoyed the challenge found in the thick Massabesic mud. In 1988, Chapman moved to neighboring Auburn. With a couple of cohorts, he started to connect and clean up the paths beside Massabesic in the early 1990s.

Unfortunately, the spring of 1996 brought heavy rains. Soon the ruts - and the run-off - near Massabesic caught the attention of MWW officials. "What brought the issue to the forefront was the number of folks biking around the lake, riding through these little feeder streams that were going right into our lake - they were actually riding in the lake because of the high water," says MWW forester Ethan Howard. So the MWW began posting "no biking" signs. Warnings were issued. Some bikers were hauled into court. Others called Jack Chapman.

Chapman was miffed. He went to the MWW in the summer of 1995, his first foray into municipal negotiations, to establish formal rights for mountain bikers in the watershed. When told the agency preferred to deal with organizations, he and his wife, Barbara, plus a few friends, formed FOMBA. They affiliated with the Eastern Fat Tire Association. They identified a problem area, hosted a bridge-building party that fall, and got a great turn-out. He struck up a friendship with Howard. Everyone was happy.

In the spring of 1996, however, the signs announcing certain areas off-limits to bikes caught Chapman off guard. "I didn't know anything about it, so I was a little bit teed off that Ethan wasn't keeping me abreast of what was happening. I told them that this FOMBA thing was only going to work if we can work together, and there's some communication."

Chapman asked for a meeting with the MWW brass, and presented his best look-'em-straight-in-the-eye sales pitch. "I basically said 'This thing can work. Do you want to let us do it or don't you?' I suggested we be allowed to cut some singletrack in a different part of the watershed. I told them we could keep people away from the water if they gave them a place to ride. These guys thought it was a great idea. And they gave me the green light."

###

What you'll find waiting for you on MWW land - all within a Mark McGwire long-ball of the reservoir - is a candystore of singletrack. Some trails feature a bounty of tight turns, over gnarled, Sleepy Hollow roots and boulders (after all, this is the Granite State), and a slew of natural and man-made obstacles direct from central casting for a NORBA trials event. On others, pine-needle carpets compress into smooth, banked turns that allow even beginner riders to connect with their mojo. Occasionally you'll have to pop over antiquated stone walls, a time-honored reminder that farming was once the primary use of this land. You'll elbow through trees that crowd you like hundreds of frenzied bargain hunters during a Kmart Blue Light Special.

A quick peek at the FOMBA map will convince any doubters. These trails look like a collection of Eastern Block countries divvied up by warring ethnic groups after the bottle of potato moonshine was passed around. Squiggles all over the place, a fat-tire Rorschach test. My kind of trail.

At the tail end of the Red Pine trail, we slide over a corrugated drop-off with a nose-bleed pitch, sort of a "British Columbia North Shore meets the Northeast" kind of challenge. The "Log Roll" is consummate FOMBA handiwork - a pucker-up chute that features small "warning" flags at the top and a more gentle escape route for less-daring riders. Everyone is smiling.

###

There are many reasons why FOMBA has been so successful while other mountain bike groups struggle. Foremost is a willing and involved landowner. "The Manchester Water Works really has to be Number 1 on the list," says Chapman. "They said, 'OK, we're going to take your word for it. Run with it.' They had the confidence in us."

"They saw the proliferation of mountain bikes in the watershed, saw the changes in the trail and the erosion, and they didn't know what the hell to do," he says. "There was no way for them to establish communication with the bikers. So, all of a sudden, they had a chance to talk with us."

Chapman also points to the key role Howard plays. It doesn't hurt that Howard's personal perspective dovetails nicely with FOMBA's mission. "I think I've been on all sides of the potential conflicts out there," he says. "I spend a lot of time out there on the ground, walking. I do some biking. We've got a couple of horses. I cross-country ski, and snowmobile, and I've got an ATV, the whole nine yards." Howard says the MWW simply saw the writing on the wall.

"We realized, being in southern New Hampshire, there was going to be a tremendous number of folks mountain biking, that we had a tip-of-the-iceberg thing here. We took the mentality, 'If we can't beat them, maybe they ought to join us.' Some groups work very well like that."

Plus, the MWW has a history of working with diverse groups, beginning some 30 years ago with snowmobiles. Once the snowmobilers got organized, the MWW agreed to allow them to groom and maintain trails. Using that agreement as a blueprint, the MWW mediated similar arrangements with equestrians, fishing clubs, even dog-sledding groups, in addition to mountain bikers.

A second key ingredient to FOMBA's success is a dedicated group of volunteers - essentially FOMBA's ability to walk the talk. In four years, FOMBA has grown from a loose collection of about five to a robust organization of 200. "I really think we have a record of doing what we say we're going to do," says Chapman. "Shortly after we started taking members, I started applying for grant money, and we got a grant. And we've been at the top of the list since."

They're likely to stay there if they continue past practice, says Johanna Lyons, program assistant with the New Hampshire Division of Parks and Recreation. "They have a great volunteer base, they're really in touch with the community, and they're very focused on their goals," she says, noting FOMBA has received two grants from her agency. "They haven't gotten a lot of money from us, but they've done great stuff with it. We're getting a huge bang for our buck."

Which is a byproduct of the third ingredient - FOMBA's esprit de corps. You don't have to look any further than Jack and his wife, Barbara. The two work hand-in-glove, dividing FOMBA duties like household chores - Jack cuts the trails, while Barbara minds the books. "I couldn't do it without her," says Chapman.

Then there are the other 198-or-so members. These people genuinely like one another, though the ribbing is as constant as brake squeal. Chapman and his band are a rolling collection of wise-cracking Adam Sandlers (another Manchester native), firing off one-liners as they rifle through the trails or heaping good-natured abuse on anyone who suffers a mechanical. FOMBA VP Pat Cassidy has a pig-shaped whistle toy mounted on his handlebars, and Chapman loves telling the story of when he had a curvy female racer approach Cassidy at the group's Watershed Wahoo race, asking if she could "squeeze his pork." Howard was dubbed "His Forestness" by Chapman, and has a plaque stating such - handcarved by the FOMBA founder - hanging in his office.

"I think it's a panic, an absolute panic," chuckles Howard.

And they genuinely love the land. At one nasty off-camber turnaround during my ride, Jim Dollard looked longingly at an amputated tree root before whispering, "we hated to cut that root, but there was just no other way around it." Chapman talks about FOMBA's latest feat of trailbuilding artistry - the Fire Line - in almost reverent tones. "It was a challenge to mark out. There are a lot of stone walls out there from a hundred years ago. You can't just barge over the wall and knock the stones out of it. You try to find a way to lace the trail through it."

"All of a sudden I find an opening created by the farmer years ago, a 12-foot opening with a giant boulder on either side, like bookends," he says. "That wall, most of it is four feet high, is very well preserved, and I was just blown away. You stand in that opening, and you think 150-200 years ago, there was a guy herding his cattle through here. I was out there by myself, and I almost felt guilty laying a trail through it."

FOMBA has proved so popular that the group started a trailside education program. The idea is to encourage stewardship and safety, which might prove the group's biggest challenge to date. As most advocacy groups can attest, preaching trailside manners is a tricky balancing act. Chapman opts for a "live and let live" approach. He understands there will be riders with a wild hair, who don't want to listen to his gospel of trail safety and etiquette, but are more than willing to take advantage of their hard work. He doesn't mind if FOMBA doesn't maintain its "coolness factor."

"I'm not that cool anyway," he says.

Those who have ridden his trails will beg to differ.

FINIS

Welcome to the velodrome ...

Oh, the agony! The sweet, sweet agony!

Hi all,

Another season, another new blog! OK, OK, I know what you're thinking ... "The Alternative Sports Guy" ...?!! What's that all about? Well, it's not what you're thinking (especially if you happen to think like most of my hockey buddies). It's about the wide world of sports that you won't find on your traditional "ball and stick" sports networks. It's about lifetime sports, like cycling, running, skiing, snowboarding.

More importantly, it's about he sports you actually "do," not the ones you watch, or the ones you fret about in your friendly fantasy league. So it might be about beer-league hockey, or old man soccer. It's about the sports that you don't find on the Vegas line. But it's about those sports that ought to mean to most to you, because they are the ones you can take true ownership of. Yesterday, I got out on my bike on the trails of a local state park, on a clear, crisp morning. And I felt like an absolute kid again. That's the electric connection these sports nurture. So here's my first installment to The Alternative Sports Guy -- my ode to the wild and wacky sport of cyclocross. Hope you like it ...

All 'crossed up

The freshly painted white barriers are a piece of cake. I confidently release from my pedals, hoist my bike, scoot workmanlike over the 15-inch boards and begin to run up the paved path. That's when disaster comes calling. The metal spikes screwed into the soles of my cycling shoes spark and skid on the macadam with the sickening sound of a car wreck. No traction whatsoever. I tumble across the gravel path, arms, legs and mountain bike flailing about in a spastic somersault of futility. So much for warm-ups. I haven't even made it to the start line of my first cyclocross race, and I'm already road kill.

***

I had a good reason for installing those spikes. Not long ago, on a raw December day, I stood on the sidelines as cyclocross racers from all corners of the United States stampeded a course at Fort Devens, just west of Boston. A hard New England wind, the kind that burrows into your marrow and makes a mockery of "weather-proof" clothing, blew through the old Army post. Hundreds of bundled spectators tried to keep warm, hollering encouragement. A cacophony of cow bells filled the late morning air as racers chugged by, their breath steaming like so many Clydesdales from a moody Budweiser commercial.

"These guys are nuts," I thought to myself. The faces of many racers were covered with what one friend delicately referred to as the "snot mask."

"Gives them that sexy glazed-doughnut look," he says with a grin.

Very attractive. The pace was lightning quick until racers ran smack into the Wall of Mud. One section of the course, built on a short, steep hillside, had thawed overnight, leaving a viscous muck that offered all the purchase of an oil slick. If racers didn't have momentum, they were toast. The yellow course tape funneled riders right to the bottom of the slippery slope, and the resulting pile-up was pure trench warfare - brightly colored racers flopping around like brawling mud-wrestlers, wallowing in the rich New England filth, grabbing for traction, bikes, each other.

Some spectators winced. Some howled. Most had to wonder why anyone would put themselves through that. How do you explain the attraction to something as excruciating and nerve-wracking as cyclocross? Not to watch, but to participate. Road racing's off-beat, off-season cousin makes perfect sense for spectators. It has all the elements - thrill of victory, agony of competing - confined to a viewer-friendly course. You get daring drop-offs, lung-scorching run-ups and hurdles, the ever-present potential for carnage, furious action in the pits, and often wild sprint finishes, wrapped up in a blink-of-an-eye 60 minutes.

I admired these racers as they came by in waves. Elite athletes and weekend warriors alike. Some svelte, some on the soft side. Some with the look of death, some exuding a gritty determination. All gutting it out.

"There's no posing here," says Marla Streb of Team Yeti shortly after the women's race, goose-bumps sprouting from underneath her Lycra outfit. "It hurts. A lot. And the rewards are very subtle. But life is almost too easy today, with everything at the push of a button. This is suffering, and there's something about suffering I like. It means digging deep."

Add to this recipe the embarrassment of being pulled off the back. At its heart, cyclocross is a war of attrition. To avoid confusion at the finish line, slower riders are yanked unceremoniously by race officials if they're being lapped by the front-runners. For racers, the prospect of physical distress pales by comparison to this blow to their ego.

Despite the misery on display - the "parade of pain" according to the announcer - I couldn't watch without being intrigued, and without a creeping desire to try it. I never learn. The post-race celebrations were contagious, and none of the racers - save those few unfortunates who suffered separated shoulders crashing on the hillsides - seemed any worse for wear. Instead, they were positively giddy with achievement.

That is the dark attraction of cyclocross, and my quandary. I long for that post-effort endorphin rush the way my 3-year-old lusts after dessert. But unlike my daughter, I know I've got to earn that little fix (MaryAlyssa might disagree - we do make her finish her peas). Endorphins are the pleasant byproduct of exertion. The greater the effort, the greater the reward. That can be a painful pursuit.

My approach to these masochistic endeavors mirrors that of Philippides, the legendary Greek messenger who, on a blistering day in 490 BC, ran 26 hilly miles from Marathon to Athens to report the Athenian Army's victory over the Persians. Like Philippides, I figure I can do anything I put my mind to, if only for a short time. Of course, I conveniently forget that Philippides, exhausted, promptly dropped dead at the feet of his superiors after delivering the good news.

Nor do I wish to mimic the post-race expectorations of a teammate, John M. A tightly-wrapped bundle of muscle and sinew, John has an amazing capacity to endure pain while ignoring the millions of synapses firing away, telling him to stop pushing so hard. In two races last year, John burst across the finish line only to get violently ill moments later. Not a pretty picture.

Shoving such unsettling thoughts to some faraway recess of my consciousness, I sign up for my first cyclocross race. The event is being put on by my club - Essex County Velo. I take comfort in the knowledge that it's close to home, and I'll be surrounded by friends. I peg false hopes on the date - October 16 - my daughter MaryAlyssa's birthday. My wife's only concern? "You'll be back in time for the party, right?"

***

Cyclocross combines the lore and lure of Europe's rich cycling tradition. Eclipsed in the past 15 years by that decidedly American phenomenon, the mountain bike, cyclocross was cooked up by some enterprising cycling buffs in Europe in the late 1940s as a training regimen for road racers to maintain fitness through late fall and winter. To a newcomer, this bizarre hybrid looks oddly similar to a mountain bike race. Don't be fooled. Mountain bikes are only allowed in "civilian" class races (sans bar-ends).

Top-level cyclocross racers use bikes more like their road brethren, albeit with wider, knobby tires and cantilever brakes. Cyclocross races "just" an hour, allowing for more intense effort. Courses feature shorter loops than the typical mountain bike venue, allowing for more urban settings. Man-made obstacles, or barriers, are added specifically to force racers off their bikes, thus requiring a fair amount of running to complement their pedaling. And, like a NASCAR race, there are frenetic pit stops where racers can exchange muddy bikes for clean ones (by contrast, mountain bikers must carry their tools and perform their own repairs during a race).

In short, cyclocross is a wild mix of road race, off-road race and steeplechase. Like Europe's other choice exports - British wit, French champagne, Italian tailoring and Spanish olives - it has developed a strong following here, particularly in the northeast, northwest, and the mountains west of Boulder, Colorado.

***

To prepare for my race, I attend my club's mid-week cyclocross practices. Like most neophyte 'cross racers, I simply modify my mountain bike - remove the barends, swap out fat tires for a skinnier model. I'm not worried that my teammates spit me out the back like a watermelon seed. These guys have been racing all summer. I console myself with the self-congratulatory notion that I'm in decent shape for a guy my age. I'm far too mature (read: old) to worry about results. I have no desire to see my performance etched in legend. No, I just want to finish the entire race and not get lapped. Not the grist of a high-priced motivational speaker, but enough for a 40-something father of two. I also sidestep any discussion about the pits. Truth is, unless you're lucky enough to have several bikes and friends who don't mind spending an hour freezing for the simple pleasure of scrubbing mud off your bike, you won't be making any pit stops during the race.

ECV's Stu Thorne, a veteran 'cross racer, patiently tutors me in the nuances of cyclocross's signature maneuver - clearing the obstacles. Watching accomplished racers perform this cycling sleight-of-hand is all grace and style. They approach a set of barriers at full speed, swing their right leg over the saddle, click out of their pedals, dismount, begin running while shouldering their bikes, jump over the barricades, set down their bikes, hop aboard, click in and pedal off. This happens in a continuous, fluid motion with almost imperceptible speed loss. It appears as effortlessas as figure skater Michelle Kwan calmly nailing a triple axle, or Michael Jordan executing a coast-to-coast jam. I'm not so gifted. Of course, if a pedal cleat fails to release, the resulting blood bath of bike and rider cartwheeling in a blur of flesh and metal and wooden barrier can be gut-wrenching.

Oddly, this possibility doesn't bother me as much as the remount. Hopping back onto the bike is especially frightening, given our anatomy. Stu assures me he's never injured himself. The key, he says, is to land on my inner thigh, not my naughty bits. Plus, I need to focus on engaging my cleats and pedals cleanly. Otherwise, I risk having my feet fly off the pedal, with the potentially disastrous results to my underside.

So I practice religiously, on my street, outside my front door. Clicking out and clicking in. Dismounting and remounting, again and again, under the quizzical gaze of MaryAlyssa. She asks my wife, Lauri, "Why can't Daddy stay on his bike?" Lauri good-naturedly tells her "Daddy is doing his special tricks." Every Wednesday in September, I show up at the ECV training sessions, endure sadistic drills known as Madisons (all-out efforts reminiscent of wind sprints from high school soccer practice), and count down the days to the race.

***

I'm up early on October 16, not from nerves, but because our youngest, Brynne, decides she needs a bottle more than dad needs his sleep. In a caffeine-induced haze, I toss my bike atop the family wagon and head for Gloucester. The venue is striking. Held at scenic Stage Fort Park, on the edge of Cape Ann, the race course looks out over the Atlantic Ocean, the same body of water that swallowed the Andrea Gail in Sebastian Junger's haunting "The Perfect Storm." On this day, however, there isn't a hint of foul weather. Dawn breaks gloriously over the horizon. Temperatures are mild, with an invigorating sea breeze blowing in from the ocean. I can't believe my good fortune.

A friend, Todd, and I do a couple of practice laps to familiarize ourselves with the intricacies of the twisting course - where are the run-ups, the obstacles, the fast sections? Since we're competing in the civilian's category, our race is slated to last 30 minutes. I estimate the race will go three laps, tops. I can handle that. We start on the road that runs through the park. A young teammate, Jesse Anthony, who will later be crowned national champion, urges me to get to the front of the crowded starting line. "Relax, Jesse," I reply in an accidental but unmistakable parental tone. "I'm just here for the experience." A race official explains that the remaining number of laps will be posted near the start/finish area, ostensibly so we can gauge our efforts. I chat with my competitors, hoping my self-deprecating humor masks my nervousness.

At the crack of the starter's pistol I lurch violently, with all the finesse of snapping the trusty kitchen blender directly from "off" to "liquefy" with no warning. Like the blender, my system recoils. Within seconds, all I hear is my own deep breathing and surging heartbeat from inside my head, as if my ears are stuffed with cotton. I hold my own with a pack of racers as we drop into the twisty portion of the course, ignoring the greyhounds, including Todd, who leap off the front.

Slowly, my breathing and legs catch up with my soaring heart rate, and I settle into a labored-but-not-entirely-uncomfortable rhythm. The second shock to my system arrives near the end of Lap 2. Passing through the start/finish line, I spy the sign indicating the number of laps remaining - 4! I'm stunned. Six laps total! Twice what I anticipated.

For the next two laps I chase after a group of juniors, muttering expletives as these little urchins one third my age and half my weight go rambling by. My heart, clearly maxed, continues to hammer some tribal beat in my frontal lobes with a ferocity unmatched since my college frat-party days. All the while, my cleats and pedals are waging war, stubbornly refusing to cooperate with each other.

At the beginning of Lap 3, I grab a water bottle from an unsuspecting bystander who was holding it for another racer. There are no Miss Manners in cyclocross. Lactic acid begins pouring into my thighs. By Laps 4 and 5, I'm no longer running and leaping over the obstacles. Any spring I had has sprung. Trudging, or walking, is more my style. The beautiful panorama of the Atlantic is lost on me. I'm unable to see anything except the racer just ahead. With the help of cheering teammates, I keep moving forward, somehow resisting the temptation to quietly sneak off the course.

On my last lap, I put on an extra burst, and my breakfast comes perilously close to an encore visit. I think briefly of John M., swallow hard and ease off the throttle. I rumble over the last hurdle, and hop on my bike one last time. And a wonderful thing happens - my cleats find the pedals like a dog finds a bone. I snap in with a smooth, resonant double "Click!" Such a little victory, such remarkable results. A torrent of energy courses through my legs. As I drop onto the last stretch of pavement, I push the chain onto the big ring. A firm believer in the Satchel Paige adage, "Don't look behind, someone might be catching up," I focus on the specs of dirt flying off my front tire, urging me on. I cross the finish line with a time just over 45 minutes, barely managing to dodge the humiliation of getting lapped and being pulled from the race.

My placing? Dead center of the pack - 20th, out of 40 starters. I'm exhausted, and ecstatic. I've earned my little endorphin high, and that piece of cake waiting for me at my daughter's birthday party.