Stumbled across this, kinda hit home. Figured it was worth sharing:
http://bit.ly/bqn5sn
http://bit.ly/bqn5sn
If anyone wants to know what XC racing is like in the Southeastern US, come on out to a ****ty suburb in Western Mass to ride one of the 5 best trails I've ever ridden.
If only Western MA wasn't the best place on earth to live and ride bikes, I'd move down to Athens or Gainesville and live in a tent if it meant I could ride 14mph twisty, smooth singletrack all day.
...
Sure, it's raining right now,winter sucks and we don't have a velodrome or indoor BMX track(a few underground skate parks though). People here in Western MA don't give a **** about the off-season, as the people I've met who are shred-heads around here usually are a little bit more multi-dimensional than the bike geeks I've met out West.
Sometimes you have a period in your life where things feel a bit off. The light in the woods during magic hour doesn't make you teary any more. 40mph through the s-turns- all you notice is that your left sti lever rattles and that when you were in college you got to that descent 40 minites quicker with more watts per kilogram than some badass local pros. You don't ride your mtb because it hasn't stayed built up for more than a fortnight since 2006, and when it is built, your x9 deraileur doesn't stay in gear. Your DH bike sits in a corner. The ****ing thing falls apart every single time you ride it. Dampers become dampeners. Brakes brake.
I've been one of those people for more than half a decade now, I think. For the last month I've been stuck with just a bmx bike, trying to figure out how to ride it like a Bicycle Motocross bike, as it was intended by God, and Brian Wilson and Stacy Peralta, Thrasher magazine and Roger DeCoster. In the ****ing dirt. In sand pits. In abandoned factories. In back yards, parking lots and hidden trails built by thousands of hours of graft and toil by 14 year olds and 35 year olds working together to keep the scene going. Passive Aggressive in the real sense. Freesurfing God's race track self-destructively fast. Abraded, broke(n) and totally stoked.