Riding The Trails Where I Started Mountain Biking

You guys are gonna outpace me like crazy? I don't think so. All right so I'm back in my, well the town that I grew up, Keene, New Hampshire and we're riding Drummer Hill. So this will kind of be a tour of the place I learned to ride a Now one thing to notice is there is absolutely no snow on the ground right now. I drove from back home we had about four inches which is way less than we normally have at this time of the year. But our trails have been closed for a while so if you do want to ride you have to travel a little bit south. All right this is a good point to stop and do a little introduction. We got Ian who's obviously on my old bike now his bike and uh Brad he was in the Arrowhead video. We were all out of shape because we haven't been riding all that much so. Downhill not uphill. Yeah so how about the downhill? I was gonna go up Butter. Yeah let's go to Butter. That's a nice line. That is, that's a great addition. If you look in the woods sometimes you'll notice trees like this that have like this hole. This is called stilted and it's actually when a tree grows on of a fallen tree. So there used to be a tree here maybe it fell that way that way but uprooted and then this tree kind of sprouted out of the stump and as the stump decays well you can start to see through it. There's a lot of cool things you can learn when you watch the right videos on YouTube. That was good, that was a good line man. I think riding on other than being what trails ride so good so hard yeah it's almost like. Have you hit it? You have it? Let's go take a look at it. So this stump up here Brad and I had always talked about like cutting it and turning into a bit of a boner log. I think it's still one of my favorite kind of features out here because it's just natural but janky and fun. Like it doesn't look that bad on camera but coming up to it it's a little bit intimidating. You're one bike length a little more than a bike length from it you're still like in the radius of the turn. We'll just start right here. I should probably shift into a better gear. There you go that might be better. I love that one. You don't have to pedal at all. If anything you want less speed. Just gonna roll right into it. That's beautiful. I know for a fact I went much farther than you and I was worried about that because these trees are so close. You did it way better but I hung up on a pole jam once with a backpack and you go like straight to face. I got out of it pretty good but it's like that's a big pole jam and this is a big bike. You made that? I made it, I've never hit it. So like I'm still like that's on my like you know. That's a genius move right there. It is amazing how big of a difference the terrain is from where I am in Vermont and here. I feel like it shouldn't be that much different. It's just so much sandier and rockier that I take it for granted when I go back to Vermont and we have like zero rocks. Hold on let's come down there. Oh yeah. So you guys have fun. I'll see you when you're back at the house. I don't want to give you one of those for this. So Brad had a flat and had to bail out. I see you two are stubborn and take the old way. So right here this used to be a section of uh well in the spring this would be the first section to thaw out and you can barely see it but there's a little bit of a berm right there. We used to like jump into that and jump out. Got a pretty cool setup but they come through and redo the roads from time to time out here and they brush hog all the brush and so evidently the trail is no more. Oh man that would be sketchy if you come flying into this. Just remember slow down before you get here. Um I'll follow you man. Okay. You actually know it better than I do now. Yeah it's okay. Oh that is sketchy. All right so I'm before the ice. Before the ice up there. Yeah that was like that was sketchy. Yeah but that was good. Let's go to the top. We'll do one from Clevis. Clevis. Yeah I definitely struggle with my channel sometimes without motivating myself to do certain things. Are you still on your schedule? Yeah. You kind of discussed it. You're like I don't have a video to put up next week. Yeah I've been I've been doing pretty good. Yeah and like that's what was happening with my building videos is like a video or a project I was like okay building will take a week. The editing will take a week. That'll be fine. It would turn into like four weeks of building and then I'd have like so much footage that I was just so overwhelmed I didn't know how to tell the story. That's why I've kind of gone back to doing the riding stuff where it's like the start of the ride is the beginning of the video. The end of the ride is the end of the video. It's like an easy thing for my brain to process and I can repeat that. All right shall we ride? You're gonna go first. I'm gonna go first. All right have fun. Me neither. The lines on the trail have changed quite a bit. This is one of those trails where it's like hard to keep your speed. Heads up Trey. Where's the drop? Is that worth something? If you haven't seen it I'll yeah we'll go check it out. Oh wow. I mean it's a pretty good drop. Oh wow. I'm trying to think when the last time I would have hit this drop was. I was still in high school so that must have been like 2008. It's a big drop with not much landing. All right let's see how it goes. Just as good as I'm curious when the last person to hit this was. I don't crash on my bike. I crash on my feet. Just get yourself up to a roll. Yeah. Actually really smooth. All right so I just picked up my bike and I realized I didn't pick up my bike. What if you just do a trail on it? I think our weight differences would throw me off too much. Let's do double drop. All right so this is a double drop. I like this trail but they've been doing some work out here. By they I mean Doug. That thing's bucky. I'm glad I was a little far behind you. I would say halfway but I think I do land right there. Yeah oh perfect. He called me out on it. He goes you don't land down there. I'm like I've never jumped it. That's where I'm gonna land. So a line that I like off this. I guess it's kind of where you built the landing but it's a jump sideways onto this rock. Yeah that might be icy. Yeah you want me to lead? I don't know this part anymore. You know what I don't know if I've hit this on a trail bike. Oh ice ice ice. You gonna do it? Oh yeah. There's a bunch of trails over here that uh this stuff's a little bit steeper but I know my buddy Doug who was our orthodontist but he does a lot of trail steward stuff around here and he's been doing a lot of work out on jump trail. I'm really excited to check it out because he apparently revamped a trail section that I built that has been closed for like past eight years. I'm gonna go at like a I'm not trying to work too hard kind of pace but like I'm not gonna go like slow pace. Definitely starting to lose some light here. So this is the first trail I ever rode a mountain bike on. Oh my god this trail has changed shape a lot of times too. It's a lot wider than it used to be. Crazy thing is like we used to ride downhill bikes on this trail and it's not a downhill bike on a trail. I had a log come up and hit me in my shin. I got bucked crazy off something. Same. Does anyone hit that right hand berm up there? Uh every time I come out here I do but okay I've only ridden this one trail off switch. That that that that was my doing and I've hated it since. I'm not proud of it. I built this berm. I might have had help but if I'm gonna be honest it's kind of like a flow killer. I also had a hand in this line right here. Though this I don't think was here. So that section I had a big hand in but it looks a lot different now because people have touched it up and made it way better. One good thing about growing up riding these trails amongst other things you really learn how to maintain speed that's awesome that is awesome wow that's a great little addition yeah all these rocks and roots like really stunt your speed oh my god I saw your back end whip out right there oh my god no does that mean oh I guess before the video is ended I should mention that as you'll notice I'm on my sensor today so this bike has 130 mils of travel in the back 140 in the front it's a lot better for trail systems where you're not always going down really fast all right let's redeem myself on this there we go all right so that's where we're gonna leave off this video it's kind of fun taking a trip down memory what member why can't memory my mouth is very cold right now trip down memory lane there we go and uh yeah as always my name is Phil Kmetz thanks for playing bikes with me today I will see you guys next time peace