In search of the unpaved - Mass Central Rail Trail

Rail trails - a side effect of America's defunct railway system. Now, a great way of building long-range recreational trails on a budget. Some cyclists love them, others - not so much. Yes, they can be boring. They are built in place of former railway after all, which means they are flat and often with long, straight sections. I actually don't mind rail trails as long as (1) they remain unpaved and (2) scenery along the trail changes frequently.

This weekend I decided to give rail trails another try and visit Mass Central Rail Trail (MCRT) between Rutland and Templeton. It's over an hour drive from Boston Metro Area so getting there by bike from your door step is probably not an option, unless you happen to have a lot of time. My main motivation was to give my new bike a spin over a longer, unpaved section and see how it rides in rougher terrain. The planned route was 70km (44mi) long and more importantly 85% unpaved and that should give me a good feeling of how the new bike handles.

The route. Red sections are unpaved. Blue are paved.

I started at a small parking lot just at the trail head on Glenwood Rd in Rutland. It was raining heavily the previous night and as such, morning was soggy and foggy. I moved quickly along the trail, which along its southern section between Glenwood Rd and Rt122 resembles an unpaved cycling highway. It's graded well, smooth and overall very "civilized". I met a few joggers and dog walkers on the way, likely due to proximity of Rutland.

But if you think that the full length of trail is going to be that easy, you would be mistaken. Once you cross Old Worcester Rd and enter the trail section running straight north, conditions change quite a bit. Clearly, this part of MCRT is used mainly by snowmobiles in winter as it remains much more wild, muddy, rough and... empty. During the next 20km (12mi) all the way to Templeton I didn't see anyone on the trail. Or maybe it was the foggy weather that scared locals off?

Once I got to Covered Bridge Rd I went off the route for just moment to find out whether the bridge was still there. A look at Google Maps a day earlier told me that it likely wasn't going to be the case and I would need to find a different route on the way back. Unfortunately, Google Maps was right. The old covered bridge was missing, as well as another bridge at Lackey Lane, just a bit further north. At this point I knew I would have to stick to Plan B and go Granger Rd on the way back.

The rest of the ride to Templeton was uneventful - just a few more miles along the mostly straight and very flat trail. Since, as I mentioned earlier, this part of the MCRT is more wild, I had to cross several muddy sections and some with pretty deep sand. Rolling on 2.2" wide tires certainly helped a lot. I would had to fight it really hard, had I been there on my old bike with "skinny" 35mm tires.

Crossing Burnshirt River. Seriously, who came up with that name?

Once I got to Templeton it got warmer, sun was coming out and for a moment I thought that it would get hot. But the next section was a mad downhill ride on Rt101, which quickly reminded me it wasn't the right time yet to take the jacket off.

The next section of the route ran along Williamsville Rd, which is unpaved but starts as a very hard packed, smooth street, only to turn into a muddy forest fire road later on.

The real fun starts a bit later though, once you enter Gilbert Rd and then Granger Rd. Both are rocky, rough, with some steep sections. In other words - perfect testing ground for my "mountain road bike".

Granger Road in late morning sun.

The rest of the ride was just a fairly typical mix of short paved sections, wide forest fire roads, some rough double-tracks and a few rocky paths. Exactly after 4 hours on the bike I was back at my car and now I think I would need to pay a few more visits to western Massachusetts pretty soon.

Tech talk: The newest tech that you do(n't) need

Just to give you a warning - this will be a part about some recent bike tech with lots of "my opinion" and "what if" scenarios.

Ah, the ever-changing bicycle tech. Manufacturers who always try to sell us the best and the newest certainly keep us entertained. And since "best" is the worst enemy of "good" - this process will never stop, for sure.

There is a lot going on in bike industry but since I'm mainly interested in, let's call it - mixed terrain riding, I'm going to focus on news from the rapidly growing "gravel" bikes market.

So let's start with the elephant in the room - suspension. Technically, your road bike doesn't need suspension. If you ride on rougher roads and you think you need suspension - just put much wider tires on your bike and be done with it. But since there are some people who believe that riding on unpaved roads on a non-suspended bicycle is not adequate in 2018, we will see more inventions such as this most recent one from Niner Bikes.

Full suspension for gravel riding? Niner thinks it's the thing (Source: bikerumor.com)

This new "mountain road bike" is actually nothing new. It's nearly a cross-country mountain bike with a bit slimmer tires and drop bars. And less travel, as it seems that it doesn't offer more than 30-40mm of fork travel, which actually is appropriate for typical gravel roads. Just by looking at it you clearly get this uneasy feeling - "Is it still a road bike?" Sure it is. The same way your cross-country MTB is a road bike too.

But something tells me a suspended "gravel" bike could've been done a bit... better. Ideally, I would like to see the old Cannondale Headshok fork reused here. It seems perfectly suited for this application. The Headshok used one damper, located inside the steerer tube with regular-looking fork blades. The steerer was sliding inside head tube on 4 long linear bearings and thanks to this design, everything was tight and stiff. Travel was somewhat limited, perhaps which is why Cannondale abandoned this tech later on and moved to Lefty forks in their mountain bikes and then also in Slate allroad/gravel bikes.

Actually, Cannondale used to make a Headshok road fork back in 1997. (Source: http://vintagecannondale.com)

Now, in the era of allroad bikes, Headshok could have its comeback for those who think they need suspension. It could be built using lightweight carbon blades and limited to 30-40mm of travel with air damper inside. Also, major advantages of Headshok over Lefty are that it can use standard wheel hubs, allows for easy wheel removal for transport and since it comes with two symmetrical fork blades, you can picture putting some bottle cage mounts on it - something many would appreciate. Why Cannondale decided to promote Lefty for their Slate line and not revisit Headshok is something I can't understand.

Canyon Hover Bars (Source: bikerumor.com)

Anyway, the search for perfect vibration damping solution continues. If it's not the suspension, then maybe compliant handlebars, like these from Canyon? These weird "biplane bars" are supposed to be the answer to unwanted vibrations on unpaved roads - but only if you spend most of your time with hands on flats, which we usually don't. Most cyclists use hoods or drops and these remain much less damped in Canyon bars. Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Canyon's main motivation was simply to hide the fact that their bikes have too short head tube and too low stack?

Now let's move on to gearing - one of my biggest issues with modern allroad bikes. Many "gravel" bikes come with a compact double - a crankset with 50/34T chainring combo. These cranksets are simply borrowed from road bikes because, well... there isn't anything else available (or at least still very little). This may explain a sudden popularity of 1x drivetrains in allroad bikes but fortunately, doubles are not gone. Some manufacturers started to notice that a 50T chainring is ridiculously large and barely usable on unpaved roads and offered "subcompact" cranksets with 48/32T combinations (or similar).

Easton "gravel" crankset (Source: theradavist.com)

The most recent example comes from Easton and while it's very commendable of them to offer "gravel" combos down to 46/30T, I still feel that's not revolutionary enough. These cranks definitely bring gearing range down towards what the usual mortal need, as very few of us would be able to spin that "compact" 50T-11T gear on unpaved roads. But it still leaves some to be desired, mainly even lower-geared "road" cranksets such as 44/28T or even 42/26T. I would love to see it becoming the new road bike standard, as few cyclists are racers and need higher gears. But maybe I'm biased, since 42/26T is exactly what I use on my "road" bike.

Let's stay at the gearing for a moment but this time we will look at what's going on at the rear wheel. For many years cassettes have been growing wider, with more gears being added. From 5 to 6 to 7 to 8, then finally 11 speed clusters. Now, we can begin to enjoy 12 speed cassettes thanks to the newest offering form Campagnolo. 

Twelve speeds have arrived to road (Source: bikerumor.com)

Unlike SRAM, Campagnolo believes that despite having 12 speeds available, road cycling isn't ready to abandon front derailleurs and therefore, the new Super Record groupset is designed as 2x12. At this point you obviously wonder "where is the limit of it?" How many more sprockets are we going to cramp onto the rear wheel and how many do we actually need? There are those who believe that the best drivetrains were those 3x8 or even 3x6 ones. I'm not one of them, but I think that more is not necessary better. There is a clear improvement in shifting precision (at least in Shimano groupsets) when moving from 2x10 to 2x11. Narrower chains and gaps between cassette sprockets require more precise shifters and rear derailleurs, which results in crispier, faster shifting. That's nice. What's less nice is the increased asymmetry of spoke tension in the rear wheel. Will we see wider road rear hubs in the future? Possibly.

Now we are waiting for Shimano and SRAM's response. I'm actually particularly curious about the latter one. Their 1x12 speed Eagle MTB group gained popularity so a 1x12 speed road groupset would be a natural consequence. I just hope that the "Road Eagle" cassette isn't going to be a carbon-copy it the existing MTB Eagle one. On road (paved or not), we really don't need 10-50T range. I would much rather see something like 10-44T. With 12 speeds, some of the larger jumps between gears in SRAM's existing 10-42T cassettes would be reduced and we could have a winner.

So now when we already decided that we don't need suspension, bi-plane bars, compact cranksets or 12 speeds (just kidding), we can look at one silly gadget that marketers think we should buy - tire pressure monitors. Seriously, if you ride your bike and constantly worry that you run on wrong tire pressure (like you really don't have anything else to worry about) then you need this gizmo from Quarq. Tirewiz lets you check tire pressure on the fly, with your smartphone. Because in this all-connected world, even your tires need Bluetooth. Right.

Quarq Tirewiz - because you really, really need to be able to answer the question "What pressure you running?" (Source: bikerumor.com)

So is there too much of it? Too much tech to deal with? Not necessarily. The great thing about bicycles is that you can have a high-tech, all-electronic, network-connected road superbike, or a simple, purely mechanical singlespeed bike. Nobody forces you into buying the latest and newest.

Beaconize it?

This is old news but last month a woman was killed by an autonomous Uber vehicle while crossing the road. This was the first death on American roads caused by autonomous vehicle and media reaction was bi-fold:

1. AVs are not ready - indicating that autonomous vehicle technology is not matured enough for widespread launch on our roads.
2. Victim blaming - claiming that it was victim's fault and she should've "watch were she was going", "wear reflective clothing" or something else like it.

As you can likely guess, I'm in the first camp and I think that while AVs are promising and could help solving some of the problems we're having currently on American roads (such as speeding, driving on red or DUI), they are not perfect and certainly not THE solution. 

First, they don't change road use density, still likely carrying only 1 person per vehicle. Next, since you can essentially work inside your AV and not pay attention to road, these vehicles could lead to even larger urban sprawl. Commuting 2hrs to work may not be that bad after all, right?

But I'm also worried about some ideas that came out days after this crash from the camp #2. Mainly, one of them - to require cyclists to wear RFID beacons and thus make them more visible to AV's sensors.

Certainly, small radio beacons installed on moving objects such as bicyclists could make AVs much more aware of its surroundings but it seems like a band-aid solution to what was supposed to be a well-tested technology. What would be the next step then? To put beacons on pedestrians? Dogs?

There is also another very good reason why beacons are a very bad idea. They will serve as a convenient excuse to a kill. In case of a deadly crash media would be reporting it as usual:

"A deadly accident in Boston this morning. Car crashed into bicyclist killing him on site."

But instead of adding "Cyclist was not wearing a helmet" we will hear "Cyclist was not wearing a beacon". Victim blaming of the XXI century.

Finally, there is this one last thing we tend to give up very easily - privacy. This week, Mr. Sugarhill was testifying in front of Congress to explain why his massive surveillance project called Facebook does exactly what it was designed for.

Radio beacons on cyclists could be used for pretty much the same thing - surveillance. For many of you, this would be non-issue. "I have nothing to hide" - you will say. But I keep thinking that bicycles have always been those "free-range vehicles", requiring little resources, taking you to remote places, moving efficiently and quietly while keeping you connected to nature. And being free-range, I wouldn't want any electronics to monitor me on my bike (even though my cell phone technically already does that). Americans love freedom. They shouldn't love beacons.

Having said that, it's a warm day today. The first one this spring (and it's mid April!). Time for a bike ride!

No AVs here. And no beacons needed.