WARNING: Everybody can skip reading this except for Orie.
The triple crown is an informal ride consisting of three single-track mountain bike trails. The first trail is the 14 mile Glacier Ridge in Farmingville (LIE exit 63). The second trail is Rocky Point (LIE exit 66) which is 21 miles long and is in the town of Rocky Point. The last trail is in Middle Island (also LIE exit 66) and is called Cathedral Pines. It is an 11 mile loop.
Planning and notification for the ride is via word of mouth and the CLIMB message board (http://www.climbonline.org/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl). I expected about 20-30 people to ride. There are two ways to do the ride. You can drive from trail to trail or you can ride your bike from trail to trail. 46 miles of mountain biking is enough for me so I drove from trail to trail. Those that rode from trail to trail added about another 20 miles on the road.
The ride started at 7:30 in Glacier Ridge. I showed up my usual 10 minutes late after getting 3 hours sleep because I could not get my wife to leave a Halloween party in Coram until 1:30 AM. She was drowning her sorrows with a few bottles of wine and I was happy to oblige. I was right on time. There were about 25 people getting their bikes ready and picking out the right clothes. I went with a long sleeve shirt for the first trail. While I was getting ready a pack of about 35 mountain bikers rode into the parking lot. This was the group that was riding trail to trail. They parked at Cathedral Pines (the ending trail) and rode to Glacier Ridge en masse. I heard a couple of them whining that they really hammered it hitting speeds of 28 mph at times. That group consisted of mostly very strong riders including some of the top mtb endurance racers of Long Island and NYC. But this was just a fun ride and not a race. A few more people drifted in. We posed for a group photo. This took a little time since we were now a group of 65 mountain bikers. We broke up into two groups. The fast group and the medium chill group. This sub-renegade went with the medium chill group. We went a little slower than the usual DTC (day-time-crew) pace probably around 8 MPH. Our group was about 15 people. We did the first trail with out stopping and no mishaps. There were one or two broken chains but that did not stop our group. 14 miles done. We pulled into the parking lot for one of my favorite parts of an epic ride. The rest stop. Jackie (the head of the DTC) had a trunk full of goodies. Sodas, apples, bananas, oatmeal cookies and pretzels. Note that there is no organization supporting this ride and no fees. I had my own PB&J, some oatmeal cookies and some pretzels. Everybody rested for quite a while (20 minutes or so) and then the riders took off to ride to Rocky Point. 5 or 10 minutes later I drove to Rocky Point. We broke up into fast and medium chill groups again and started the Rocky Point trail. The pace was a little slow for me but I knew we had a lot of miles to do so I wasn't complaining. We also took a bunch of stops. One of the hills is called Shorty. It is a short steep hill with a rough surface. We were a mix of geared and single speed bikes. I did not expect us all to make it up the hill but a miracle happened and we all made it. After the last stop Jackie led the group with a very zippy pace thru the tight single track all the way to the end. I asked her what she ate at the last stop and she said she had a hammer gel and felt like a different person afterwards. We rode to where the carpoolers cars were parked for another rest stop. 21 more miles done for a stop of 35. The group was smaller now because some people went straight to Cathedral Pines and some people had to leave because of other commitments. We had another long break of close to 30 minutes. I heard some people complaining how they were hurting. The fast group was really pushing it. I had another PB&J, banana and pretzels and then we drove to Cathedral Pines. At this point I switched to s short sleeve shirt. Cathedral Pines is probably the easiest of the three trails. We had a nice cruise thru this trail. I felt pretty good after the total of 46 miles although somebody said I was walking funny. Next year I hope to ride from trail to trail. About 25 of us went to the Mill House for some beers and lunch outside on the deck. What a gorgeous day it was.
Arthur
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