Perhaps you've heard about the high gas prices? I honestly wasn't paying much attention until I filled up the gas tank and the number on the credit card slip started with a 4. The actual cost isn't much of an issue for us - we share one fairly small car and only drive to work 16 miles round trip an average of two days a week. The grocery store is only a few miles away and most of the rest of our driving is optional - mostly driving our bikes places. But it's the principle of it that makes me want to drive less. I don't want the oil companies to have my money. I'd rather give it to the MBTA or the bike shop.

In that spirit, we've been checking out places to mountain bike that don't require driving. With a little intraweb research and map studying, we've already found a couple of new places. These are little patches of conservation and town-managed land that aren't worth driving to, but they're easy to link up with just a few miles of road. Two weekends ago, we scoped out a spot to the north we've been hearing about. We headed west, through a couple of local conservation areas and worked our way northwest to a larger parcel (Bedford), road rode for a few miles - with a few stops for map checking - until we found the right spot.

It took us a few hours of slow riding and backtracking, but I think we managed to find all the good stuff. After we decided we had seen everything, it took us 15 minutes to find out way out. It wasn't as small as we thought... Another couple of miles of road would have taken us to some other small parcels or the Fells, but it was already after 6pm and I was ready for dinner. 

Last weekend, we added a new twist to our beloved route out to Acton and Carlisle and back. We rode three miles to Waverly, took the train out to Littleton, rode some Littleton conservation parcels between the train station and Acton, then hooked in with our usual route. The trails in Littleton were awesome - they're not MTB trails, but you wouldn't know it. They flowed well and had enough interesting technical bits to keep things interesting, but no real hike-a-bike.

This route required extra time to get out there, but it was totally worth it to eliminate the out-and-back from Estabrook to Spring Hill and the incredibly boring railroad bed from Estabrook to Bedford. The original plan was to hook into the Bedford trails and return from the north, but my brake hose disengaged itself from the lever on the way back through Estabrook, so we headed straight home, but we still logged 50 miles. My next mission is to check out the trails at Horn pond and the Brook Estate. They're easy to get to after work. I just have to accept a little backtracking and aimless wandering for a few hours. Then we can loop the first ride to the North (I'm not sure that the trail building elves want to advertise the actual location) with Whipple Hill and Mt Gilboa and end up a few blocks from the house.