Road Trip! T&R's Ubersweet MTB Adventure - East Coast Edition - Day 2 Coaticook

Got up early to avoid all the finger wagging from the local campers…witnessed a RV go by leaving with a 3 series BMW on a trailer behind it, not that I like Beamers but that’s just excessive. Got on the road and then stopped abruptly as we were in serious need of more coffee. Drove to Coaticook and went to Foyer du Sport which gave us the 411 on trail riding… you can either do 45 kms of boring doubletrack or you can go here... We clearly chose the latter. Started off missing the first sign…ended up doing some really muddy double track…good warm up. The rocket ron’s hooked up like no ones business…this also would be a recurring theme for the week. If you don’t have Rocket Rons by Schwalbe, you should. We both rocked the 2.25s and they never let us down. The rolled nice and had amazing traction in all conditions. The trails of Coaticook Gorge were, once we found them, really good. They were flowy and technical with an extra healthy dose of elevation. They were far and away better than Bromont. There were some dodgy downs and skiddish ups and everything in between…we also realized about 4km in that they flow a lot better if you ride them in the direction intended! Go figure.

Coaticook Gorge gets 2 thumbs up way up and after a little bike wash it was time to get the heck outta Quebec!

Quote of the day: "Rocket Ron's, I love you!"

Took off to East Burke…border crossing agent was real nice and quite how you say “rural”. Thankfully he let us keep the bananas and come into Vermont. The country side was gorgeous however the road appeared to be quite neglected as the american's are trying to deter the Quebecors from coming down I'm sure. Stopped in at Brighton State Park which would be our home for the next couple nights.

Very friendly gate keeper who set us up with a nice waterfront site, some firewood and let us know that we better obey the speed limit or face certain eviction. We joked with her that 15 mph was definitely doable and explained that the last park was an asinine 8 kph which is 5 mph in American which even she agreed to as being ludicrous. Set up camp and headed off to East Burke to get the lowdown on the local scene.

It being a Monday night there wasn’t much in the way of life in this thriving metropolis…there isn’t even a population sign on the way in as I don’t think there were enough people to cover the cost to put one up. But they have a good bike shop and even a well staffed trail center. We had the guy at the bike shop lay out a route for us for a good long ride that allowed us to hit all the must ride trails.

Dinner was at this dodgy little hole, the pasta was ok and the local brew went down easy and as it was Monday it was the only choice in town to eat at. We survived. So far we had seen rain everyday at least twice and we were sure today would be no exception. Due to all the inclement weather (RAIN) they had gotten the upper mountain trails were closed…which was okay by us as that is mostly FR and DH stuff and not what we came for. Lit up a fire with the firewood we smuggled in from Quebec…although it was more like glued compressed sawdust but it burned real hot and had good staying power and started very well with camp fuel. Like much of the week we just shot the shit, cracked jokes about what we had done or seen happen that day or reminisced about that summer of 2005.