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Words by Memet Ozgoren
Photos by Philip Keyes
BELMONT, MASSACHUSETTS
Riding your bike with friends on Labor Day is a kind of unofficial tradition that a lot of us in the northeast look forward to; the weather is almost always good, and it’s one of the few holidays that enough people have in common to stage a really memorable group ride. On one particular Labor Day in the early 21st Century, I was on just such a ride, having a great time, never suspecting for a moment that in ten days I would be sitting in a dentist’s chair being given the “pulp test.” You don’t want to take the “pulp test.” You don’t. Trust me.
This ride started like many do — a handful of us piled into a couple of cars and drove out to the town of Milford, Massachusetts to spend the day on a then-illicit system of trails known as “Vietnam.” Now don’t think of “Apocalypse Now” or of some steaming jungle undergrowth that requires a machete to get through; those are clichés, anyway. The Vietnam that I’m talking about is typical, glorious East Coast trail riding: twisty, gritty, rocky, rooty, and fun as hell. It’s the type of terrain that invites, and often requires, a more creative approach to picking lines than usual because a lot of the time, there simply is nothing that resembles a “line.” This was also the era in which man-made, North Shore B.C. style trail structures and features were becoming common practice outside the Pacific Northwest. In places like Lynn Woods, north of Boston and at Vietnam, ladder bridges and wooden catwalks were being built by riders to either link unconnected sections of trail or to add excitement to existing ones. Unfortunately, some of the carpentry involved was, well, sketchy. Whatever. No-one said you had to ride it.
So this Labor Day was turning out to be a real gem. Blue skies, no mechanical failures, and we were having a ball, splitting our time between riding prime singletrack and navigating improvised wooden structures that looked like they were built by Ewoks on a Nyquil bender. Good times. But at one point, the trail we were riding opened up onto a rock garden that was probably forty or so feet long, nearly half as wide, and funneled in by dense trees on either side. The rocks themselves were a broken and jagged wheel-trapping nightmare– no way to “ride” across. The solution to this was a ladder bridge about a foot wide made of found wood that shot up six feet from the forest floor and cut between two trees that were so close together that you had to shimmy the bars and shrug to get between them. Once you were past the trees, you had to start pedaling right away because the ramp up robbed you of all your momentum, then cross over the rocks, and then, roll down the ramp on the other side. Because I’m a naturally cautious, look-before-you-leap type, I scoped out the bridge and calculated the risk first. Since I had spent the last three years doing almost nothing except riding trials (not trails) I figured that if I could ride a bike onto and over a pickup truck, I could sure as shootin’ ride a bike across a piece of wood a whole foot wide. So I went for it. I hit the bottom of the ramp with just enough speed to get up the ramp and between the trees. All I had to do now was peck my pedal forward and get the bike moving again. But then the thing you don’t ever calculate happened. My back tire just spun in place and all my weight went into my front foot, pitching me over the side of the bike and into space. I remember thinking on the way down that I could probably work it out — that it was just a matter of landing the right way. If I could get my arms out in front of me and roll when it hit, I’d be allright. But the bridge was high enough for me to get completely inverted and the rock that I was directly over was roughly pyramid-shaped, so that when I landed, my hands came down on the base of the pyramid and I took the peak of it straight in the teeth.
Now, there are a number of sensations that most people will never experience. Feeling shards of enamel floating around in a pool of blood that’s collected in your mouth is one of them. Another is the “pulp test.” A dentist will give you a “pulp test” in order to determine whether or not the nerve of a damaged tooth is still alive. In my case this involved a very long Q-tip whose fuzzy end had been sprayed with an aerosol resembling Freon which dropped its temperature to something like that of ice. The really exquisitely fun part of this was that the dentist decided to first test some unaffected teeth, and then to my surprise, jam the interrogation device into one of my half-teeth that already ached with pain if I just inhaled too sharply. This is where words fail. Imagine breaking a spoke on your bike, stashing the sharper half in your freezer for about twenty years until it’s good and cold, and then having a total stranger hammer it upwards through your gums and into your cerebral cortex when you least expect it. It’s a little like that.
However, this is a success story. For nearly two weeks after that crash, the idea of riding a bike in the woods was terrifying. I was shook. But after a while, I realized how lucky I was. I could still walk despite a fall that could have easily snapped my skinny neck. To sit around watching TV and not actually live life doing what I loved would have been shameful — a total waste. I started to crave all the simple things in life that one doesn’t always keep in the front of your mind, but should. I also started to long for riding, but now, the fog was off the lenses. When I started riding again I was still spooked, but everything was more vivid — ultra high-definition with stereo surround sound real. It was better than before.
On that Labor Day in Vietnam, we were poachers on trails that were in constant danger of being closed off by property owners and land managers. A year later, the New England Mountain Bike Association (NEMBA) raised nearly a quarter of a million dollars and purchased the land. Since then Vietnam has been a mountain biker’s paradise. The trails are beautifully groomed, marked, and maintained. Every dropoff and chute and kicker is built the right way. I was more than happy to contribute to the NEMBA efforts, not just because I love riding those trails, but because it was also a symbolic way of reclaiming a space that almost took me out of the game for good. I like to think that the money I donated to NEMBA bought me a little piece of Vietnam, perhaps one pyramid-shaped rock in particular.
