Location: Ride Headquarters in Sherborn, MA
Ride Type: Mixed Terrain
Time & Date: Starting January 13, every other Saturday January-March, varying roll-out times.
Distance: Varying distances & routes chosen are weather-dependent
Price: Free
March 24 UPDATE: We will be riding all PAVED ROADS and not trails due to warm temps and soft, snowy/messy, hard-to-ride trails. The road route is 46 miles in length.
See complete details on the Road Ride page.
Description: The Burning Snowflake series of rides take cyclists all over the trails of Sherborn and far beyond. The routes include paved roads to trails, dirt roads, grassy areas, and other places off the beaten path. Depending upon the week and weather & trail conditions, the distance and paces offered will vary so there are a lot of great riding options.
One of the special features of the Burning Snowflake Series is food! We serve hot food prior to the ride and again after the ride returns. Each ride we have something a little different. We accommodate dietary restrictions.
Schedule
Note route distance options, pace information and further details will be posted soon for each of the rides in the series.
DONE - Saturday, January 27 - Rolllout is at 12pm. Show up between 11am and 11:45am for pre-ride food!
DONE - Saturday, January 27: the Burning Snowflake ROAD ride
DONE - Saturday, February 10 - Rollout is at 12pm. Show up between 11am and 11:45am for pre-ride food!
DONE - Saturday, February 24 - Rollout is at 11:45am. Show up between 11am and 11:30am for pre-ride food! We are merging this ride with the Burning Snowflake ROAD ride
DONE - Saturday, March 10 - We are offering a normal 36-mile ROAD RIDE. We're POSTPONING the Burning Snowflake series and running it next Saturday, March 17 instead. For this ride, fenders are required. The rollout is at 11am, we have a ride leader for a 16-17mph ride pace.
Saturday, March 24: the Burning Snowflake ROAD ride
Route: See the road ride page for route and details of the ride.
Ride Notes: We have a designated Ride Headquarters ride leader leading the ride and pointing out turns.
Last Minute Information: Watch our Twitter feed shown on the right side of our home page for last-minute updates, weather cancellations or other changes.
Estimated time: 2-4 hours typically, varies depending on route length, amount of trails versus roads, weather and trail conditions.
Contact Information: Email - connect@rideheadquarters.com, Phone - 508-975-4678
Riding Rules, What to Bring, How Our Rides are Different: All riders are required to read and are expected to abide by These Rules.
Waiver: Ride Headquarters requires a signed waiver before your first ride. Please fill it out online prior to your first ride.
Proper Bike for this ride:
32c knobby tires minimum. Wider tires are nice, too. Tire choice depends on your riding skill set.
Clipless pedals and shoes. These are important elements of bike control. If you ride with platform pedals you’re likely to be over your head in some of the more technical parts of the ride.
A bike that’s in safe working order. We don’t stop for preventable mechanical issues.
Higher tire pressure than you’d ride on a cyclocross ride. We recommend about 80% to 90% of maximum rated tire pressure, for two reasons:
First, we want to minimize flats on the ride; waiting for someone to change flats is not why we ride. We typically see zero flats on our ride. One of the primary reasons for this is due to higher than average tire pressure.
Second, on average, about 30% of the ride is on pavement; having slightly higher pressure makes the road sections go by faster.
We do not recommend fenders since sticks and twigs can get caught in them.
How do we decide if we’re riding? Keep reading. If conditions aren't conducive to riding, we'll substitute in an indoor activity such as a bike maintenance clinic or informative talk on a relevant cycling subject.
Thunder storms: If there’s a 33% or greater chance of a thunder storm at the ride start time, we don’t ride. It is not safe to get caught out in a thunder storm.
Rain or sleet: There are a few variants of this. We don’t ride sensitive trails when they’re wet; this can cause damage that’s not repairable. Fortunately, we have some rain-friendly routes that don’t damage sensitive trails.
If it’s raining at the start of the ride we probably cancel the ride. If it’s only threatening rain, we ride.
If it’s misting or drizzling at the start of the ride, with less than 50% chance of rain in the coming hour, we ride.
If it’s been raining a lot for a couple days, but not raining the night before, we ride. Our rain-friendly routes avoid sensitive trails. Of course, every few years there’s such a bad storm that we won’t ride; we take the force majeure very seriously.
Snowing: We ride; it is so much fun to ride during a snow storm.
Snow on the ground: We ride. It doesn’t matter if there’s 1 inch or four feet, we ride. We recommend studded tires or fat bikes for these kinds of conditions. The only exclusion to snow riding is when there is a state of emergency and we’ve been asked to stay off the road.
Icy conditions: We ride. For this you have to have studded tires in order to ride with us.
Cold: It doesn’t matter what the temperature is, we ride.
If you'd like us to do any work on your bike prior to the ride, please email us the day before so we're ready to do the work as soon as you come in; we want you to be ready to roll before the ride starts.
