It has everything you need, it looks cool and it has good components for the money. New ones are $300 (I just bought a second one for my other son). Above $300 is too much bike for a kid, below it is dept store level. Best bike store that I know of is Milford Bike off Rt. 16 in Milford (MA). Very nice people, everyone I know is happy with them.  I don’t take spending $300 lightly, but I figured they can keep the bike through college and when out on semi-tough rides, they don’t have to worry about breakage. It’s like driving a Honda.

My view on bikes – don’t spend any money at all on a good bike until they move into a 26″ tire size one. They grow too fast and at a young age, they are reckless. Stay on the 24″ tire size bike until your child can handle a 26″ tire size bike with a 15 or 16″ frame. Don’t get a 26″ tire size bike with a 13″ frame, they’ll grow out of that. Age 10-11 is approximately the time they can move up.

Always carry an emergency kit that includes spare tube, pump, allen wrenches, an adjustable wrench, screwdriver, some wire, tape, patches, bandaids, and a chain repair tool. Put in a small seat bag. Makes for a worthwhile birthday or Christmas present.

See a tricked out version after the jump:

Here is a map of the local rail trail in Milford. It is meant to form a large loop through the surrounding towns. That will be a nice ride someday. rail-trail.ppt

If you are interested in mountain biking, a good place to start is: http://www.nemba.org/ridingzone/places.html

This is the trail section of the New England Mountain Biking Assoc. These guys do quite a lot to promote MB activity. They purchased 47 acres of property near our town and created one of the premier single track rides in the northeast – Vietnam.

Here is a link for the info available on that area: http://www.nemba.org/Articles/Vietnam/NEMBAsVietnamProperty.html

Located off 495 at the Rt. 85 exit, it is great ride for a number of reasons – it’s challenging, well maintain & planned, it’s diverse, it’s meant to be ridden, and it is easy to get to.

What I also like that many people don’t know about is the ride across the street from this area. I’ll call it the Wildcat Pond area. I’ve attached a few topo maps for reference, but what you do is take the obvious trailhead into this area, maybe with compass or map in hand. Back here you’ll discover a number of old rock quarries. Some show signs of teenage abuse, but they are really quite interesting to search out and find. You can also pedal to Echo Lake, the source of the Charles River.

These trails eventually come out on Lumber St. and Granite St. in Hopkinton. Another connected ride is to take the trails from Vietnam into the College Rock area. (Where we often start to enter the Vietnam area). College Rock is a beginner rock climbing opportunity if you want to do that with your troop. Right in front of the rock is a Kiosk built as an eagle scout project.

I’ve attached maps of College Rock, Echo Lake, Wilcat Pond, and Vietnam. The Vietnam map is a bit useless except just to get a generally sense of the trail flow. NEMBA does not have a better map. The trails aren’t really marked so it won’t do too much good anyway. Furthermore, the sound of 495 always gives you a sense of SW. The topo maps attached show some trails, but there are a lot more trails out there. I used these to create maps of all the trails but I never transposed back to electronic format after surveying the area.

bikemap1.ppt

Another idea for a local quality mountain bike ride is to go over to Blue Hills Reservation, just south of Boston. Blue Hills has some nice single track routes and it is also loaded with geocaches. Views from the top of the hill are very cool. Stay over at BSA’s Camp Sayre right on the reservation. A nice low logistics, action filled campout.  Another benefit is the Minuteman Council Egan Rec center is right at Camp Sayre and it has a pool. If this gets you excited, call ahead to make sure the pool heaters are working. When we went, the water was freezing. Here is a map of camp of Camp Sayre as well as a mountain biking discussion from ragemtb.com:

campsayre.pdf

blue-hills.doc

photo credit:New England Mountain Biking Association

www.mapadventures.com 

(I bought my copy at EMS)

There are dozens of hiking books available and it is easy to get overwhelmed with information. If you want to pick one, I recommend Jarad Gange’s 100 Classic Hikes of the Northeast. I have the older version and have found it to be a great resource to explain hikes to people and get ideas for hikes that don’t just pop into my head.

This is probably one of the best sites for map reading I have ever seen. Lots of downloadable powerpoints. The author also covers the use of the military compass (brings back old memories).

Scouting in my view does not adequately cover land navigation and compass work. Some time ago it was decided that scouting would cover orienteering, not map & compass. There is a distinct difference.  Orienteering is more map/terrain reading oriented. Orienteering itself is a spirited game where the objective is to get to relatively close control markers as fast as possible (compass work is not a big part of it). Orienteering is a lot of fun and there is challenge and map work involved, so I understand the switch. Furthermore, there really is very little time to cover map & compass in much more detail and by in large, most scouts don’t go out on remote, off trail, wilderness backcountry excursions. Those few that do have acquired these skills somehow. I’d like to see kids really learn about declination diagrams and the use of the protractor to develop azimuths and plot coordinates. Frankly, I think most scouts want to be better at compass use then they are. 

 http://landnavigation.org/

I had posted this previously – I will keep it up as it covers the more familar plastic compass. This is not mine, it came from someplace on the web. It is a start but not that good (yet). Take it and run with it if it helps. Send me back an improved version. I’m sure others can use.

map-and-compass.ppt

Here’s a helpful doc from the Purdue Outing Club:

orienteer.doc