About Us

History

In October of 1995, Chuck Joyce posted a request for riders in the rec.offroad newsgroup. John Methot and John Bruder responded. After they rode for awhile, Jeff Neuman stumbled across Chuck's mountain bike page and started riding with them. A fellow employee of John Methot, Alex Knowles, joined on in August of 96 and John had the idea of creating a email list to make it easier to schedule rides. Since then many more people have signed up, and the list now has over 750 subscribers going into its 9th season.

Philosophy

Some poetry (are we cultured or what?) from the Dylan Thomas poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night".

We love to ride and have fun, but we don't like to be anal about it! There is NOTHING structured about our group. If you join you don't have to attend any regular meetings (we don't have any), you don't have to do any charity work, and you won't ever be harassed to pay a membership fee, you can just ride (or not ride) when you feel like it.

Whenever someone wants to ride they just send an email message to the rage list. Other riders respond to the emails and that is how rides are started. From experience we tend to organize about 3-4 rides per week during the spring and summer months and 1-2 per week during the off-season. Many of these rides are at night (especially in the off season).

Usually we ride in Middlesex Fells and Lynn Woods, but sometimes we will venture to new places. Other events are sometimes scheduled through Rage, such as camping trips, snowboarding, races or a get together for a few beers.

There are no requirements for membership, except that you are cool and like to ride (we don't want uptight people, if you want to wear flashy clothes and act like you are God's gift to mountain biking then join some other club, or come along and prepare to be ridiculed). The ability level of our riders varies considerably from very good to piss poor. Rides have been put together for all levels. If you sign up to Rage and don't like the rides, then post your own rides to your liking. That's the best thing about Rage, ride the way you want and meet some other riders while doing it. Also if you aren't a strong rider, but want to be then go on rides with the better riders and learn from them. Even if you have never ridden before, we don't care. We don't even mind if you prefer to walk down tough terrain (as shown below), so don't be afraid to join up.

The only problem with a club this laid-back is that no one goes out of their way to help new members get started. So if you want to ride with Rage, it is really up to you to make an effort to join some of our events--or to post your own events to Rage.

Rage typically does not get involved with the politics of mountain biking around New England. Rage does not organize trail maintenance days, does not lobby for better access or try and save riding areas. This does not mean that we do not whole heartedly support these actions, but there are already very well organized groups to do this. If you are interested in trail maintenance and protecting the rights of mountain bikers, you can join NEMBA. Many of the ragers are also members of NEMBA.

Other Rage Groups

As the word of spreads around the country, we meet people who wish they had a similar club near them - look carefully you may already have one, or at least with an email list and possibly a website you could help unite the riders in your area.

Mainiacs Rage on Maine - Raging in Portland

Rage Sur Quebec - Rage goes international

Rage on New Hampshire - The Rage family continues to expand

Rage on Waterville - Raging in central Maine