By Harold Hatch and Nina Siegel
The CRW CLASSICS Ride Series 2025
Building on the success of our Classics kickoff featuring Lindy King’s “Hills are Your Friends,” we’re featuring our second ride in the series, Bob Zogg’s “Brake for Beavers”, which will be run on June 1 starting in Chelmsford, MA.
As a reminder, this ride series is meant to highlight some of the “best of the best” routes that have been created by CRW Route Developers/Ride Leaders over the club’s nearly 60-year history. Familiar to long-time club members, some routes have been running annually since 1999, while others haven’t been offered recently. This season we are focusing on rides that feature 3 or more routes. With beautiful roads, multiple speed and distance options, including a welcoming 10-12 mph pace, these routes offer something for everyone in CRW, new and long-time members alike.
Be on the lookout for upcoming WheelPeople articles featuring the Route Developer and/or Ride Leader and what it is about their ride that makes it special to the club. You’ll find notifications in ChainLink and club social media channels when the rides are posted on the Events Calendar. Please join us as we celebrate what our Club has to offer in its long history of riding.
AND NOW – OUR SECOND CLASSIC FEATURE!
Harold Hatch, Nina Siegel, and John O'Dowd are leading Brake for Beavers on June 1, 2025 out of Chelmsford, MA.
Brake for Beavers was originally developed in 2010 by Bob Zogg who was looking for some fresh terrain while maintaining a start location that was within reasonable driving distance for most CRW members. Google Maps helped Bob a lot, along with scouting missions to see if the route was interesting, reasonably safe, and could accommodate adequate snack/watering stops. He noticed that the ride passed an old beaver lodge at one point, hence the ride’s name.
Fast forward to 2021. Harold Hatch, a relatively new member to CRW, had spent several years exploring the roads of New England using CRW’s route library as a guide. Much like Bob, Harold was looking for new routes that might appeal to CRW members within a reasonable distance from the usual starting locations. With a bit of internet sleuthing, he found an old CRW ride posting for Brake for Beavers claiming it was voted “best new ride of 2010”. Having never seen this ride on the calendar, he was curious.
The route follows mostly back roads, is reasonably flat with the exception of a few challenging climbs, notably the hill going into Hollis in particular will get your legs burning! As Bob mentioned, there are many good rest stop options, first in Hollis (Buckley’s is a must stop if you’ve never been) followed by the store in Market Square, which has a pretty decent slice of pizza, and the ice cream stand at the end is a must on a hot summer day.
After rediscovering the route, Harold posted on the CRW calendar, not sure who would show up for a ride a bit far from the usual routes around the I-95 area. There was a surprisingly good turnout, with lots of great feedback on the route. One person even mentioned that years ago there was quite a beaver problem in the area and speculated that could be part of the reason for the ride’s name. However, with all the development over the years nearly all the beaver habitat along the route is now gone. Sadly, as far as we know, there have been no beaver sightings on this route in recent years.
After the initial success, John O’Dowd joined to lead the medium route 2022, and Nina Siegel started leading the short route in 2024, and we continue to get a great turnout each year. This route inspired the idea for the CRW classic series, where we hope to continue to highlight some of the great routes that either have been long-time traditions, or like Brake for Beavers, have been rediscovered as “hidden gems”.
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Ride a Classic route or two this season and find out exactly why they are such enduring Club rides. Explore new territory, scenic views, and the best snack stops all while riding with great people the way you like to ride.
Some of the exciting upcoming routes include:
- Blue Moon – Barry & Linda Nelson – July 6
- Northern Light(house) Tour – Renee LeVerrrier & Andy Meyer (Route Developers) Nina Siegel (Ride Leader) – September 7
- Bagels and a Witch – Melinda Lyon – October 26
Check out the CRW Ride Calendar and choose your next ride – which will become your Classic?
If you would like to have one of your routes featured as a CRW Classic please reach out to either Nina (ninasiegel7@gmail.com) or Harold (haroldhatch@yahoo.com).
Let’s Ride!
