Originally Posted by
rholland1951
DBrim, Bishbike, funny you should mention Lynn Shore Drive and Nahant. That's just where I rode yesterday,
42 miles through Arlington, Medford, Malden, Revere, Saugus, Lynn, and Nahant, consuming 4+ bottles of water as I went. The route was a mix of roads and trails, taking advantage of the Northern Strand Community Trail through Malden and Saugus, along with a bit of single track in Revere, and the paths along the Lynn Shore Reservation and Nahant Beach Reservation. The ride was motivated by the weather forecast: the predicted high on the North Shore coastline was ~10 degrees cooler than it was in Arlington or points West. But to get there, I had to first plunge a little deeper into the urban heat island. As usual, time constraints played a role in route selection: the original theory of the ride involved Route 127 North of Marblehead, but an emergent chore--cleaning up after a catastrophic spill of a half gallon of laundry detergent in the trunk of my car--kept me busy until after 2, so a ride to Nahant became Plan B.
Stopped for commuter rail trains in West Medford, coming and going. Turns out there's a working flagman at that crossing.
That intersection is less than a mile from my house; it's funny to see it as part of a trip report. It can be a mess to turn left there with the angled tracks in the middle of it and no stop signs, but cars are generally gracious about letting people across. The flagger is required so that they can not sound the train horns through the crossing, and possibly for other safety reasons -- I see them having to chastise pedestrians who try to skirt the barriers when they're down on a regular basis. That's the Lowell line going past, and the Downeaster heads through as well, though without stopping.