I see the Mass Bike website has been updated to include the ride announcement for July 27th. They said a press release would follow with registration information.

Marc

Due to a grand daughter's wedding I won't be able to attend this ride :( I was looking forward to the event but hope to make next year's ride.

Thanks for posting that link, but when I just tried it now I was directed to an old webpage from the 2010 Ride. :twitchy: However, the webpage for this year’s ride has been further updated to include a more detailed description of the event, including the locale of the rides, the concurrent events at the starting point, and a link to the registration. The maps and cue sheets are to follow:

http://massbike.org/summercentury/

I'm sorry to hear you won't make the ride, Beverly. I'm looking forward to this event as a reunion with the great people I met on the Second and Third Annual Rides, along with some new attendees. Here again is a suggested schedule:

Here are some further details for the proposed Fifth Annual Fifty Plus Ride from the Mass Bike Summer Century and Family Fun Fest web site:

http://massbike.org/summercentury/

Online registration closes Friday, July 26, 2013 at 10 PM EST. The registration fees are $85 for the century (starts at 7 AM on Saturday, July 27), $70 for the metric century (9 AM), and $55 for the 30-mile ride (11 AM). The fee includes lunch provided by a local well-known BBQ restaurant, Redbones, and the locally brewed Sam Adams beer. Redbones is an active supporter of cycling, hosting various cycling events such as fundraisers and a couple “Breakfast and Broadcast”s of the Tour de France; and they even offer valet bike parking.

Interestingly, the registration site also provides a list of the names and towns of the entrants, by ride category. The new locale of the Ride from previous years is a very nice exurban to rural area for cycling, estimated about 25 miles northwest from downtown Boston, just beyond the historic town of Concord, MA of Revolutionary War and Walden Pond fame. One of my favorite roads, Rte 225, runs just north of the starting point.

I had provided a suggested schedule in the preceding post #128 for Thursday, July 25, through as long as Wednesday, July 31. As in prior 50+ Annual Rides, the activities evolve as the participants reveal their plans, and as they materialize.

I will be there Friday afternoon sometime. I plan to ride the Metric at 9AM and will be staying to recover Sunday. Saturday morning is the only plans I made, so I am up for anything. Monday I will be leaving early for Montreal.

Marc

Well, fooey. I work Saturdays, so I can't make it. If you all decide to do a ride on Sunday, I can make that one.

My long awaited approval for time off from work on Friday the 26th has come through. We are in, arriving either late afternoon Thursday, or Friday mid day. Wicked!

wow - pricey ride. especially for an area that's my regular routes

It has been the custom on the past three 50+ Annual Rides to join up with an established organized ride with a local bicycle club (Finger Lakes, Michigan, and Tennessee). This provides a convenient core activity for the weekend without imposing too much onto the local proposing subscriber. In particular, the 50+ riders are of different abilities and often string out over the routes, so this organized ride tends to their needs. In my experience, the socialization occurs mostly before and after the ride.

The Mass Bike Ride is also a fundraiser for this cycling advocacy organization, and they do provide a lunch from the well-known Redbones BBQ Restaurant, beer, and some ancillary activities. As I mentioned, Rte 225 passes by the starting venue. Three weeks ago, I was riding there and was passed by several peletons on the 148 mile one-day Harpoon B2B Ride. The entry fee for that was $300, which also included a jersey, a T-shirt and transportation to Boston, and was also a fundraiser, according to their website, for Kenary Brain Tumor Research Fund and Team Psycho’s Elite Development Fund. :bike2:

Sorry - no offense meant.

Nobody should be offended. At $300 for a one-day ride, it IS expensive; even considering there's beer at lunch and it has a few activities associated with it.

As I intend to participant in this ride, I apparently read Jim's last post a tad more thoroughly than you did. He stated that the cost of the Mass Bike ride is either $55, $70, or $85 depending on the rider's choice of distance. Call me a spendthrift, but that fee does not seem expensive to me given the extras included. :rolleyes:

Jim's mention of $300 was a reference to the cost of another ride he passed as he was cycling.

I agree--$55, $70, or $85 is not unreasonable for a well supported ride, and I am very thrifty.

Hi BP,

We rode the Third Annual Fifty Plus Ride from Chelsea, MI in 2011 (but not together). I don’t recall what the entry fee was, but the event was well organized. The fee for the currently proposed Fifth Annual Ride by Mass Bike on July 27 is $85 for the Century, and less for shorter rides.

As Miss Kenton noted, I referred to an entirely different organized ride held three weeks ago, a local annual hard-core ride called the Harpoon B2B (Brewery to Brewery) with a $300 entry fee. I mentioned that ride to contrast how much less expensive the Mass Bike ride is.

I was actually passed by several peletons on that B2B ride, while out for my solo excursion. Ride jerseys are given out as part of the entry fee, and if you see one, regard it as a badge of honor. Those riders really had blazing pedals (as did you on the Michigan ride in 2011), though I saw no recumbents on the B2B. See the photo I took below. As you can see from the picture, to paraphrase a Ronald Reagan quote, “I did not pass the peleton, the peleton passed me.”*

If interested, a subscriber to the 50+ Forum wrote about the B2B:

http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=327203

*"I did not leave the Democratic Party, the Party left me."

heck Jim, those guys and gals ain't got nothing on you. Not one has a giant bag on the back of their bike.:lol:

Jim, having met up with BP on the Ann Arbor ride last year, too, I think he blazed in 2012 as well as 2011!

Thank-you for correcting my poor reading comprehension. :( An $85 ride sounds much more affordable. Still more than I usually pay, but not outrageous.

Freedomrider1 was amused by my rear trunk bag when we rode on the Third Annual Ride in 2011:

My bike was totaled in my accident last year, and now I have a carbon fiber Specialized S-Works with no eyelets for a rear rack. So I have had to become a weight (and volume) weenie. Of course though, now my cycling vest weighs about 20 pounds. :rolleyes:

LOL.:giver:

I've heard CF really improves the power to weight ratio...Does it?:roflmao:

My favorite new accessory:
http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=327378

Marc

I said to Jim from Boston,"what do you have in that big bag Jim" he replied "everything for a better life"

I happen to be a devotee of the 1970’s comedy troupe, The Firesign Theater, and their dialogues are so emeshed in my mind that certain of their phrases are part of my usual conversations, such as above. For example, when I‘m getting ready to merely go out for a walk with my daughter, I’ll rhetorically ask her, “OK, now do we have everything we need for a better life?”

FST employs a “stream of conciousness” style of comedy, so I won’t try to explain this dialogue, but here’s where that phrase comes from (Temporarily Humboldt County):

Eddie gets off the bus.
EDDIE: Hiya, Pop! I'm home!
INDIAN: Hello, Soaring Eagle! It's good to have you back from school!
EDDIE: Aw, come on! Call me Eddie! I'm an American now!
INDIAN: What have they been teaching you?
EDDIE: Just what we need for a better life! French horn, Italian, water polo...

I’m happy to exchange these interludes because they keep this thread about the Fifty-Plus Ride on July 27 bumped up :fight::

...And now back to our regularly scheduled thread, already in progress:

Well it appears that I have to work that weekend now, much of my plans for the summer have been adjusted with some family issues. So unfortunately I won't be able to attend, as much as I'd like to be there. I trust you will all have a great time, sorry to bail out so late in the game.

Good luck to all that attend.
ken

I’m very sorry to hear you can’t make it, especially since you actually made hotel reservations this winter. We live across the Charles River from the Mass Institute of Technology (MIT) and I think you may have been able to meet some other kindred spirits in tinfoil hats as well :rolleyes:. BTW, Ken, I note that you have a 2006 Specialized S-Works. I just bought a year-end model in April.

I have also received a couple of other regrets as PM’s, and if those subscribers give me a go-ahead, I’ll mention who they are, without reference to their stories. I was also chagrined to read that they couldn't come either.

For those interested, there is a sticky on the Fifty-Plus Forum, A Chronicle of the 50+ Annual Rides, and in one post, I listed the threads that chronicled the Rides II to IV beginning with the personal narratives and photos:

Recently, I perused the various threads about those Rides to reminisce. There was a definite pattern to the threads for those previous Rides: initial discussion in the winter about where to go, followed by a flurry of enthusiasm; spring doldrums; eventually the posts immediately preceding the ride as the participants departed for the destination; and the memorable tales afterwards about the event.

I look forward to adding the stories about the Fifth Annual Ride.

So at this point, do we know who is firmly in?