mr_bill

Back from an overnight to mid-cape. 50 mile ride before the rest of the family woke up.

During the Bike MS ride at the end of June:



Yesterday, same couple, same dog, within a few yards (a lot more humid though. Sorry about the condensation.):



-mr. bill

jimmuller 

mr_b, nice pics, very inviting!

No pics from em today. Just the usual boring commute, 32 miles round trip, every day this week except yesterday. Ho-hum. Well, maybe not so boring. The weather was very nice.

Drivers were in a hurry today and traffic was heavy. I think the cool weather wakes up everyone's urge to migrate so they have to go somewhere fast, anywhere, it doesn't matter as long as they are going.

rholland1951

Rolled out from Arlington a few minutes after sunset, turned around at Lexington Center in full dark, and followed the moon home, to the rich and rowdy music of the Night Chorus; no cicadas singing in this cool August weather, though.




rod

jimmuller 

We did 49.5miles on the tandem today. Dang, it was half a mile short. The run from Concord to Bedford must be shorter than Bedford to Concord. Got a moderately late start. Beautiful weather.

Dappling, leaving the Battlefield Part HQ parking lot


A required end-of-ride stop for blueberries, Scimione Farm somewhere between Concord and Bedford:

rholland1951

While it only gets occasional use, I regard the fact that my old Allen Rack--perhaps the sole object I ever purchased after reading about it in the Whole Earth Catalog--still does its job well, more than 40 years after I bought it, as an admirable anomaly; perhaps more American consumer products should be made in garages in Lincoln. I put the LHT and my sweetie's Raleigh hybrid on the rack, and drove us up to my daughter's place in Wenham for a visit that included a leisurely 10-mile social ride exploring the neighborhood. Highlights of that included walking the bikes on the duckboards of the Danvers-Wenham SwampWalk, visiting Mass Audubon's Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary, and riding the double-track path alongside the Grand Wenham Canal for the first time, along with some easy-going local roads and sections of the Border to Boston Rail Trail. The dog got a walk, too, and my daughter made us a great dinner with a fruit pie that I won't soon forget. Good day!




















rod

jimmuller 

We took the tandem out again today. Following my experience of last week we started early, about 10 after 8, okay it's early for us but maybe not for you. Rode straight through town into the more wooded 'burbs, ended up with 43.1 miles, Waltham to Carlisle.

Chapter 7 (or is it 8?) in the Every Day's an Adventure book, soon to be a major motion picture:
Had a close encounter with another cyclist's defective bike on the way back. We were nearing Arlington Center on the Minuteman Bikeway (because it lets us avoid Waltham Main St) when an older couple (not as old as me perhaps) started up on their solo bikes going the opposite direction. The guy swerved into our side of the path, I hit the brakes hard, he did a quick near fall swerving back onto his side. The he called out to his S.O. "Wait, I have a problem!" His stem had come completely loose on the steering column, flopping around with the front wheel not following. Yeesh! We could have plowed into him with twice his mass. Or he could have started up and lost his teeth when his bike suddenly took a turn he didn't expect. How can that happen?? Fortunately no one was hurt and they probably decided not to ride further until the problem was resolved.

mr_bill

No pictures, left the camera at home.
40 km in Vancouver BC early this morning.

(Boston could learn something about way-finding from Vancouver.)

-mr. bill

Jim from Boston

Hey mr. bill,

I saw your thread on Fifty-Plus, ”Rent a good bike - N+1 mitigation”, and replied.

Jim

jimmuller 

Lots of good ridin' goin' on in MetroBoston!

Monday morning and afternoon: I did my commute again, as usual. Rode the Masi. Across Waverley Sq to Rt 60, through Belmont into Arlington Center. MM Bikeway west to Bow St, except there was detour on the MM today! Signs and policemen and policewomen directing traffic and everything. They routed us back to the bikeway at Bow St or I might have missed it. Bow and other connecting residential roads skirt the eastern slope of the hill presumptuously named Mt. Ephraim and eventually connect with Lowell St/Rt 2A. Right at that stoplight onto Woburn St which becomes Lexington St which becomes Pleasant St IIRC which goes into Woburn Center. I'm liking Woburn, it seems a friendly place. I even got said hello to by the policeman on his street beat. (There's even a sign somewhere saying whose beat it is.) Good weather but humid this morning, headwind on the way home but not bad.

Tomorrow I'm riding the Centurion.

rholland1951

Rode out on the Minuteman at sunset, up to Lexington Center and back in the dark, with a little detour on Mass. Ave between Drake Road, Arlington, and Fottler Avenue, Lexington. By the time I was there, nobody was directing traffic, but at one point it seemed like every Arlington police cruiser in the inventory was haring around with their blue lights flashing and their growlers growling: no idea what was up. The Night Chorus was in good voice, and I rode along enjoying the changes in the music occasioned by the bug & frog demographics along different stretches of the trail; thought I heard cicada song in a couple of places. The other Wild Kingdom news was a rat sighted on the Drake Road bridge, its little toenails audibly scritching on the sidewalk.


rod

Jim from Boston

My most memorable Saturday long (greater than 40 mile) training loops from Norwood or Kenmore Square are out to the far flung regions of the known Metroverse, to apogee towns such as North Attleboro, Upton, Harvard, Lowell, Topsfield, and Ipswich. This Saturday for novelty I went on a “low Boston orbit” intending to ride around Boston through the inner suburbs, starting in Norwood, to Braintree, and along the coast of the little known, and feared “Big Water East of the Heartbreak Hill” through South Boston, to inner northern and western suburbs, and back to Norwood.



That part of the ride was great, all the way to Castle Island, and into South Boston guarded by the statue of David Farragut (“Damn the SUV’s, full speed ahead.”). But because Dot Ave ends at the old Gillette plant with no passage, I got myself misoriented and rode through industrial South Boston/South End/Roxbury. I have described riding through Kenmore Square as "über-urban", but this was “dysurban"; not dangerous, but tedious, through a maze of railroad tracks, freeways, and warehouses on bumpy, rubble-strewn roads. I almost got onto a freeway ramp the wrong way. And it was getting hot, with no shade.

I finally made my way to the planned rest stop at South Station after losing valuable early AM riding time, but by then I was pretty frazzled, and did not want any more city riding, not even to just get to the Charles River Bikepath. My route after South Station was planned to go up Rte 99 to Rte 60 through Malden, Medford, Arlington, Waltham and then to Rice–Oak St through Wayland and Natick to Dover and back to Norwood. Instead (bless me MetroBoston, for I have sinned) I took the train back to Norwood, after a total of 32 miles.

I think my original plan would have taken me well beyond my allotted 60 miles though. I have a catch phrase for my training rides of specified mileage, ”This far and no farther” because I am goal-oriented, and time-limited. I picked up this phrase from an episode of the detective show Columbo about a rumpled detective who matches wits with sophisticated guilty suspects.

In one episode Columbo was pursuing a hard-drinking Irish poet and IRA assassin. When he and Columbo sat down to talk, the suspect would take out a bottle of whiskey and make a mark on the bottle with his diamond ring below the liquor level, and say, “This far and no farther.”

When I got back to Norwood, I told myself another tagline, to paraphrase that memorable character, the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld, “No [strike]soup[/strike] (post ride) chocolate milk for you.

BTW on the inside back page of the Sunday Boston Globe Magazine (8/10) was a nice tribute to a local cycling “guru” nick-named Bobby Mac.

rholland1951

Jim, that's a pretty good New Frontier ride you had there! The ability of a bicycle to transform the world just by being pedaled through it amazes me: you keep pedaling, and the world changes around you, sometimes becoming very different indeed. Observing the succession of transitions is instructive...

rod

Jim from Boston

Well said, rod; I experience and enjoy the transitions, especially traveling urban > suburban > exurban > rural, or the reverse, and particularly round trip. However, I think of the world as being the constant as I pedal through it (rather than my pedaling transforming the world). I further experience that constancy when I re-visit a route, more intensely after a prolonged absence. Almost paradoxically, that constancy becomes more novel to me the longer the separation (“Absence make the heart grow fonder.”)

It just occurred to me that I should relish the transitions more, as a source of novelty, especially on my most routine (constant) rides. As you suggest, ”Observing the succession of transitions is instructive...”

rholland1951

After looking at my calendar and the weather forecast, I declared a Work-Life Balance Emergency and went home early enough to take a 31-mile ride through Arlington, Lexington, Bedford, Concord, and Carlisle, a modified North Bridge loop, taking the Minuteman and Reformatory Branch Trail outbound, Monument Street and River Road in the middle, and Route 225 and the Minuteman for the homeward leg. The preponderance of rail trails is advantageous for a rush-hour ride. The run of dry weather we've been having neutralized the ferocious sucking mires on the Concord section of the Reformatory Branch; after tomorrow's downpours, I expect they'll be sucking ferociously again for the rest of the week.

Men Working: the Minuteman detour at Fottler Avenue, Lexington.


The Crabs From Outer Space are still depicted on Minuteman trail signs on the down-hill run from Lexington Center to Route 128; this is a reassuring sign that our precious cultural heritage is being preserved.


No men working on Wiggins Avenue, Bedford, but there's a nice cautionary sign advising us of their campaign to extirpate infiltrating roots; looks like they're about half done, and this section of the trail is perfectly ridable. The animated LED sign, btw, relies on human persistence of vision to convey a whole message; its refresh rate doesn't couple well with my phone's imaging sensor. There is an infinite number of cyclists in Bedford, apparently.


The Bedford section of the Reformatory Branch Trail; Bedford keeps threatening to pave it; this inspires mixed emotions...


A passing glance at the Great Meadows National Wildlife Reservation from the Concord section of the Reformatory Branch Trail.


There'll be a change in the weather...


A little agritourism to go with my cyclotourism...


I suspect this of being an Ent. If I were a druid, I'd probably worship it.


The sunset colors were dandy this evening.




rod

jimmuller 

On my morning commute yesterday a longer section was blocked off. The westbound detour continues past Bow St. It is good to see maintenance taking place. Some of those root heaves were becoming new life forms.

I have ridden from Lexington west past 128 and back many times, not lately though, and I don't think I've ever seen those signs.

rholland1951

The detour is between Hurd Field/TJs/Drake Street/Drake Village, in Arlington, and Fottler Avenue, Lexington; Bow Street, Lexington, gets swept up in it. The picture was shot looking back at the Fottler Avenue intersection, where the work was particularly active just at the moment I crossed it, outbound.

The crabs, interestingly, have been there well over a decade, installed by graffiti artist Sonik (a.k.a. Caleb Neelon) as part of his Bolted Sign Project; the idea was to create graffiti that was compatible with the road-sign format; pretty clever, since it neutralizes the destructive/defacement component of grafitti art. For giant space crabs, they're pretty unobtrusive, easy to miss, I guess; I often don't notice them on a ride, but sometimes, like yesterday, they pop into the foreground. The old web site for the Bolted Sign Project seems to have succumbed to web rot, but a 2009 Phoenix article on Sonik, and Caleb Neelon's current home page suggest what was going on here. Once upon a time, there were more of these signs along the Minuteman, but some officious person(s) removed most of them, leaving these two only. With luck, they'll survive the pending round of improvements.

rod

sherbornpeddler

Jim, Positively brilliant ride. Thank you for sharing it. I like your plan and I like the ride you took. Thanks again!

Jim from Boston

Hey sbp,

Thanks for your always gracious and encouraging replies.

Jim from Boston

Most of my Work-Life Balance Emergencies resolve in favor of Work.

Nonetheless, I can always read the Forums and enjoy the pictures to tilt the Emergency a bit towards Life. Rod, your video clips are hypnotizing. As I was watching this one I noted how precisely the the long-sleeved white-shirted rider morphed into the short-sleeved gray-shirted one. Great camera work if that was your intention.

rholland1951

Sheer good luck! Fun with animated gifs...

rod

jimmuller 

It is curious how the rider's jersey changes from light to dark and his pannier disappears as he crosses onto the near shoulder of the road.

rholland1951

Two bikes, of course, along with some real luck as to the start and end times of the gif sequence...

rod

Jim from Boston

Good eye...I missed that. Also for a time the alter egos are separated and appear simultaneously, supporting Rod's hypothesis.

Jim from Boston

I zoomed in and slowed the sequence and noted that the "transformation" occurs in front of that boxy apparent generator of the lighted sign rather than behind it, and the transition still looked seamless, even down to the position of heads and shoulders and tilt of helmets.

Anyways, is anybody riding this week? I did my first early morning commute from Kenmore to Norwood in a few days this morning. At about 4:30 AM to my surprise the streets were wet and the rain icon was on the weather channel as a mass of green was almost finished passing over Boston. Since my carbon fiber bike does not go out under such circumstances, I had to prep the heavy beater mountain bike which I hadn't ridden in well over a month, though the car beckoned. Just yesterday I posted to this thread, Getting “out the door”

The ride was dry and the streets damp to wet, and I might have ridden the CF, but I was already “out the door.” I was unusually tired when I arrived, maybe from the bike weight, or maybe a head wind. (I assess the wind from the flags flying en route. When I arrived, the flags were limp, though I rationalized maybe they were wet and too heavy to flap in the wind.) Nonetheless, beyond the usual benefits of riding the bike rather than driving the car, I was greeted by the Fleet Goddess.

For all the times we have encountered each other over several, maybe more than ten years, I can anticipate her on a segment of Washington St in Westwood less than a half mile long, between about 6 to 6:30 AM, though not always.

mtalinm

I rode in yesterday, but it was not so great because Washington St. in Roslindale is pretty much torn up for a long stretch. climbing it was un-fun and I figured descending would be a nightmare so I took the T home instead.

surprised how little traffic there is though