For the last couple of weeks I have been preparing to move into a new apartment. This has been on my radar for a while, and along with traveling to see family and an earlier apartment move I’ve made little time this summer to take to the roads in the area surrounding Boston. I haven’t even worked off my “winter baggage”.

It was with pent-up anticipation that last Saturday I finally took the time to select a route, clean up my hybrid, oil the chain, and strike out to ride. The destination: my favorite-so-far loop around Nagog Pond.

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I haven’t been logging my activities much lately, but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been much to write about. Here’s an account of my doings for this summer so far.

There was the Bikes Not Bombs ride in June, delayed to its rain date. I struggled a bit on this 65+ miler, not having trained enough and starting too aggressively, but I rallied and pulled off a clean finish.

I have been making trips out to Concord on my fixed gear bike, usually stopping by the overlook at Hanscom on the return trip. I spotted some wild turkeys on the Minuteman one of the times I went out.

More recently I attended the unveiling of the new bike sharing program in Boston, the Hubway. I got a little sunburned on the inaugural ride where I joined other volunteers in populating the stations with the first fleet of bikes, and later that day used the system to get from my office in Allston to Government Center where I had left my bike, managing the trip in roughly half an hour, obeying traffic rules (it was slow going as the bikes aren’t built for speed).

I am currently on vacation visiting my folks in northern NY, and my sister is here as well on break from her job teaching English in South Korea. No bike means no rides, and that’s a shame because the area has a lot to offer for scenery.

There’s still tons to do, summer isn’t over yet!

This year’s Bikes not Bombs Bike-a-thon ride was back in June 20th. I rode it, took a few pictures, and then neglected to write anything up about it until now.

On that Sunday some 3-400+ fundraising bicycle enthusiasts met in Jamaica Plain to support the Bikes not Bombs organization for their annual Bike-a-thon ride and Grassroots Festival.

This was a postponed event, with the original date two weeks prior called off due to a heavy rain prediction. Very many of us thoroughly enjoy this event and were eager to arrive, get registered, get our numbers, call sheets route details, and start on our way for a 15, 25, or 62+ mile ride in surrounding areas.

The day started out pretty hot, I could tell my Camelbak was only going to supply me for most of the ride. As the day went on the mercury hovered around 90 – and I am not a fan of the heat when I’m out for a long ride.

Here we are at the start of the ride. I rode the 62-mile route which had two service stops. I rode really well and kept pace with the lead group for the first ten or so miles, then lost them when I helped someone replace a flat innertube. From then on I rode pretty much solo, and struggled more and more as the heat kept bearing down on me.

As usual (for me) I got a bit lost when approaching the last couple of miles when entering JP. From what I gather there was at least one marker that was supposed to help direct me which had been ‘removed’ by ‘someone’. I ended up tacking on another several miles and probably another hour with futzing with maps on my phone before I got reoriented and travelling in the right direction. I pulled in to the finish with just enough time to eat and chat with folks before I had to head out to a bike repair class in Cambridge (which I made it to, barely on time).

I didn’t take any more pictures and really wish I had, but there are plenty that can be found on flickr or the Bikes not Bombs website. Though, if I had taken more photos I might not have had enough power left on my phone to bail me out at the end…

It was a long, and at times straining ride, and I can’t wait until it happens again next year!

I say, it has been a rather long time since I’ve written. Truly the winter gave me little to work with, and once settled into the habit of laziness it is difficult to find one’s way back into the spirit of writing about things. But, often as this goes, with a little bit of encouragement (100psi) combined at a time with an event worth relating to others: a recipe for a blog post is formed. All that needs to be done now is for the writing to happen.

Today, ladies and gents, was a Tweed Ride. Dapper lads and lasses dressed up in wools and linens, dropped to a low-speed crawl of a pace, and set about to smile and wave at all manner of folk still here in Cambridge and Boston for Memorial Day. The weather was warm and pleasant, and except for a smoky odor which permeated the area (apparently caused in part by forest fires in Quebec) it was a perfect day for a ride.

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Thank you, thankyou thankyou thankyou thankyou thankyou! (Also, thank you to the League of American Bicyclists for dropping the e-mail with the news.)

http://maps.google.com/biking

Color-coded differentiation between dedicated bike paths, easy-biking streets, and user-submitted preferred streets. Getting directions will plot a route that may avoid hills, and can offer alternative routes or click-drag modifications to the route. Minty!

Of course, I’m also proud that Boston took some initiative in the last two years to publish their own map, but c’mon this is Google Maps!

Yesterday was Halloween, so I donned my pirate socks and joined in the annual Tour de Grave (sponsored by MassBike.)

It was a pretty long ride, hitting ten destinations around the Boston and Cambridge areas in total. There were over 30 riders of varying skill levels, and the going was paced to be able to keep everyone more or less grouped together. There were some challenging hills in Brookline which caused a little trouble for some, but for the most part the ride was interesting and educational. Somewhere between 20 and 30 miles was covered over the course of about five hours (!!!) with a good deal of that time spent actually in burying ground perimeters learning about each of the sites.

The places we hit were (in order) the Old Burying Ground (Cambridge,) King’s Chapel Burying Ground (Boston,) Granary Burying Ground (Boston,) Central Burying Ground (Boston,) South End Burying Ground (South End,) Eliot Burying Ground (Roxbury,) Evergreen Cemetery (Brighton,) Market Street Burying Ground (Brighton,) Cambridge Cemetery (Cambridge,) and finally the Mt. Auburn Cemetery (Cambridge.) The tour guide took a little time at each stop to explain some details about famous people buried in each place, what the practices for burial and treatment of the dead were at the time, some religious and political history to tie things together, and as we continued from one location to the next he presented a progression of the changes in the treatment of the deceased changed the entire style of human burials.

The tour was quite informative and was too much to keep all in my head, so fortunately a handout was available which provides the “readers digest” version of everything.

I experimented with using my phone to take pictures this ride, in part because it looks decent enough (as long as the lens is clean and I hold steady when I take a shot) and also because the pictures are automatically tagged with the location (which I had to fix in a few cases.) Without further ado, here are my (not so very spooky) pictures of the Tour de Grave:

Earlier this week I found out that the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail phase one, from Chelmsford to Westford, was opened to the public.

Even earlier on in the week I was in planning with one of my coworkers to get him out more on his bike. Our initial plan included another person, a former coworker of ours, who unfortunately had to back out due to issues with her ankle. Plans shifted from riding out to Concord, to starting a ride from Concord that might include Walden or the Sculpture Park, or even the Nagog Pond Loop (as I’ve been meaning to revisit it all summer.) But, when word of the rail trail opening came in we thought it was be good fun to go and check it out. So today we did just that.
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Yesterday I deviated from my usual solo rides to join a small group for a tour around Cape Ann.

Plans were drawn up by the fiancée of a friend who I met on a hike last year, and when the idea was broadcast on a group for hiking and biking trips I was compelled. When I first joined the group distribution list I did not think I would be participating in so few activities, but, as things go this became my first time joining one of these group events. The route took us alongside the shore nearly the entire trip, making for a scenic ride on an already gorgeous day.
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Happy (belated) Birthday, America!

Last year I hiked some of the Presidential Mountains in New Hampshire in recognition of our Declaration of Independence . This year I joined a group for camping and hiking in the Adirondacks, and later visited my parents for a couple of days to catch the fireworks at Boldt Castle in the 1000 Islands.

When I first heard of the plans for the camping trip began I was overjoyed. I grew up in the northern foothills of the Adirondack mountains in upstate New York. This is a familiar area to me and one that I missed many opportunities while growing up and living around.

It is impossible to grow up where I did without some degree of camping; however, my family tended to stop outdoor activities there and not participate in many of the other mountain-based experiences: hiking, rafting, skiing/snowboarding, snowmobiling, hunting, or cycling.

My experiences growing up with biking there ended when I was able to start driving a car. The nearest real grocery store was 10+ miles away, as was the nearest movie theater and bowling alley. The farthest I rode a bike back then was less than 10 miles in a single trip, and it might have been to get to the baseball field for practice during those questing couple of years where I tried every sport my school had to offer. (I stuck with soccer throughout high school, but even so I have never really been much into sports.) I only biked around town – in hindsight I see that I missed an opportunity to get ridiculously strong at hill climbing.
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At last. At long last. The training, the preparation, the nervous anticipation; it was all for something.

On May 16th I set out at 9:30AM to ride 100 miles. Six weeks prior to that day I began my training in earnest, building on a physical foundation that the last two+ years of riding my bike around Boston had sculpted.

I followed a plan I found which recommended performing long rides on weekends, increasing the distance each week until two weeks out. Since I did plenty of riding around during the mild winter we had this year I was able to start part of the way into the program.

First was a (roughly) 30-miler. The following weekend I went on a ride of opportunity: in the middle of the night I did a modified 50-mile route the Marathon was set to take several hours later. The next weekend I punched in 57 miles going around the Nagog Pond in Acton. Next up was a Metric Century achieving 68 mile ride that I stitched together from two smaller routes. Having done more than 65% of the total distance I planned the next ride to be a shorter 50 miles to Walden Pond and the DeCordova Sculpture Park, which is a much recommended way to ready oneself for…

a Century Ride:
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