Right on, ride on

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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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!

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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Two weekends ago Sunday I attempted a ~60 mile ride: go to and take roughings of all of the Museum of Science’s Community Solar System planet kiosks (including Pluto the Plutoid.)

I should have known something was up when the MoS updated  their website and no longer offered for download the “passport,” nor made available the pages detailing the Community Solar System project at all.

But that didn’t deter me! I downloaded that passport file weeks ago, and I had worked diligently on finding somewhat feasible biking routes (more on that in a bit.) I forged ahead – the ride would not be thwarted just because the new website doesn’t have the Community Solar System project listed anymore!

Well, here is what I started with: Pluto, at the platform of the Riverside T Stop, Green D Line.

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So, I went on an early-summer trip to Italy for a couple of weeks. That happened a while ago now and I haven’t written anything since before leaving.

It’s taken me a while to get back into the various rhythms, and, well, the weather’s been more or less quite good so I’ve been riding a good deal! Riding > writing.

I’m working on a ride for personal enjoyment, it will be my longest single ride to date. In the Boston area is a scaled down model of the solar system (including Pluto as a planet,) called the Community Solar System. It’s centered around the Sun at the Museum of Science and spans out to as far as Newton. The distances for all of the kiosks with the planets is scaled so that walking speed is the equivalent of light speed when factored up. It’s a really neat idea, and I like it.

So far I’ve come up with a general map, starting from Pluto and working my way back into the city. There are a few more inner-system planets I’ll hit before some outer-system ones, just to keep the ride to something more sensible.

If the ride goes well for me I’ll do it again and invite others to join, but as there are some questionable navigation legs and since I’m not very familiar with the area very much, and since I’ve never lead a ride before, I hesitate to include anyone else in my crazy schemes as of yet.

So, hopefully the weather will be excellent this weekend, because since I’ve started working on this ride I’ve lost sleep thinking about it. I can’t say why I like the idea so much, I’m just a geek I guess.

[edit] Looks like fortune was not in my favor. Saturday was in the 90’s and today is sketchy. On top of that I’ve become inflicted with a summer cold (of all things!) so I’ve been more out of commission than usual.