[Bike] Melrose/Stoneham: Enh

In my quest for 10-20-mile rides I can do after work, I tried heading up towards Melrose (to Medford Square, Riverside Ave to Pleasant St to Route 60, then north on Main Street). At the northern end of Melrose, I turned left on Forest St, did a quick hill, and then rode through to Stoneham Square, then south on 28 to Forest St (a different one!) to Medford Square and then home.

It was decididly enh. Main Street through Malden and Melrose was a little hilly and not terribly scenic; there wasn't a lot of traffic, but it just wasn't a fun ride. A couple of people yelled at me for no discernable reason. The rotary above 93 at the Medford 28 intersection was entertaining, at least: you're coming down off the bridge so you can in fact get into the rotary at speed, and then Forest St was slightly downhill all the way into Medford Square, so I was able to stay above 20 mph for most of that segment without any trouble.

[Bike] For completeness...

Last week narya and I rode out on the Minuteman to just shy of Lexington Center. There we turned right on Woburn Street, which in that shocking Massachusetts way, morphs into Lexington Street when you get to Woburn. Rode that to Arlington Street, turned right and came down by Horn Pond, magically got from there to Winchester Center, then came down 38, Grove Street, and Boston Ave back to Somerville.

This was a pretty nice just-under-20-mile ride. There was just one hill on Woburn Street, and that of the down-then-up variety (hint: if you pick up speed on the downhill, then momentum largely carries you uphill without much work). Lexington Street was for the most part generously wide, and since we were going perpendicular to rush hour on back roads, traffic wasn't that big a deal.