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[bike] Boroughs of 495 tour
Aug. 20th, 2007 07:52 amYesterday's trip (a small one with just myself, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nuclearpolymer, and mb) headed out towards 495 and the Pike, heading through Marlborough, Northborough, Westborough, and Southborough. We seem to have successfully skipped all of the actual town parts, but we did run into an enthusiastic gas station attendant on Route 9 (his real goal was just to bike to work, though). My bike showed 79.4 miles, after almost exactly 8 hours; the 80-mile range seems to be my sweet spot right now in terms of "can definitely make it but I'll be really tired afterwards". Route map
This also came up as a reasonably good route ("yes, I can still pick things off the Rubel bike maps and not just rehash last year's rides"). I correctly registered the Mass. Central crossing in Hudson, and we passed some UTLX tank cars on a siding off the CSX Framingham-Leominster line in Northborough. Northborough is this kind of fascinating pastoral/industrial area, which is to say, it's nice and green except for the regular squat manufacturing buildings. Nobody was left at the Westborough State (mental) Hospital, thankfully.
Ride-wise, this was the ride of long, gradual climbs. Concord Road in Marlborough, for example, was definitely sloped uphill for pretty much all of the three miles we were on it; not so steep that you needed to shift down a lot, but still steeper than, say, the Minuteman. MA-85 in Hopkinton was the same way, except that the bit from Southborough to Hopkinton actually was a significant climb, and then it kept going up some more. (Yes, Hayden Rowe Street in Hopkinton was on the route; no, we didn't pass Upton Tea Imports.)
nuclearpolymer, and mb) headed out towards 495 and the Pike, heading through Marlborough, Northborough, Westborough, and Southborough. We seem to have successfully skipped all of the actual town parts, but we did run into an enthusiastic gas station attendant on Route 9 (his real goal was just to bike to work, though). My bike showed 79.4 miles, after almost exactly 8 hours; the 80-mile range seems to be my sweet spot right now in terms of "can definitely make it but I'll be really tired afterwards". Route mapThis also came up as a reasonably good route ("yes, I can still pick things off the Rubel bike maps and not just rehash last year's rides"). I correctly registered the Mass. Central crossing in Hudson, and we passed some UTLX tank cars on a siding off the CSX Framingham-Leominster line in Northborough. Northborough is this kind of fascinating pastoral/industrial area, which is to say, it's nice and green except for the regular squat manufacturing buildings. Nobody was left at the Westborough State (mental) Hospital, thankfully.
Ride-wise, this was the ride of long, gradual climbs. Concord Road in Marlborough, for example, was definitely sloped uphill for pretty much all of the three miles we were on it; not so steep that you needed to shift down a lot, but still steeper than, say, the Minuteman. MA-85 in Hopkinton was the same way, except that the bit from Southborough to Hopkinton actually was a significant climb, and then it kept going up some more. (Yes, Hayden Rowe Street in Hopkinton was on the route; no, we didn't pass Upton Tea Imports.)
