Lance I ain't

[dmaze]

I wasn't planning on biking 50 miles yesterday. It just...happened. Fitchburg to Somerville via Route 2 comes out a little over 40, and it seemed like it could be a nice ride, so I took the train out yesterday afternoon. (Points to the T and MBCR for having someone who could make decisions on the Porter platform; negative points for having made a decision about bikes, posting it online, and not thoroughly communicating it down. The conductor warned me that I might have issues getting back, and seemed dubious when I told her I was planning to bike.) The trip took me about six hours once I left Fitchburg, with lots of short breaks along the way.

Downtown Fitchburg was pretty dead, in the "all the stores are closed and nobody's walking around" sort of way. Took an orbit, then headed out through Lunenburg and Leominster and Lunenburg again towards Shirley. cfox had the excellent idea of printing out topo maps of the area, so I had a route that wasn't terribly hilly (wasn't totally flat either; discovered that my eyes tear up a lot beyond 25 mph, and that I just can't go above 30). Shirley felt depressingly suburban, which I think was attributable to the unimpressive houses on huge lots with expanses of grass.

The route back mostly followed the commuter rail. This was partly intentional, but partly also because trains don't like big steep hills and so a road next to train tracks will be pretty flat. The Fitchburg commuter rail line is two-track CTC to Alewife, then two-track ABS to South Acton, where it merges down to a single track. In Littleton, it merges with the B&M main line between Lowell and Fitchburg, which is two-track CTC. What that all means is that the Fitchburg-to-Ayer section of the commuter rail line bears a shocking resemblence to a real railroad, though I didn't notice any moving freight, and the commuter rail turns into this branch that heads towards Boston.

Ayer looked nice, though there wasn't a whole lot of rail infrastructure to actually see. The Nashua River Rail Trail has a fairly obvious beginning right across from the commuter rail; from that write-up, it sounds comparable to the Minuteman. Passed the MBTA/B&M junction in Littleton, then rode through Littleton proper, past an abandoned station, and towards Route 2. Thetans of the correct era will remember a retreat "somewhere around 2 and 495", and I was somewhere around there.

Rode along back roads through Boxborough and finally into Acton. No sign of the rail branch the map shows heading south from South Acton (though there was an exciting yellow-on-black pentagonal Middlesex County 27 sign on MA-27 heading north); there was evidence at least of the "Conrail" (if I remember maps correctly, ex-NYNH&H) line that should have crossed through the middle of the West Concord platform. Stopped in Concord for ice cream, which was ill-advised, hit Great Meadows for more water and a bathroom break, spent sadly too little time on the Reformatory Branch trail, and then took the Minuteman home.

My bike thinks I went 50.97 miles (it's actually a little more) in just over four hours (I think six) for an average of 12.6 mph (more like 8.2). This was a nice trip, if you're up to 50-mile bike trips. If I acquire a suitable camera I'll probably do it again sometime.

Comments

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I'll be doing an 80-miler next weekend, if you're interested....Not sure where yet. Open to suggestions.

And yeah, on the Lance front, isn't it demoralizing to think that if you just did the same thing twice as far, twice as fast, and possibly over an Alp, you could be in the Tour? Luckily, these people aren't actually human, so we don't have to compare :).

[dmaze]

I suspect I'm not really up to an 80-mile trip, but thanks for the offer. Trying to bike another 50 miles a little more continuously would be neat. But I don't know about next weekend (might want a week off, I think there are other things happening).