[bike] First ride of the season

[dmaze]

Went out with a couple of people for Lexington and Horn Pond in Woburn. It was perhaps a tad chilly, but still worth it. Worse was the terrible headwind all the way up the bike path. And the route was a little hillier than I remembered. Still, it was a straightforward and somewhat scenic 20-mile jaunt. "Start small." Route map here.

Also tried this with the handlebar-mounted GPS. It was marginally useful though not necessarily the greatest thing since sliced bread. One issue is that it doesn't know about the bike path; another is that its internal compass doesn't work unless it's actually horizontal. In the end, though, while you're moving you can't actually look at the thing to see where you are without stopping thinking about biking, so the most useful feature is it saying how far it is to the next turn. The right strategy might be to just carry it in a bag so we can stop and figure out where we are and where we've been and otherwise navigate the same way we always have.

Comments

[nuclearpolymer.livejournal.com]

I was pretty glad that I had suggested a short ride, because I was having trouble keeping up as it was. Time to grow more leg muscles.

[narya.livejournal.com]

Actually, if you go biking with dzm/jwm, you need to schedule *longer* rides. After about mile 20 they start tiring out and then it becomes sensible :).

[dmaze]

As was noted during the ride, the pace we both consider "reasonable" is faster than we can actually sustain. So on an actual long ride part of the challenge is pacing myself so that I'm not completely shot after the first 20 miles.

I also like to race down hills, so that I have momentum that can carry me up the far side. The first down/up hill after we turned off the bike path is a place I remember doing that in the past, then having to stop at the top of the hill to let people catch up.

[iabervon.livejournal.com]

If you go past Horn Pond again, you should go the back way: take Woburn Parkway (second right after Lexington St turns into Pleasant St; the first is dead end, and has a big hill with my parents' house), go straight at the end where motor vehicles are prohibited, down the causeway through the middle of the pond, left at the end, diagonally across the former parking lot, along the back side of the pond, and down the last hill between the pond and the power substation (the Google Maps hybrid view clarifies somewhat; the part of Woburn Parkway south of where it starts crossing the pond and all of Cove St is bike-path-like, although it's not marked). You come out just a bit down from where you turned, and it's much nicer and more scenic.