dmaze | Entries tagged with bike

I don't seem to have downloaded anything off my GPS in ages. How odd.

At the start of May,

nuclearpolymer led a group in a loop from the Ipswich commuter rail. I didn't follow the group out to the beach; instead, I tried harder (but successfully) to make it back on the earlier train. Ipswich was also in the "remove all of the pavement to start from scratch" phase of road construction. My loop was 20 miles, not counting the trip to and from the commuter rail. Route map

Last weekend, amidst uncoordination and some unwillingness on my part to do a 60-mile ride, I went alone around Brookline and Newton. I am reminded that even the bits of south Brookline that don't look hilly on the map, are a little hilly. Also, I am reminded that I shouldn't take month-long breaks from biking, because it means I don't go far. This 24-mile trip was fine, but I was awfully sore the next day. Route map

My new bike also cleared 200 miles last weekend, and I'm wondering about the ever-elusive thousand-mile goal. If people are doing the Seacoast Century at the end of September, that's 15 weeks away; if I ride 10 miles after work twice a week, that's an additional 300 miles by then. And if the century and its preceding warmup rides are 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100 miles, that's another 450. That leaves a lot of weekends to catch up 50 miles, so this all seems pretty doable.

Weekend plan is to redo this trip, from the Ayer commuter rail up the Nashua River Rail Trail then back to Somerville, on Sunday, leaving Porter by rail at 8:45 AM. Will hopefully survive 45 miles. Hopefully won't get rained on.

Took a largish group up past Horn Pond, out through Burlington, to the Baldwin Apple Monument, and then back via Wilmington, Wakefield, and Melrose. The stated goal was a trip between 30 and 35 miles that didn't involve the bike path, and this accomplished that, coming in at 33.1. (Closer to 35 with transit to and from Davis. Route map)

This being Massachusetts, we saw all kinds of roads. In particular a half-mile stretch of MA-129 in Wilmington had no pavement at all. "Twist foot to leave bike" appears to have become a sufficiently ingrained reflex now that I failed to die when my bike hit the first patch of loose sand there. But yeah, most of us kind of walked through most of that.

Today the assembled mob went out to Bedford via the bike path; then four of us rode on to Concord via MA-62, and came back via MA-2A. That put us riding on the Battle Road from Concord to Lexington during Patriot's Day weekend, which was busy but not terrible; we passed a fife-and-drum corps in Lexington. It did in fact turn out to be a pretty good day for it, not too cold, somewhat windy, but definitely the nicest day this weekend. Bike computer says 31.75 miles in all. (Route map)

Still trying to get the front derailleur adjusted correctly. On the way back I managed to push my chain off, though I'm not entirely sure how, and it went back on easily enough. I feel like the front shifter has four positions but the front chainring only three gears, which causes strange things to happen. If I haven't gotten this worked out when I take the bike into Wheelworks for the tune-up, I'll ask them about it.

Since everyone else is getting one, and since I'm not buying a house this year, I actually got into Wheelworks' annual sale and came away with a bike. Shiny!

( details )

This is one of my "routine" trips, but I don't seem to have it online yet. This is a straightforward 10-mile trip (my bike computer says 10.08, counting the distance to and from Ball Square) up to Winchester and back. It actually is reasonably scenic, especially the two miles along the Mystic Lakes, and (Boston Ave. aside) isn't too horrifically trafficky. (Route map)

( Detailed directions... )

Since

nuclearpolymer suggested a trip today, I've been watching the weather forecast. That forecast has had everything for today -- snow, clear with a high around 47, and pretty much everything in between. Reality seemed to be "windy with a high only around 40". This is not something I actually have the right clothes for.

We set out along the Minuteman. There was some intention of going on to Concord but consensus at Bedford was that we were just too cold to go on. We will not speak of the indignities that were visited upon me (though they did, I admit, keep my hands warmer). Had lunch at the Lexington Bertucci's, which was not really warm enough for my liking. Made it home with 24.42 miles on the bike computer. (Route map)

Let the record show that the forecast for this coming weekend, according to the NWS page I use, is for "mostly sunny with a high near 53" on Saturday and "a [30%] chance of rain, mostly cloudy, with a high near 52" on Sunday.

It was quite sunny out, and sort of acceptably warm, so I went along on

nuclearpolymer's jaunt out the Minuteman and back. It turns out to be four and a half miles from our place to hers, so while the trip for me was 24.39 miles the people who started in Arlington had a noticeably shorter trip. But...Minuteman. Yay. Bike. Yay. Obligatory route map. Yay.

There was a fair bit of ogling of

fredrickegerman's bike, which looks like a newer version of

nonnihil's. I haven't yet really figured out how to distinguish it from any other new road-ish bike, though there was quite a bit of examination of the brake/shifter assembly.

(For my own edification, my bike computer now says 1702.7 miles, which is all on this bike, all since...spring of 2004?)

People are talking about setting up a mailing list for trip organization.

desireearmfeldt loudly proclaims that LiveJournal communities are not the new email! So, um, poke me if you're interested.

I took advantage of the above-freezing temperatures yesterday to actually bike into work for the first time since, well, I worked at MIT. This worked out pretty well; at just over 3 miles, the trip took 25 minutes, time-competitive with the bus but not requiring careful synchronization. On the route I took it was probably faster than driving in rush-hour traffic. And they've converted a couple of parking spaces in the garage into a locked bike cage, with five or so ordinary bike racks inside, which converts to "lots of parking".

Now, if I can (a) get my bike research/shopping done and (b) increase my bicycle carrying capacity I'll be set...

I wasn't really motivated for a long ride this weekend, but I did want to get out of the house, so I rode out to Waltham to look at what remains of the Central Massachusetts Railroad (formerly the Massachusetts Central; subsequently briefly a branch of the Boston and Lowell, then the Boston and Maine). There is, in fact, an interlocking signal and a switch where the CMRR should branch off from the Fitchburg main line, but I don't think the track goes terribly far. There's quite a bit of evidence of it across Waltham if you know where to look; the most notable thing is the Waltham Highlands station at Hammond St. and Elson Rd.

From there I rode out just barely into Weston, around Cambridge Reservoir, and back through Lexington. Only one particularly notable hill (on Trapelo Road just west of 128). 28 miles. Not really gearing up for nuclearpolymer's century if I decide to do that, but hey, I got out on a nice reasonably cool August day. Route map

Wound up biking alone yesterday, after a three-week break. I didn't feel like doing a lot of planning, but the bike map suggests that it's possible to bike happily outside of 128 from Braintree to Waltham, so I headed out through Brookline with an eye for getting to the Blue Hills, maybe aiming for 50ish miles with some hills thrown in.

It's worth noting that the greater Jamaica Pond area is hillier than one might think from just driving around there. Also, that one should get their directions straight if they're trying to avoid the Arborway/Centre St intersection.

Left to my own, I made it 47 miles, going via Readville, out on 138 without doing anything particularly interesting in the Blue Hills, then clockwise back to Needham, at which point I headed back inbound, picking up 16 in Needham. I wound up taking a reasonably detailed tour of every commuter rail stop I passed, except for Norwood Center. I must have worn myself out early, along with being somewhat out of shape, since (especially right after lunch in Canton) I was trying hard to judge where exactly I should turn back and deciding if I really did have 10-15 miles left. If I wasn't right between trains I probably would have punted at Needham Junction.

Route map (since it's GPS now, you get to see all of the train-oriented noodling around); pictures (all of train stuff).

nuclearpolymer, narya, and I did a round-trip ride from Davis to ever-so-scenic Lawrence and Lowell on Saturday. This came in at 67.14 miles on my bike, thus accomplishing the "65-70 mile trip" goal. route map

Lawrence was, as expected, kind of a dump, though probably better than Fitchburg. Most of the vacant buildings were condemned, and at least a couple of new buildings were going up (one visibly new building, one contractor sign next to the big red X sign). Route 110 between Lawrence and Lowell was also 10 miles of dump; not actually many good scenic river views, broken beer bottles by the side of the road the whole way. Lowell turned out to be unexpectedly nice, with a fairly large downtown that looked at least somewhat populated.

Outside of the Merrimack corridor, the rest of the trip was pretty nice. The Lowell-to-Woburn route worked out pretty well; the Woburn-to-Lawrence route wasn't bad. We paid a surprise visit to remcat, since we were approximately there.

nuclearpolymer says she's addicted to the bike trip thing now. Quack.

A group of us met up at Porter Square on Sunday to take the train out to Fitchburg. Except that I couldn't find my Central Massachusetts bike map, and they seem to be out of print, but that's okay, because I can use the GPS toy to figure out where I am. And I couldn't find my bike computer after last week's expedition either, but I can use the GPS toy to track distance. And, oh yeah, I had planned the trip using the Saturday commuter rail schedule, but Sunday on the Fitchburg line is totally different. Whoops.

We instead set off (using

nuclearpolymer's "beyond the Minuteman" magic cards) for Nagog Pond in Acton. It was a ride. The first step was "ride to Carlisle" and the last step was "return from Concord", though, so it was 30 miles of routine stuff and 20 miles of New And Exciting Places. I have 48.29 miles in all, though stopping in outer Arlington rather than coming all the way back into Camberville (looks like another 5 miles); route map.

After all that, the GPS didn't die, and I at least found the bike computer when I got home. The first five miles were kind of rough, but then I got into things and it was better. I kind of think my next trip wants to be 65-70 miles but I'm not really clear where it would go; maybe to New Hampshire and back via Tewksbury? Also not clear when since people are coming in out of town not this weekend but the next two.

We did in fact succeed in biking to just across the Maine state line yesterday. We started at Maudslay State Park in western Newburyport, then rode east across Salisbury, up MA-1A and NH-1A along the New Hampshire coast, and then crossed on US-1 into Maine. Coming back was the same route except that we detoured along NH-1B into New Castle. Bike computer said 59.26 miles at the end. Route map

It looks like there's a rail-trail project to connect Kittery to Portland. One amusing aspect of this is "ET bike" signs that appear once you show up in Kittery. Didn't explore much from there. (Web-surfing indicates that the "cabbage" cars on the Downeaster have bike racks that can hold eightish unpacked bikes, though, reservations required, $5-10 extra.)

As far as the route goes...it was totally flat, which was nice, but we faced a pretty harsh headwind coming back, which wasn't nice. Salisbury is a dump, Seabrook is slightly less of a dump with a nuclear power plant, Hampton Beach is overrun with people (and so as a bike you'll be the fastest thing on the road), North Hampton and north is pretty nice. Several steel-grid deck bridges, which people with smaller tires found troublesome. There was often a sea wall between you and the ocean. In all it was probably a nicer ride than most of the other coastal rides I've done, but I'm not sure I'd recommend doing it again.

I didn't even realize I had a Seal of Approval...but that was a really nice ride yesterday, for the amount of detailed route planning that went into it. ("I am at point A; I want to be at point B; I follow the greenish roads on the bike map; done.") As advertised,

76trombones,

nuclearpolymer, and I took the train out to Ayer, rode up the Nashua River Rail Trail to the New Hampshire border. Then we followed uncolored roads to Westford or so, and green roads back to Carlisle, at which point routing reduces to a previously solved problem ("the Minuteman"). 47.74 miles, says the bike, counting home-to-Porter and coming all the way back home. Route map

(A trip planning note: you can use the Minuteman to make any west-oriented trip 10 miles longer. Because now it's not "zomg 45 miles", it's "35 miles plus the Minuteman", and the Minuteman is so familiar that you can count it as home. And then next week you say "well, I went 45 miles last week, so 45 plus the Minuteman should be easy"...)

But the route turned out to be remarkably scenic. The NRRT is pretty (busier than I remembered, but still better than the Minuteman), and we passed farms and houses and ponds and stuff without being overly desolate or overly suburban. It was warm but it didn't start feeling actively hot until we got into Arlington. It was a little hilly, but I think there was only one moderate climb, a 1/3-mile section just before the Dunstable/Tyngsboro line. And we did hold up reasonably on moving at a sensible speed and not taking too many breaks.

A huge mob of people -- ten in all! -- left from Davis Square on a sunny but not too toasty Memorial Day for the coast. We went up to Winchester, and from there up Washington Street into Woburn, then turned east and went to Salem; if you look at the canonical bike map this is actually pretty obvious, and much nicer than going through Malden and Lynn. We then went over not-the-default-bridge from Salem into Beverly, probably also a win, ate lunch, deposited people at the train station in Manchester, and went off to Rockport.

Useful bits of advice: if you try this, Beverly is pretty deserted around the train station, but a couple of blocks to the east on Cabot Street looked pretty settled. The southernmost chunk of 127 in Beverly is kind of unpaved at the moment, but we cleverly went around it. It looks like they're actually building 1A south of the Giant Bridge between Beverly and Salem along the commuter rail right-of-way, more reason to go around. Oh yeah, and bring weaponry in case your commuter rail car coming back is overrun with teenage girls screaming something in the vague rhythm of a Dave Matthews Band song; for yourself or them, either way you'll be glad.

Route map

Went on

nuclearpolymer's bike trip yesterday, along with

narya and

dcltdw. We rode out to the end of the bike path, then from Bedford up 225 to Carlisle, then down to Concord, then back on 62 to Bedford. Bike says 37.82 miles. Note to self: acquire long-sleeved bike shirt if it doesn't warm up by two weeks. Route map here.

I figured I'd take a 25ish mile trip out around Cambridge Reservoir (much like Arlington's Great Meadows, in Lexington). This expedition started by going across the Fitchburg Cutoff trail, then across Brighton Street in Belmont and up the hill. The Arlmont Hill climb took a little more out of me than I really expected. (Note to self: remember to bring food, even on "short" trips.) I headed out on Concord Ave., which also isn't terribly flat, so I turned off towards Lexington and came back by the bike path; busy, but not unmanageable (no baby SUVs or rollerbladers with iPods). Route map here.

Here we also discover a failure of the GPS plot. The data set I have doesn't know about things like the various local rail-trail conversions. While Mass. Ave. approximates the Minuteman, nothing's really that close to the Fitchburg Cutoff trail aside from the commuter rail proper, and the GPS is clever enough to know I'm not biking on that. My planned return route came back via Belmont Center, so it concluded that I had gone outside of 128 and come back without telling it and the nearest match from my current location to the route was on the way back. Not so useful. Finding out that Brighton Street didn't actually go anywhere useful past Route 60 was a positive use of modern technology, though.

Total of 17 miles. Climbing Arlmont Hill looks like about a 3% grade climbing 250 feet in a mile and a half; coming down the Minuteman from Lexington is more of a 1% grade.

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.

narya and I did the 92-mile version of the CRW Climb to the Clouds yesterday. Finished, though very last (or very close to last) out of anybody who did any of the Concord routes. I got the mountain bike lecture from one of the trailers ("think of it as adding 20 miles to your ride"; does this mean I did an effective century?). But we did finish, even if my body started complaining that it was really really tired around mile 80 or so, and so the little hills in Acton and Concord were wiping me out even though they were, by the outside-of-495 standards of earlier in the ride, pretty wimpy.

In the process got rained on, rather heavily in outer Sterling and more normally in the Stow/Boxborough area on the return. The biker uniform dries pretty quickly, it turns out, though my bike computer stops registering if water gets around the contacts. And so my bike wound up with only 83 miles on it; there were times when it was "hmm, I'm racing downhill but my speed is 0.0" or "I feel like I'm going at a continuous speed, around 16.3, 10.2, 16.1, 8.4 mph". (route)

Yesterday's bike trip was to scope out the difference between the long and short versions of the Climb to the Clouds next weekend, to try to pick between the 60, 80, and 90-mile rides. I rode out to Concord in the obvious way, then followed the arrows painted on the ground to Bolton and back. Trying to enter the route, I discovered that the arrows don't quite match up with the online version of the cue sheet. But it was a ride, 78 miles, and I survived going alone without killing myself. The end conclusion was that the extra mileage wasn't that bad, a little harder going out than coming back, two big climbs on the loop I took of which the first was 15-20 miles in from the start and the second also appears on the short route and is 20 easy miles from the end of the long route. (route)

Also, TIGER thinks my favoritest street in the world (well, at least in Concord; less favorite than "A Street, Downtown" off of 880) is Old Road to 9 Acre Cor.

As has been documented elsewhere, several of us headed southwest yesterday. This started without a plan, but having lunch in Norfolk we looked at the map and said "hey, Rhode Island isn't that far away". So we went, and came back.

narya and I did a total of 83 miles, believing my bike over hers. Also, my bike ticked over 1,000 miles in North Cambridge on the way out.

South Street in Needham is a total biker hangout. (By which we mean the spandex kind, not the leather kind.) Pretty flat, pretty wooded, pretty low traffic. That, and Pine Street between Dover and Medfield, were nice biking places. You could probably come up with a much shorter loop going Needham to Medfield and back via commuter rail. (route)

After an hour on the train chatting with Conductor Bob about biking and heat restrictions and explaining to

narya about welded rail and the delay-in-block rule, we rode from Worcester to Fitchburg, with an explicit goal of getting some hills in. It took 10 miles or so to get out of ( Worcester ) We rode past Wachusett Reservoir, then turned left and started heading through the hills. Hills are...hilly; we discovered that

narya can climb faster and for longer, but neither of us was really successful at climbing hills of any length. Descending is somehow much easier. We wandered through ( back roads ) a bit, and appeared at the top of a nastyish hill in Princeton Center. No food there made us sad. We rested for about half an hour or so, then headed north to the entrance to Wachusett Mountain State Park. Stopped there for a short bit, then rode downhill (mmm, hot rims) and mostly coasted most of the way into Fitchburg.

In all, 35 miles. (

narya had originally thought 40ish, and when we were at 23 at the side of Wachusett Mountain she was a little worried about time. Then when we crossed from Westminster into Fitchburg I explained that, no, my estimate was just an estimate, and I thought it was two more miles to the train station, so we'd barely clear 30. Mmm, accuracy...though we still showed up with enough time to find lunch, going with the stylish Fitchburg Jade [which puts bread in with your take-out Chinese order] over their neighbor [who would let you substitute French fries for rice].) (route)

There was a not-quite-accomplished plan of getting to Plum Island yesterday. We (with special guest

nuclearpolymer) rode up through Winchester and Woburn and Reading, then turned right to head through Middleton and Topsfield. Bradley Palmer State Park, between Topsfield and Ipswich, was actually pretty nice. We got to Ipswich, stopped for a bit, and rode out to Jeffries Neck; then we got back to the mainland, headed north on 1A, got to Newburyport, and realized that we didn't have time to both get to Plum Island and catch the 6:00 commuter rail back, so we stopped there. With some additional toodling around in Somerville, my bike claimed 62.77 miles, or 101.02 km. (route)

Combining the publicly available information about Google Maps, a copy of the Census Bureau's TIGER database imported into PostgreSQL, some Python hacking, and general navigational memory, I now have bike trips projected on to Google Maps.

The big problem right now is TIGER's view of the world being slightly different from Google's; if you zoom in a lot, you can see the points not lining up. Also, look at the bridge between Salem and Beverly in the Rockport trip, which follows TIGER's reality and not Google's. (I also found one bug in TIGER/Line 2003, which I should figure out how to report.) There are also limits (in some cases the Google Maps JavaScript hangs, I'm not sure when but trimming out points seems to help), and a report that this doesn't work under IE.

There was this brilliant idea that we'd have an semi-organized 60ish-mile ride yesterday. "We" turned out to be only three people. But we left Davis, and headed to Mem. Drive to the BU Bridge. Where a brilliant cyclist shot out from a building and across the path, causing everyone he cut off to stop suddenly. My rear wheel wasn't on the pavement somehow, lost control, didn't unclip, left leg sad. Stopped by ET to attempt to address this, but really, I was functional, so we kept going.

More thrilling urban riding brought us to the Southwest Corridor park. Personally, I was underwhelmed, but we made it all the way to the Arborway T stop, uh, that's Forest Hills, yeah. Backtracked into JP for lunch, wandered through Franklin Park, then the Forest Hills Cemetery on the way to Mattapan Square. (Nice cemetery, incidentally; it felt much more...intimate? than the vast suburban cemeteries I've experienced before.) Rode all the way down Blue Hill Ave., into the Blue Hills Reservation, and over Chickatawbut Hill. (Always reassuring that you can climb the hills that people who passed you earlier have to walk up.) We crossed 128, headed back west...and ran into horrible tire issues and aborted to the Braintree T stop. This wound up being only 35 miles in all, but with the heat and humidity (one of those electronic-light signs that banks tend to have, though this one wasn't on a bank, said 97 degrees in JP) it was still a pretty good ride. (route)

Rant the first: HEY YOU! YEAH YOU THERE, ON THE BIKE! Get a helmet! Ride on the right side of the street! Raise your seat! Inflate your tires! Don't ride at night without lights!

( Rant the second )

Went all the way up the North Shore with

narya for, on my bike, just shy of 55 miles (far enough that the 1% difference in what our bikes report is noticeable). You can get from civilization to Lynn, roughly by following 60 through Malden and then not turning where it heads for the rotary-o-doom at 1, but it's not really that much fun. Then it was an exercise in following numbered roads over streets not paved particularly well; 129 to Marblehead, a path back to Salem, then 1A across the Huge Gratuitous Bridge! to Beverly to 127 to Rockport.

( Exercises in how to die on a bike )

Also, the sucktastic Massachusetts pavement was out in force. Just how craptactular was it, you ask? It was so suckalicious, that

narya lost the bag on the back of her bike in a pothole somewhere between Manchester and Gloucester.

( And then, in Rockport, we didn't actually bring any home )

Rockport itself was nice (I always trip on the REM reference though). We stopped, and got ice cream. There was a Very Special commuter rail ride home. We explored the wonders of Leverett Circle on a bike (conveniently not a circle now, but why isn't there a good way to get between Boston and Cambridge by bike?) and got home and showered. (route)

I had this whole weekend thing planned out so that when it finally quit raining I'd be able to go out on the three-day-weekend Monday and bike. But it quit raining early, and yesterday was already booked, so I didn't get out until today. The plan was a little lacking, but it started with crossing the Charles at Harvard Square, going down North Harvard Street to Cambridge Street to Brighton Center, then following Chestnut Hill Ave. to Route 9 to Lee Street to Clyde Street, and ultimately to West Roxbury Parkway. Go through Stony Brook Reservation, past Readville commuter rail, and ultimately wind up in the Blue Hills Reservation.

So this worked great. Cross 128 at 138 and head for Canton Junction...and the sky opens up. Oops. Try to not drown for a few minutes, give up when the trees start dripping too and head on. Get to the commuter rail at 3:15...there was a 3:00 train back into Boston, next train is at 5. Wander around the station for maybe 15 minutes before figuring out that Attleborough and Stoughton are on the same schedule card and the reason the "weekend" block doesn't mention Stoughton at all is because the train just doesn't go to Stoughton on weekends. Well, onward...get to Norwood Depot at 4:15, the next train there is at 5:07 but it's clear that Murphy has connected the weather to waiting for this train, so after 45 sunny minutes the train appears, it's a somewhat irritatingly slow local until we pass Readville inbound and are on the Southwest Corridor.

The T cleverly scheduled construction work on the Red Line over a holiday weekend, and bikes and bustitution don't play together, so biked (in the rain, of course) from South Station to Kendall, then T'd to Davis, and came home. About 27 miles of actual biking; with better weather, the plan likely would have been to come north from Norwood just outside 128 then come back in from Weston or somethere like that. (route)

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.

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.

Did ~nothing on Saturday. Went to Hall's Pond on Sunday, and followed this up with a bike ride since it stopped raining.

( 37 miles )

Happiness is being able to knock off ten miles before breakfast.

Current Mood: slightly sore

Things I screwed up yesterday:

(1) My bike computer has two buttons, one on the front and one on the back. If you press them both together, the whole thing resets, and it loses all of its saved state...including the odometer reading. You can set it from the hard-reset state. I know I passed 500 in Nashua last August. If since then I came back from Nashua to Lowell, went from Rockport to Salem, and took two local 30-mile trips, that leaves me around 610. Which is what I set the odometer to.

(2) You use the bolt on the bottom of the shifter to take the shifter assembly apart. None of the screws seem to actually do anything. But it seems like you need to put tension on the rotating part to install it. Maybe that's not right. But right now it's in a state where the rear shifter is in its highest gear, and I can shift down but it doesn't "stick"; I pop right back up to the top gear when I let go of the lever. More frobbing is in order.

There's been a cold going around work that I caught. It's not a very consistent cold; the woman who runs the mini-cafeteria downstairs said that people seemed to feel terrible on days one and three, and sure enough, I felt pretty out of it on both Wednesday and Friday. Today I think I'm feeling better, which is good. No plans, so maybe I'll try to get outside (again).

Got dragged biking yesterday. Not the greatest or worst of ideas, I only made it up the Minuteman to the Lexington line before saying "nope, I'm stopping here for 10 minutes then going home", so ten miles, at least. Ran into someone with Presta valves wanting to borrow my bike pump. In theory my pump should work with both kinds of valves and I switched the magic adapter for him, but it didn't seem to be terribly successful.

After ET dinner, a small mob of us went to Somerville to play games. I made the factory strategy work in Puerto Rico finally! (And noticing that the Eschaton was nigh, decided to buy a large building instead of a harbor, but I was ahead by enough points at the end of the game that that didn't actually matter.) Got my ass handed to me in Cities and Nights! (My initial build was on the 8-4 of wood on the wood port, which would have been great if either (a) 8s got rolled or (b) the 8 didn't spend half the game robbered; plus, I got seriously scrod the first time the pirates landed, and produced neither rock nor wheat, so I ended the game with five settlements and only like two slots on the little flip-card, where there were two metropolises out there at game end.) Sick and helpless in game == not good; oh well.

Current Mood: less sick, I think

Went 35 miles, from Ayer to Nashua, NH, then down to Lowell to take the train back. Nashua River Rail Trail was nice. Odometer clicked over 500 miles in Nashua. My preschool is attached to a UU church with rainbow banners out front; how cool is that? Also, never go to Lowell.

( Read more... )

Bike. At night is a nice time to ride. The bike path is not such a nice place for it. Need better lights. I'm contemplating insanity, probably on Saturday: train to Ayer, Nashua River Rail Trail and then Route 111 to Nashua, NH, then back to either Lowell (~40 miles total) or all the way back (~60 miles total). Estimates are probably low, especially the Lowell-to-Somerville difference.

SIPB. So glad I've refrained from entering any of the conversation. So sad that some people just seem to be out to prevent anything from being done. So terrible that others just seem to want to release random flames. Not My Problem.

Work. I seem to have landed myself a Project. If I can get myself into it, I should be really psyched about it. Goal for this week: get really psyched about it. I was able to combine our product and my l33t DocBook sk1llz fairly prettily, though.

On LiveJournal. Don't know how sketchy it is to LJ-friend random undergrads, both ones I've met and ones I haven't. Should come up with a good way to read journals without LJ-friending. Stupid multi-purpose ACLs. Found the empty

leland_hs community. Amused by posts about beds in

davis_square. People who post ads to multiple communities in the same geographic area suck. High-traffic communities and RSS feeds make your friends list difficult to read.

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.

( details )

Went out on Sunday with

cfox for an extensive exploration of the Minuteman and associated trails. We rode out to Bedford, with a stop for birding at the pond just past 128, then rode the Narrow-Gauge Rail Trail north into Billerica, came back, and rode out on the Reformatory Branch Trail west into Concord. The total came out to just over 40 miles; we took enough breaks that it wasn't particularly tiring for me.

If you're up for something beyond the Minuteman and have reasonable tires, the northward trail is a nice extra ride. It was just over 15 miles from home to the end of the trail. From the Bedford depot, turn right; the trail is a block up on the left (signed "no motor vehicles"). The first bit is paved, beyond that it's unpaved but surfaced. It was a lot less crowded than the Minuteman proper. There's a couple of spaces you can stop and walk around if you want to.

In other news, we've been told we're definitely not working over the long weekend. Yay! I should try to get another trip together; maybe "bike back from Rockport" will work. Don't know if I have other plans or not.

This was one of those mad biking plans. It was a bit longer than I had expected, and not really as scenic. Nice day for it, at least, a little warm but not so terrible I was perpetually overheating. Brief summary: 37 miles from the Plymouth commuter rail to the Wollaston (Quincy) T stop, in about four hours, mostly following route 3A.

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I've been asked to evaluate bike routes to a particular office park in Waltham. I figured since it was comparatively warm today it might be clever for me to go out and try it. Conclusion: it's not actually that warm, I'm not actually that buff, and that part of Waltham doesn't actually want to be biked to.

I got to Alewife without too much trouble. From there I decided to try the Fitchburg Cutoff path. This alternated between mud and sheets of ice, so it wasn't really that bikeable. I was stubborn. From the other end of the path, I biked into Belmont Center. The map I had with me showed a hill leaving Belmont. This turned out to be more hill than I could handle. In fact, it wound up being quite a bit of continuous hill, more than that one little arrow implied. As in, I wound up two blocks on the Belmont side down Park Ave. where it intersects Route 2.

I foolishly pressed on. More hilliness. I made it to Concord Ave., which seemed okay aside from being a two-lane 40 mph road with a cruddy surface. (Everything has a cruddy surface now, though.) This led to another big hill, which I again walked up. But when I got to the top, I was at the corner of Pleasant St., which was where I ultimately decided to turn back.

Right on Pleasant, cross under Route 2. Follow it where it merges with Route 2, then turn right on Mass. Ave. I tried cutting over to the Minuteman trail, but this also screamed of icy sheets of death, so I just headed down Mass. Ave. to Arlington Center, then took Broadway back into Somerville and towards home. (For readers attempting this in reverse, you'd cut over to Mass. Ave. at either of the first two crossings after you reach Lexington; the second was just past the 4-mile marker.)

I'm looking at this clear but vaguely chilly weather we're having, and wondering what it's like to bike in it. I certainly survived skiing in sub-zero temperatures pretty well. Boston tomorrow is expecting a high of 22 and a low of 8; adding in wind of 20 mph gives a wind chill around 4 degrees, which isn't terrible (just remember to dress warmly). So maybe tomorrow I want to try biking to work and to the evening SFB run, and then not have to deal with the T afterwards. And if that works I can think about taking more involved trips; if it doesn't, I'm not so far from home that I can't just give up.

MIT was nice enough to give us extra paid vacation between Christmas and IAP, so I've been home. The laptop has been getting a lot of love; I played through a few more Railroad Tycoon 3 scenarios, and played some Loco-Commotion, which is a cute puzzle game that comes bundled with RT3. I've also spent too much time figuring out Troubles of Middle Earth, yet another Angband variant. (I think I don't like it as much as vanilla Angband: there's too many things floating around, and the multiple town/dungeon pairs are confusing and you have to remember where you left things. It also seems like powerful weapon artifacts are coming up far too shallow.)

Since Boston has been stupidly warm, I also got around to replacing the tires on my bike with something more road-worthy. I rode 15 miles today. (The Minuteman trail is much less crowded on December 31 than June 31, somehow.) The bike was fine; the rear derailleur needs adjustment again, but I can do that myself. I did manage to find the Fitchburg Cutoff trail near Alewife and rode out along that, discovering that new tires aren't so friendly with mud as the old knobbies were.

Otherwise, productivity has been down. I've had to battle the forces of entropy in the kitchen to be able to cook for myself (yes, I do do that sometimes). But I haven't updated my Debian packages, or my firewall rules. Or done work, though that's a little more expected. Maybe I'll order some things online and claim productivity that way.

Profile

dmaze

Page Summary

[bike] Catching up
[bike] Revenge of the Apple Monument!
[bike] All patriotic and stuff
[bike] New
[bike] Winchester Loop
[bike] *shiver*
[bike] Minuteman
Biked to work!
[bike] Touring the Central Mass (Railroad)
[bike] Touring the commuter rail system
[bike] The scenic Merrimack valley
[bike] "Nagog" isn't some IETF thing?
[bike] The Mad Maine Trip
[bike] The dzm Seal of Approval
[bike] Rockport, via the inland route
[bike] To Bedford...and beyond!
[bike] Arlmont Hill
[bike] First ride of the season
[Bike] Climb Near The Clouds
[Bike] Bolton preview
[Bike] Rode to Rhode Island
[Bike] Wachusett, Wachusett
[Bike] There were no comics
Google Maps + Biking
[Bike] Twice the T tokens, twice the fun!
[Bike] (Don't Go Back To) Rockport
[Bike] Canton, then, um, oops
[Bike] For completeness...
[Bike] Melrose/Stoneham: Enh
Short weekend summary
Bike is better now
Bike oopses
Sniffling and gaming
Bike: New Hamster
<formalpara>
Lance I ain't
Still more biking
Plymouth to Quincy
Ill-advised biking
Too cold to bike?
Winter break

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