mr_bill

This is part of the short WHDH montage celebrating Mayor Menino. Just got to say, thank you Mayor.



-mr. bill

rholland1951

Amen!

rod

sherbornpeddler

Bravo. Thanks mr. bill.

jimmuller 

SBP, that sounds like a great ride. You're in our usual stomping ground here, you know. We need to plan on a joint ride next spring, you and Mrs. SBP and my sweetie stoking the tandem of course.

mr_bill, nice tribute to Mr. Menino. Indeed we miss him already. A politician who seemed to care more for his city and its people than for his own political agenda. A man who was easy to like. Hard to believe, isn't it? Too bad he didn't have much time to enjoy his retirement.

sherbornpeddler

JimM,
i agree with your comments about The Mayor. I also agree it would be fun to ride your stomping grounds. We've no tandem and Mrs SBP is dedicated to her new Giant. I'll plan on riding a Raleigh with proper sewups.

Jim from Boston

+10. In particular as a citizen of Boston I am grateful for his improvements for cycling in the Olde Towne: the Hubway Bike Share, extended bike lanes, Hub on Wheels and TD Mayor’s Cup, and appointment of a Bicycle Czarina, Nicole Friedman.

A few years ago were some news stories about him taking up cycling for exercise around his home. Since I occasionally rode through Hyde Park on my morning commute I was always hoping to meet him. My son was at that time doing a Boston Latin School fellowship in his Office, so we had a tenuous personal connection. Hizzoner wrote Mike an elegant and personal letter of recommendation (which we suspect was actually penned by a staff member, but signed by him).

sherbornpeddler

JimM,
i agree with your comments about The Mayor. I also agree it would be fun to ride your stomping grounds. We've no tandem and Mrs SBP is dedicated to her new Giant. I'll plan on riding a mink blue Raleigh with proper sewups.

DBrim

I hid from the weather this weekend, but it inspired me to get the rest of the clothes I need for winter. Bring it on... later this week.

rholland1951

Rode out to Lexington Center on the Minuteman tonight, ten miles after work and after dark (but isn't everything, now?), temperatures in the low 40s to high 30s, depending on just where and when the thermometer got read, pulled some of my Winter wardrobe out for the first time, got the layers about right to satisfy the "cool, not cold" desideratum. The Egg has made it to November. A few subtle remnants of the Night Chorus remain, but a solitary devotee of hops by the trailside took up some of the slack by saluting me with a thunderous belch.

rod

jimmuller 

I've been too busy for the past few days to post anything but I have been riding some. Did my commute yesterday and this morning (so far, since I'm still at work). Yesterday I first stopped by the polls, locked my bike to a barrier, went inside and voted. The weather was cool but tolerable. I dressed like I was x-c skiing, and that was really too much. This morning was warmer.

Traffic was light yesterday morning but a little frenetic in the evening. I figured the morning go-to-work traffic might have been spread out by the voting, and the evening characterized by people rushing to vote before going home for dinner. However this morning's traffic was light too. I got an earlier start than usual but I don't think explains it since I've had early starts before and it never made that much difference. So I hypothesize that people who work by daylight are now heading off to work earlier than they were last week. This evening's return home will be interesting.

Yesterday's return was the second I've done almost entirely in the dark and the first done in the dark through the peak of rush hour. It wasn't so different from doing it by day. BRIGHT lights help me see, and running both steady and blinking taillights (and reflective clothing) help me be seen. Drivers were generally courteous, just as they usually have been. Woburn Center was lit up like a baseball field and most of the rest of the trip is on roads with large shoulders. Those shoulders still have lots of debris from last week's storm though. Also some dump truck carrying gravel must have run from W.C. into Lexington. I know that because it left a breadcrumb trail of gravel littering the shoulder the entire way. It's not a threat to the tires but it makes for a slightly unsteady ride sometimes.

For various reasons I didn't ride on Monday, but considering how long it took me to get in, I might as well have. But it gave me the chance to check out the roads at that hour by car. I'm glad to have ridden yesterday and today. Great fun, a great way to get to work.

DBrim

Yeah, the first real night commute was definitely an interesting experience for me, particularly because I do not have any night riding experience. To me, pavement variation was much more of a concern than traffic, mostly because I've invested in good, visible lights. I'm glad that I'm riding into work in the mornings now, since it helps to offset the semi-sadness of riding home in the dark. Riding by the ocean when the sun is down has its own appeal, though.

The commute this morning was extremely pleasant, apart from the headwind. Almost took off the knee warmers halfway in.

rholland1951

Rode out to Lexington Center and back tonight, 10 miles, temperature in the low 40s with a gusty wind, dressed for bluster and got bluster. Rode past a sparsely-attended game between Arlington Catholic and Newburyport. Enjoyed the hissing of the fallen leaves when I rode through drifts of them, and the soughing of the wind in the treetops, and in my ears. Rode home with a veiled moon.







rod

jimmuller 

I do have some night riding experience, not a lot but enough not to be frightened by it. I've had generator-driven lights on my Peugeot for many decades and would occasionally go out at night just because. Modern lights sure make it better.

+1 on the bluster part. My commute in this morning was characterized by wet roads under a gray but dry sky. The ride home was a taste of winter, dry, cold and getting colder, and windy. The air feels different somehow.

Drivers are losing patience with each other. Fortunately it rarely make any difference to me on my bike.

sherbornpeddler

I had the opportunity to take a mid day ride in Boston with a friend to places we wanted to see.
Gosh it was great.
The theme was the Shawmut peninsula aka Boston and change. In "The Leopard" Lampedusa wrote,"If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change." Here is our eclectic ride through bits and pieces of change.

We started on Cambridge St in Alston and rode across the river to Fort Washington, 795 Mass Ave, Cambridge. The beautiful park has 3 cannon still guarding marsh and Charles River for the Siege of Boston.
This was a good start to look at Pelham's 1777 map to visualize the peninsula before all the filling.
We rode out behind the park, across the Grand Junction Railroad to the bicyclist's dream road, Vassar St, with separate lanes for everyone. We rode over former marsh past MIT's Briggs Field.
We re-crossed the Charles on Mass Ave and admired the plaque honoring Mr. Houdini for his many escapes involving the Charles.
We rode through to Peter's Park, 230 Shawmut Ave, Boston, MA to look at a monument placed during the Menino era to mark the isthmus that is now Washington St.
Next we stopped to admire architectural change and the preservation of the Hayden Richardson Building, the last brownstone commercial building designed by Richardson who is more famous for the Trinity Church in Copley Square, aka Back Bay. We did stop to admire the Liberty Tree plaque at 630 Washington St, the meeting place for the Sons of Liberty and used to hang replicas of Tories in favor of the Stamp Act.
We stopped to admire a fine example of the new, the LEEDS certified environmentally friendly Radian Building on 120 Kingston St, Boston, MA.
Couldn't help but stop for a lobster roll at Mr. Hooks, the site of a future mixed use building on 15 Northern Ave.
Next inland up to Spring Lane off Washington by Water St. The spring was the water supply for old Boston and the site of Mary Hutchinson's house before she left for religious freedom in Rhode island.

Then over the hill to Back Bay and the PBL at 700 Boylston St (opposite Richardson's Trinity Church) to check in on the Map exhibit.
By then we were over dosed on land and sea changes so we decided to find the South End Ball Park and did but it is being dug up for a new building in Roxbury Crossing next to Ruggles on Columbus Ave and Cunard St.

We gave up and followed paths near the Muddy River out to the Charles and rode the PDW back to our start in Alston. 16 miles, two lobster rolls and more than 300 years of Houdini like change.

rholland1951

SBP,

Your ability to turn a bicycle into a time machine is admirable. Puts "century ride" in a whole new light...

rod

jimmuller 

What he said, all over again.

Boston has some incredible architecture. Sometimes it is easy to overlook or take for granted. Every now and then it confronts you and you are astounded.

Thanks for the travelogue.

DBrim

Quick 16 miles around Salem and Marblehead this afternoon. Salem is much more rideable now that the tourists have dispersed. The Marblehead Rail Trail has really changed character in the last month, and today it was muddy enough from Thursday's rains that my bike needs a bath. A run-in with an underleashed dog took me into the weeds, and I ran over a stick large enough to break the quick release brackets on my front fender. No tire damage, at least, and it's still rideable until my replacements get here. It just means that I have to deal with a nice rattle for the next week or so. Nothing like a few trail encounters to exercise one's misanthropy, I suppose.

The good news is that I found the mid 40s temperatures and the moderate breeze to be pretty comfortable for a long-ish ride. I was definitely taking it a bit easy with the velocity, though, to avoid over-sweating.

rholland1951

Yo-yoed out to Lexington Center and back on the Minuteman this evening, cool, calm, and dark. At the turnaround, the moon was wrapped in dark clouds like so many feather boas, then performed a divine burlesque act, getting quite nekkid and shiny by the time I reached Arlington Center. Hubba hubba!

rod

rholland1951

Sticks sucked under fenders can cause bad crashes; there are some long and hair-raising threads about that elsewhere. Glad your incident was relatively mild. If your fender brackets gave way, that's the best outcome. Out of curiosity, what make/model fenders were you using?

rod

DBrim

Planetbike Cascadia (Hybrid sized)

rholland1951

Thanks. I run the ATB variant of those on one of the Surlys. Good to know they fail the right way in that situation.

rod

sherbornpeddler

That never occurred to me. Most of what is one our roads are colorful leaves but Nature's pruning has dropped a lot of branches. In the right kind of snow can pack in between the tires and fenders but that is too early to contemplate. My English 3 speed and single speed have metal fenders with bolted on metal stays. I put a pair of plastic 3/4 fenders on my regular road bike where there isn't clearance for full fenders. The stays meet at a block of hard rubber that are held in place with heavy duty rubber bands. I suppose those might break away but it is hard to imagine something binding enough to seize a wheel. Fall riding does have it's challenges.

DBrim

Not to mention that riding on wet leaves is like riding on banana peels.

Rear flat on the commute this morning. Luckily temperatures were comfortable and it's a slow time at work (and my boss is an understanding man). Patching this tube will be an adventure since there's no visual indication that I was able to find as to why it was flat.

The cold, it is coming. Everybody ready?

jimmuller 

It was about 32degF when I left the house this morning. I was dressed for x-c skiing, wasn't cold. By the time I got to Arlington I was beginning to sweat. The ride home will be warm.

No visible cause for the flat? Most likely it was caused by a tiny thorn, sliver of glass, or strand of wire, and whatever it was may still be embedded in the tire. Pull the tube out, pump it up enough to make it look a bit like Bibendum, and hold it under water. You may have to let the water settle down before you see anything. Then search that area of the tire for the offending bit. Of course you may know all this already.

rholland1951

I find that I mostly find sharp objects embedded in the tread by touch, rather than by sight; then it's time for the pliers...

rod