Ghazmh

I hit up the Kickstand Cafe in Arlington Center once or twice every summer. My personal favorite is The Sparrow on the CCRT in Orleans.

Panza

Bless you Bill. This gives me a lot of rides to create.

I feel better riding longer when I know I have a purpose or a place to go to.

mr_bill

Not my bike. (I walked.) This is nuts - Tryst Arlington Center.



-mr. bill

jimmuller 

I rode my Grandis to work this morning. I did not ride it home. Now it sits forlornly in my office all alone.

rholland1951

As the Accident willed it, the bicycle committees of Arlington, Lexington, and Bedford were holding their annual Tri-Town meeting in the Arlington Town Hall when the heavens opened. Some folks couldn't get through and attended by speakerphone, some arrived by car, a few made it through on bicycles. One of those was Richard Fries, Executive Director of MassBike. When I showed your picture of the bike awash in Arlington Center, he laughed and said, "That's my bike!"

rod

mr_bill

https://www.twitter.com/RichardFries/...75297096114179

His shot of his bike.

He ate at Tryst too last night. We were sitting at a window table. While he was locking up his bike, I told my spouse, "That's Richard Fries, director of MassBike."

It's a small big community, or a big small community.

-mr. bill

autonomy

No love for Haute Coffee im Concord? Seems to be the Peloton meeting grounds

autonomy

Nice bike. Is that titanium and a Brooks saddle I see?

I actually raced against the storm yesterday. There were plenty of cyclists and runners on the trail that I had to dodge, hope they all made it in time. Skies did not look fun - funnely. Got home juuuust as I was starting to get wet, skies opened up 5 minutes after I shut the door so I call that a win. Also, fastest time ever door-to-door, 82% of my previous 'good time'. And apparently this happened in Arlington: https://twitter.com/RealRonnieWhite/...988352/photo/1

rholland1951

An Arlington friend with a rain gauge in his garden reported 2.6" of rain.

rod

Ghazmh

Rain rain go away.........

Wednesday morning has been my pick of the week so far. I made it out Monday, Wednesday and this morning-Thursday. Monday and Wednesday was with my R3, for some reason the grass was a little greener, the bird songs a little more cheerful, and the sunrise prettier Wednesday morning. Today expecting summer rain I rode my Roubaix, thankfully the rain came about 45 minutes after getting home. The past 2-3 weeks seemingly the only others I see is the occasional commuter or large groups in a pace line passing me as if I'm standing still. Last month I was kinda mystified as a large and really fast group again passed me going uphill on Monument st. I matched pace with a few guys who they dropped and they were cruising along at 25 mph. I can only imagine how fast the main group was.

rholland1951

Rolled out on the Ebisu for 10 miles before dinner, under a gray sky that was no doubt filled with Chinese dragons, celestial bureaucrats of clouds and rain. Coming and going I encountered a middle-aged Chinese man singing in a beautiful baritone voice; the songs sounded elegiac, and I thought of Liu Xiaobo, then wondered if the singer was thinking of him, too. I barely had time for the ride, and didn't stop for photos; the swans in Peepers Pond were ready for their close-ups, but I just kept pedaling, and logged a pace that was 10% faster than usual.


rod

jimmuller 

No pics today. I just rode to work and back as usual. Today I took the fendered Raleigh and wore my rain suit (with the shoe covers in my handlebar bag). Of course it didn't rain a drop. Because why? Because I rode the fendered Raleigh and wore my rain suit, that's why.

Panza

At least it's not an electrical groupset.

jimmuller 

I took the Motobecane out for a short spin today. I wasn't really sure where to go when I started but as I went west from home I decided to to try some new roads. I ended up running north from Bedford Center on Springs Rd. Rode past Rogers VA Medical Facility (I think that's what the signs called it) and Middlesex Community College. It had some swoopy hills up and down, down and up, got narrow and dark in places. I didn't stop to take any pics because I was afraid of what might come out of the woods, Sasquatch or some other strange beast, or maybe a banjo player. At one intersection I stopped to check the map on my phone - ah, if I go straight here and then a left it will take me to Rt 4 and some semblance of civilization. Interesting discovery.

I ended up with 34.5 miles.

rholland1951

My schedule Saturday was a trifle confused, and after taking a spin up to Lexington Center to keep the moving parts moving, I spent some time in Arlington Center, gathering data on how cyclists, motorists, and pedestrians are adapting to the new signals and striping at the Mystic Street and Swan Place crossings. Not surprisingly, ambiguities in control are leading to vagaries in behavior: folks are making it up as they go along, in the absence of clear guidance. To put it another way, the Mystic Street intersection is unambiguous for Westbound riders, and they generally do the right thing. The same is true of Swan Place for most Eastbound riders. But the Mystic Street intersection presents Eastbound riders with a choice point with a cyclomatic complexity of 8 or so, one alternative that is "right" according to the designers, another 3 or 4 that are "wrong" but legal, and several that are dangerous, illegal, or both. I saw all these play out over the course of half an hour of observation. Swan Place presents Westbound cyclists with its own special fun, some of that having to do with the HAWK light, how that's actuated, and how drivers interpret it. Arlington Center is a bit more of a circus than usual as a result of all this emergent behavior, a good place to keep your eyes open and your wits about you.

Swan feathers and duckweed at Peepers Pond.


Free-range kids on the Minuteman.


Free-range grown-up, also on the Minuteman.


Problem-solving, good, bad, and indifferent, by Eastbound cyclists at the Mystic Street crossing.










Westbound from Swan Place: the signal activation button inaccessible and almost invisible to cyclists. The bicycle detection system was either malfunctioning, or set at such a long interval as to be useless; I never saw it work.




rod

Ghazmh

FWIW my son and i rode the Minuteman last Saturday, the bike lane signaling at Arlington Center was either inop or above my comprehension level. After a few light cycles we took a left when the cars had the left arrow. Westbound the signal was clear to understand.

Ghazmh

I made it out Friday morning for my usual 30 mike spin. The family and I were back on the cape this weekend with the Smoothie perched atop the car. 'Took my son for a 26 mile ride on the CCRT for his first time on his new bike. Today I covered the Old Colony trail and the CCRT for a 63 mile spin solo. The weather was picture post card perfect. That was followed by a lobster roll at Creme n Cone before beating the traffic home!

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5...0VwRnhQcGtPTmM

jimmuller 

Minuteman stories - Here's one from my Motobecane ride yesterday. Cruisin' homeward at an easy but non-dawdling pace I passed two women stopped on the right, one holding a bike instead of astride it. A bit further ahead was a 30's to 40's man (old enough to know better) plodding along at a jogger's pace on a bike a bit too small. At first I thought they might have been together but he kept on riding away so I re-guessed that he was just a plodder. Later I figured he was checking something on one of their bikes. At 10 yards behind him I called out "Passing on your left" as I always do. A few seconds later without looking around or behind him he starts a u-turn to the left right into my path. I slammed on the brakes and yelled "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" He sort of reacted but quite ambiguously. I managed to get around him by almost running off the left side of the pavement. Quite obviously he had not heard me, was 100% oblivious to anything except his own thoughts. It never occurred to him that anyone else would ever deign to be out riding the MM. It was his and his alone. I yelled at him again as I went by. He muttered not a word, no apology, no "sorry", not even a grunt. I hope I scared the living <bleep> out of him. Only my quick reactions kept us both out of injury.

jimmuller 

Today's ride was seemingly much safer despite having much more distance on busy roads. 66 miles on the Masi. I wanted to get out to Lancaster (no particular reason, just a nominal destination half a world away). A few things conspired to delay me so I ended up doing a nice back roads loop in Stowe before heading home. One of the delays was this on Powder Mill Rd which I think is in Concord at this point:



That other cyclist pulled up as I was setting up for a picture. He was doing a longish ride out of Chelmsford and wanted to dash west over to Old Pickard Rd for a run back into Concord. Otherwise he didn't know how to get back. I wanted to cut over to rt117 bypassing a section with a narrow shoulder. So I said I knew how to get around that obstacle. We rode together south to rt117 then west to Dakum Rd where he went north.

I continued west, through parts of Maynard, stopped for a quick lunch in some nice shade at a shopping center in Stowe.



The bike took a selfie of itself too.



The way back was uneventful.

autonomy

My 0.02:

Two ways I go through the Mystic street intersection Eastbound. If the left turn arrow is green, I ride through the intersection from the rightmost lane kind of in the middle of it; away from all the cars and into the bike lane. Been doing this for a couple of years; before that I tried to make my way to the left or middle lane but that was too dangerous. Second way is if the light is green forward. Then I (and many others) cycle across and wait in or near the new green box. Taking a left across mystic on the ped light and then waiting for another cycle or trying to go counter-flow in the new green crossing at Swan Place is not a good idea in my opinion.

As far as the lights go, I tried them twice and gave up. First of all, the button to activate them is very inconveniently placed off to the side, ON the sidewalk. Second, last time I tried them, it took way too long for the lights to activate. I actually never stuck around to see them activate as the intersection had already cleared.
The problem with this one is now the cars are unsure what to do when cyclists are in the intersection. Before, most of us would just make it halfway through and wait for the other side to clear, just like you would in a car. Now, some drivers will stop and wave you through, others don't or drive around the ones that do stop... very unsafe IMO.

Wow, is that flooding related? There is a bit of water damaged pavement by Watermill Place on the Minuteman.


Today wife & I did another longer ride through Carlisle. Not as nice as last weekend, more humidity and sun made it for a bit more miserable time. Did not see as many cyclists either, although noticed a few more PanMass jerseys...

jimmuller 

No. Some sort of new project. Actually it's been developing for a while. The last few times I've been down that road the cut had extended into the wood to the right (north) but not south and had not affected the road.


Edit: I just found the following online.

Powder Mill Road closed to through-traffic - 7/10 to 8/31/17

CONCORD, MA — Contractor D.W. White Construction has confirmed that the existing Powder Mill Road culvert will be removed this summer, and replaced with a new culvert that is better (higher and wider) for bicyclists using the trail. Work in the area of the Powder Mill Road culvert will begin on July 3rd with the road closing to through-traffic on July 10th. Work is expected to be completed in late August, with the road re-opening before the start of the Concord Public School’s new school year. The Contractor has submitted a detour plan to MassDOT engineers and signs are being installed in advance of the road closure.

mr_bill

The bikabob at Swan *was* working before the great flood of '17. But you *really* have to stop your bike *RIGHT* on top of the bikabob to get it to register. (Interesting note - it detected bikes but appeared to correctly reject cars.) Now it's obscured by flood debris, so I'm guessing people are simply missing the bikabob.

The pedestrian beg buttons at Mass Ave/Mystic/Pleasant are a mystery.

When they first programmed the new lights, none of the ped crossing signs would change to walk UNLESS someone pushed a beg button for the leg. Recently the beg buttons seem to have been reset to placebo mode, and the ped crossing lights would change no matter the state of the beg buttons. But now I can't figure it out what's up with the beg buttons - maybe they've got inputs from some or all of the Pokestops at the intersection.


As far as east bound, taking the left at Water St/Mass Ave *used* to be the deep end way to cross the intersection, but too many car crashes so they put up the ambiguous No Left Turn. (Can you sprint across "straight" to Peg Spengler Way if you are going to the library? It's as "straight" as Mill St/Jason Street.)

The other alternative is to go parallel to the bikeway by taking Russel Terrace-ish at Water, but go straight instead of making the left where Russel Terrace heads down hill. Continue past the upper entrance ramp to Winslow Towers, then make the right on to Mystic and then make the left turn from the left turn lane on to Mass Ave. (Note that there are sharrows on every lane heading up the hill at Mystic. Still find it odd that there are four overhead traffic signals for three lanes.)

-mr. bill

jimmuller 

The last time I tried a ped beg button to cross Mass Ave when going east it seemingly had no effect at all.

I'm still trying to figure out what the HAWK acronym is supposed to be.

rumrunn6

at least the water in that flood photo was still well under the hubs

mr_bill

High-Intensity Activated Crosswalk.

(Not to be confused with the Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacon (RRFB) on Mill Street.)

-mr. bill