rholland1951

WATCH FOR PEDESTRIANS AND BICYCLES AND... oh yeah, CARS.


Quick spin up to Lexington Center on the Minuteman, over before I knew it.

rod

rholland1951

Took the GT East Saturday afternoon, riding hills for thrills, with occasional chills, and no spills.


rod

rholland1951

Today's schedule was blocked by the need to wait for the Gas Man, who said it was Very Important that he come sniff for Gas Leaks. Dogs feel sniffing is Very Important, too, and I like dogs, so I figured I might as well give the Gas Man the benefit of the doubt if he wanted to sniff around the basement a bit. While waiting to start waiting, I took the GT on a quick sprint up the Mystic Valley Parkway around noon. What I found was people enjoying peace & quiet in divers ways.

To enjoy the peace & quiet at Shannon Beach, bring a folding chair and a newspaper. For variety, admire the black squirrel.


Some might enjoy the peace & quiet while cruising along the shore of the Upper Mystic Lake in a little aluminum fishing boat with a murmuring electric motor and a purple umbrella, a gentle conveyance.


Peace & quiet rule at the docks of the Sailing Pavilion, a suspenseful quiet. Two distant kayaks approach from the North. Nanook?


rod

rumrunn6

umbrella on that boat, too funny

drewguy

Can't handle the speed!

rholland1951

Boat like that, you need extra braking power.

rod

rholland1951

Took the GT out wearing a new set of spectacles, first ride on the first day with this prescription, the first change to my optics since before the pandemic had me avoiding such routine clinical stuff. I use progressive lenses, and the first day with a new prescription is sometimes reminiscent of the special effects in the Dr. Strange movie. However, the usual ride up the Minuteman to Lexington Center and back was given the zing of novelty by the fresh view of things, and I didn't ride into Mill Brook or anything else.


"Oh brave new world That has such people in 't!"


rod

rholland1951

Out on the GT up the Minuteman before dinner again. The Mile 4.0 Cairn Builders are using smaller stones to build smaller totemic figures; sustainable cairn building? Or just another supply chain failure?


Traffic was a little frenetic, and I kept a fast pace with the others for a while...


Until I paused to take a photo of Arlington's Great Meadow, and realized I hadn't noticed the rainbow in the cloud floating above it until I had stopped the bike.


After admiring the rainbow for a few minutes, I rolled home at a slower pace, and enjoyed what was left of the afternoon.

rod

mr_bill

Been riding my bike back and forth to BIDMC each weekday, so I’m 8/34 done with my treatments, 240 km or 150 miles to date. (Except one day when I temporarily lost my keys so my bike and Sur Alien the Incredible were locked inside the house. I took the Bluebikes that day. I missed Sur Alien though, but they understood.)

Should be posting some pics over the weekend.

-mr. bill

rumrunn6

wow, congrats! fun gifs!

rholland1951

More rides than ride reports lately. A random sampling follows.

Friday: chasing the clouds dancing over West Medford and the Mystic Lakes. Here they are, dancing over Jerome Street.


Saturday: Time Machine day in Medford. Here are a few.


Monday: The green has commenced dwindling at Arlington's Great Meadow. Pfui!


rod

rholland1951

Had one of those odd rides that begins fatigued and just sort of stays that way. I limited myself to a gentle spin up to Lexington Center and back, even though there was time for more.


The Mile 4.0 Cairn Builders got my attention, despite the fatigue, with a particularly charming composition, putting the neo in Neolithic.


rod

rholland1951

Saturday afternoon, I took the 1987 GT Karakoram for a ride East.


The "traffic" portion of this "hills & traffic" itinerary was subject to some volatility due to a street fair on Riverside Avenue, that backed the eastbound traffic up on High Street, beyond the rotary, and made the old GT one of the swiftest vehicles in the pack. When I got to the street fair itself, I decided to detour on epidemiological grounds, and rode one block South to cut through a parking lot, before rejoining the now-empty Riverside East of the fair.


Traffic was clumpy after that, and some of it followed me back up into the hills. Ultimately, the westbound passage over the High Street hills, at the end of the ride, involved stretches of solar glare. Welcome to October. The road improvements on High Street were most welcome.


rod

mr_bill

So, still riding to and from BIDMC, already 1/3 way through treatment, though the BU Bridge is getting steeper with each passing week.

I come here to praise The Minuteman Bikeway, Alewife Linear Park, Somerville Community Path, and the Dr. Paul Dudley White Bikepath, plus the various simple changes made to streets that make connecting these possible for me.

Thank you Arlington, Cambridge, Somerville, Boston, and Brookline.


The Minuteman Bikeway is where the journey starts, and I'm thrilled that a worker in a cherry picker recently fixed the RRFB (Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons) at the Mill Street crossing, though honestly most drivers still are oblivious:


I'm travelling mid-day, so I miss the sometimes chaos at this too small two stage bike queue box, but even with my lost marbles, I manage this block fine:


The new-ish signal at Lake helps a lot. I just wait, wait, and wait for the bike green, bobble head making sure all cross traffic has actually the ____ stopped, and then happily continue onward:


Now onto the beginning of Alewife Linear Park, this cantilever over Yates Pond is such a huge improvement over the "take the lane" (and it still is a sucky road surface) back in the day. One note, it's amazing how often drivers will preemptively stop for me. They see me from a long way back and just usually yield, even without the beg button, at least during off peak hours:


Heading around Russel Field. P.S. Love that they removed the stop signs at the Harvey Street dead end:


The crossing at Cameron Ave, the boundary between Cambridge and Somerville, and the boundary between Alewife Linear Park and Somerville Community Path:


And now, this surprised me. I expected to walk through Davis. But mid-day, with the on-street dining reducing this to a single lane, the drivers are calmed. It's so bad here it's really really good:


And ironically, once I turn off Holland onto Grove it gets hard with absolute nuts often racing to the stop sign, but it's a short street:


To be continued....

-mr. bill

rholland1951

Speaking of coincidences... on Sunday, I paid a visit to my son John, who has recently moved into Somerville, not so far from the Lowell Street terminus-but-not-for-long of the Somerville Community Path. He rolled out on his Surly Cross Check, I was on the GT (the only ridable bike in my stable these days, I've been ducking wrench duty). I realized he didn't know how the Someville Community Path, the Alewife Linear Park, and the Minuteman hung together, so we rode West as far as Lexington Center, then back East to Lowell Street again. We had a fine time, and caught up on things. At some point, night fell, I dropped him off at his apartment, and rode back to my East Arlington home base, 23 miles for me, including the Arlington-Somerville inner loop and the Somerville-Lexington outer loop. More rides with John are in the offing.


Public Art on the Somerville Community Path.






Computer science humor in Davis Square.


Cranking along.


Stopping to admire (or dread) the incipient Fall Foliage.


Night fell. Compare and contrast the lighting on the Somerville Community Path with the lighting on the Minuteman (BYO).




Somerville Theatre: Get an inoculation, go to the movies.


rod​​​​​​​

rholland1951

Took the GT out to Depot Park on the Minuteman on a gray, cool, damp, mid-afternoon ride.


The ride to Depot Park reminds me of just how pleasing some of the outer segments of the Minuteman can be.


Here and there, the maples were beginning to turn, and I was beginning to forgive them for it.




Lots of water, flowing where it could, then standing to await further instructions. May none of it stand where it isn't wanted.








Is a vernal pool that's made it this far into the calendar properly called an autumnal pool?

rod

rumrunn6

great job Rod, nice of you to share your Son w/ us. that gif of the Mass Ave is very good. congrats on racking up the miles! jealous!

rholland1951

Retired. While it's not quite true that there's nothing else to do, the opportunities to ride do present themselves somewhat more frequently than formerly...

rod

rholland1951

Took the GT for a sunset ride on the Mystic Valley Parkway, the air cool and pleasing as I cranked along.








Quiet evening, pervaded by a contemplative calm.

rod

rholland1951

Rode over to Watertown in the late afternoon to look in on my son Sam, his wife Jess, and their daughter--my granddaughter--Ida. All are well, and Ida is running around naming everything she sees; she appears to have bipedal locomotion licked, as a walk to the park demonstrated.


I rode home as night fell, and was greeted by a possum on the back fence after I put away the bike. Well, hello Pogo! Any gossip from Fort Mudge?


Just another reminder that East Arlington resembles Eden a little more every day, wildlife everywhere you look.

rod

rholland1951

Took the GT out Thursday afternoon, not quite early enough to go have a look at what might or might not have been doing at the Cranberry Bog, but plenty of time for a spin out to Depot Park on the Minuteman. First I stopped for a chat with Sam, who got inspired by the flag shadow draped across my bike, and announced he was going to sell it to the Army. "Sam, look at the color. It's a red bike. You'd have to sell it to the British Army." Sam looked thoughtful. "Hmmm.... a lobsterbike... There could be a future in that..." Sam became lost in thought, then, and I rode off before he came to himself again and gave me any papers to sign.


The Mile 4.0 Cairn Builders seem to be making Stone Soup today.


I stopped at Valley Road to pay homage to the Old Ones, the real creators of the Minuteman. The rail-trail story is a convenient cover of course, The straight poop is that the trail is a ley line established by extraterrestrials before anybody was born. This explains all sorts of puzzling things nobody ever thinks of.


The Old Ones left us a scripture; carefully studied, it tells us everything we need to know to live in peace on this holy ground. But the letters are starting to fade, and soon doubters will deny these commandments ever existed. Various errors could become common then, perhaps even horseback riding.


I turned around at Depot Park, and headed back. The temperature had already dropped noticeably, and a change in the weather was blowing in on the breeze.


A trick of the low sun lent radiance to a pot of mums near the memorial bench.


I admired the resident family of swans at Peepers Pond. Somehow, a duck flew backwards. I rode home singing "Polly Vaughn". If anyone heard, they didn't let on.


rod

rholland1951

Rode East on the GT this afternoon, surfing the hills and playing dodgem with the traffic in Arlington, Medford, Malden, Melrose, and Stoneham, the weather cool and breezy in a way that invited and rewarded constant pedaling..


The bike needs a bit of tinkering, the front derailleur decided it didn't want to shift into the smallest ring of my triple crank. That turned out not to matter much, the hills got climbed anyway with no harm done, but it reminded me of my wrenching backlog. Soon enough, night began to fall, and I called it a day and headed back. Just before I crossed the Mystic for the last time, I stopped to photograph a couple of guys shooting hoops in Dugger Park, West Medford.








As I put the bike away, I noticed the clouds piling in. We'll see what becomes of them.


rod

bike_tom

My wife and I went out on the Bruce Freeman today, starting from the Brook St, Acton lot, the one behind Donelans. It was a great early fall day, with some nice foliage.

Here's a pic at Grist Mill, Chelmsford, our northern turnaround:




Those murals were replaced recently, the old ones having become very weathered.

Here's one at Heart Pond. As you can see, it was overcast, so the colors don't really pop:




And, I am pleased to report, they have started grading the connection at our southern turnaround at Wetherbee St Acton to the new bridge over Route 2:



That was untouched the last time we were there, in late August. There's a reasonable chance it will be possible to continue southward to West Concord next season. Woo-hoo!

Overall it was a pleasant 20 miles ride, with lunch afterward, as usual, at Donelans.
Next year I am hoping we'll be doing the out and back from West Concord (with lunch at Nashoba Brook Bakery )

rholland1951

Took the GT out on the Minuteman in the late afternoon for a sunset ride, pink clouds and deciduous trees showing off their anthocyanins. Depending on where you looked, there might be a crescent moon.








I'd like a moonrise & sunset, please, with a side of blossoming knotweed.


Meanwhile, in an alley behind Arlington Center, it was still a lovely evening.


rod

rholland1951

So, I appear to have fallen a week behind on ride reports. Here's an attempt at a concise synopsis of a week's worth of rides on the 1987 GT Karakoram, shod with René Herse Humptulips Ridge Extralights, 26"x2.3" dual-purpose knobbies that are just about the fanciest tires that are compatible with the old bike, and make for a good deal of fun on or off the road.

A week ago Tuesday, I rolled out to the Carlisle Cranberry Bog, a 40-mile ride through some favorite roads. The Bog was the northern-most commercially active cranberry bog in New England, and it used to be great fun to ride out during the harvest and watch the somewhat specialized equipment and methods used to harvest cranberries in the flooded bog. Timing mattered, since the dates of the harvest weren't announced most years. The last few years, the bog was in a state that made me wonder if it were still being farmed, and conversations with other visitors to the bog were inconclusive. This year, once again, it appeared not to have been flooded.


I rode along the dike trails, and talked with a few people about the bog's status, including a guy who admired my tires and a woman taking her exuberant sheepdogs for a swim in the bog's reservoir.


The consensus was that the farmer who had been farming the bog under contract with the Town had concluded it was no longer commercially viable. They were all definite about this, with none of the ambiguity of the people I had talked to in prior years. After I got home, Mr. Google found me a court filing for the dissolution of Carlisle Cranberries, Inc. So that's all she wrote. As the Farm Gods would have it, the rainy summer we had produced a bumper cranberry crop, even without flooding, and the Town permitted people to pick the berries by hand, which many apparently did. So perhaps there's simply a different sort of harvest to witness (or, perhaps, join) in Octobers to come.

I made it back to the Minuteman by nightfall (it's more congenial for night riding than Route 225), and witnessed the return of the Giant Skeleton, with a few ghoulish enhancements.


The following Thursday, I rode over to Watertown for a visit with my son Sam and my granddaughter Ida.


And received season's greetings in Belmont.


Friday afternoon, I took a peaceful ride on the Minuteman.


Saturday, I rode East, and chased the sunset West again.




Monday evening found me on the Minuteman again, under a cold sky.


The following Tuesday evening was spent riding along the eastern shore of the Mystic Lakes, squinting at boats in the solar glare and impressed by the gumption of one solitary swimmer. The student sailors came when called, like tame ducks.


rod