Usually biking to work involves getting on the bike and riding to work. Today was a bit more interesting 🙂

I had wanted to join the Walk/Ride Fridays crew from RozzieBikes for the second time. They were to depart Roslindale Square at 7:30, so my plan was to get up at 6:30, shower, and bike up to join them.

ACT ONE

But then I forgot to set my alarm. Um, oops.

Luckily I woke up on my own at 6:50. So I jumped in the shower, threw my bike on the back of my car, and drove to Roslindale Square. Arriving at 7:32, I could just see Doug and the crew pulling out and heading for Arnold Arboretum. I tried to get their attention, but of course I still needed to park my car. By the time I found a space, they were long gone.

Decision time: punt, or try to catch them? At first I moped back to my car but then thought “hey, let’s go for it.” I figured the hills of the Arboretum might slow them down a bit, so I hightailed it up the Washington St. bike lane. I hoped to catch the group during their stop to meet people at the Jamaica Pond boathouse…but no luck. I kept riding and caught a break in traffic to cross Route 9. Finally, I caught up with the group on the Olmstead Park path in Brookline.

ACT TWO

When the group of us got to the intersection of Park Dr. and Beacon, we all pulled to a stop at the light…only to notice mac & cheese, meatballs, and a bunch of metal serving trays scattered all over the road. Cars were, unbelievably, driving right along and bumping into the serving trays, but no one was doing anything to help.

“Let’s go!” yelled Doug. We put down our bikes on the sidewalk and sprang into action, grabbing the serving trays (one of them still full of meatballs) and dragging them out of the way. It was the first time I’ve ever heard cagers yell “THANK YOU! WE LOVE YOU!” at a bunch of bikers.
Too bad none of us through to grab a camera.

ACT THREE

We turned down Back St to make our way to one of the Esplanade footbridges. Before long, we saw the yellow police tape with a policeman in front of it. I’ll admit that my first reaction was that-must-be-for-cars-we’ll-sail-right-through, but he wasn’t about to give us safe passage. “You see, that building is about to fall,” he said, pointing to what I thought was the law school though I’m not sure.

So, we went around the building instead. My most eventful commute to date!

The ride home was fairly uneventful except for some guy on a road bike tailing me on the southbound Washington St. bike lane in Roslindale. I slipped to the right to let him pass me, figuring he was one of these zero-body-fat cyclists who averages 22mph going uphill. But when I pulled over a bit, he said “No problem, I’m just checking out your bike! Where are the gears? The brakes? The chain?” We had a nice chat.

I don’t usually get up at 4am, but a friend volunteered to do a half-century (50-miler) with me. We arrived at the tip of the Cape Cod rail trail just before 6am. It was light outside, but there was no one on the trail.

We rode the path pretty much straight to the end, and then followed a local road to the beach where i got this picture:

The way back was a bit more eventful, as we went off the bike path to see the Nauset lighthouse. We lost the path for a bit and did some road riding but eventually found our way back. 51 miles total by the end.

It’s a pretty flat path, so it wasn’t all that challenging. The guy I was riding with was on a mountain bike, so we couldn’t exactly maintain a quick pace…was about 4 hours of riding. My butt definitely started to hurt around hour 3. Brooks saddle on the way, perhaps?

I’d like to do a more hilly half-century, or maybe I’ll just go for a metric century (~62 miles). Been thinking about riding from home to Little Compton, RI: http://ridewithgps.com/routes/47436.

My other thought is that I probably want to get a road bike before too long. I rented a Trek 1.2 on vacation and couldn’t believe how quickly it got up to speed. The 1.1 is cheaper but doesn’t have as wide of a gearing ratio. I hear the Pilot has a slightly more upright position, which would probably be better for me. Need to think about this one…a month or so left until my birthday 🙂

Somewhere between 100-200 people showed up at BU’s Morse Auditorium for the mayor’s bike safety summit yesterday. i was among them.

First off, kudos to MassBike for providing free bike parking.

Second, kudos for the mayor for showing up … I had thought this event would be “endorsed” by him but not attended. Nice to see him.

Third, major props to the mayor and bike czar Nicole Freedman for sticking their necks out re: bike helmets. Menino described how a helmet may have spared him from a serious injury when he was struck by a car last year, and urged everyone in the room to get over their hair etc. concerns and strap in.  Even more gratifying was to hear Nicole point out that the student killed a couple of weeks ago wasn’t wearing a helmet. The silence on that fact from all sorts of cycling advocates has been deafening.

Fourth, it was useful to hear from several constituencies re: their cycling plans. In fact, I wish they had taken more time. For whatever reason, the bulk of the time was given to event attendees to speak their mind and pose “questions” which were usually lengthy (and thinly veiled) comments. My guess is they did this so that people would feel “heard” but a lot of it was the usual venting with not too many productive questions.

Fifth, one of the more productive questions yielded the most disappointing moment of the evening. One man observed that if helmets save lives, as the mayor and Nicole memorably reminded the crowd, then why are they not required under state law? To my grave disappointment, this wholly rational suggestion was met with boos. I was shocked and almost got up and left.  What is it with the cycling crowd?  Good grief.

That said, many thanks to the mayor and his staff for orchestrating the event. Time well spent.

26.2 miles is not all that far, but for me there was some allure in riding the path of the Boston Marathon.

from what I could tell, there were two ways to do this:

1) join one of a few groups starting from Boston and riding the marathon back and forth — 52 miles. The mileage itself didn’t scare me off too much, but the thought of riding to Hopkinton after seeing the elevation profile seemed a bit tough for me. I asked around to see when these folks would be halfway so I could join them for the way home only,but no response.

2) join the “midnight marathon ride” in which folks take a train to Southborough in the wee hours and ride the marathon one way home. of course the disadvantages of this include that it is DARK and that the trail isn’t blocked off yet.

if I had this to do over, I would have had someone drop me off on the outskirts of Hopkinton with my bike around 7:30 or 8 and just ride the by-then-blocked-off trail one way to Boston. But I had promised to take my kids to Springfield late MOnday morning, so that would ruin our plans.

instead I did the midnight ride. this involved driving to downtown Boston, leaving my car on Beacon hill, and hopping over to South STation just in time to join what must’ve been 70 other people with bikes in taking over the last train to Worcester. Here are just a few of the bikes piled into the train.

During the hour-long train ride it became painfully obvious that I was by far oldest person on this trip. Although the notice was posted on BostonBiker.org, it was chiefly a Facebook announcement that rounded up college students (BU Bikes was the organizer), so I felt pretty much out of place. That said, everyone was friendly and no one said anything openly disparaging (at least within earshot!).

Since the train went to Southborough and not Hopkinton it was necessary to ride a fewmiles over there. This sounded easy enough, but no one told me that there was a 200-foot climb including a 8% grade. Not much for most people, but for me that was pretty tough. About five people got off and walked up the hill, and I came close to joining them.

Around 1am everyone had gathered at the starting line of the marathon, and we were off.

If it looks like a bunch of people riding in all directions it’s because it took a few minutes to establish which way was east on route 135. This is also when my age and grey hair became a distinct advantage: I was one of the few people who had ever actually been to the suburbs and knew how the roads linked up. So I was routinely telling people “135 becomes 16, just follow it” and the like.

There weren’t many cars, though I would still prefer doing this in the daytime with the route blocked off. By 3am we had arrived in Copley Square. I certainly didn’t keep up with the top 10-15 riders, some of whom had run the marathon the previous year, but I think I ended up somewhere in the middle of the pack.

The only navigation booboo was staying on Comm Ave the whole way instead of taking the detour to Beacon. Adds about 3/10ths of a mile and a few hills, so I say I still did the marathon. Here’s my bike at the finish line:

The best part for me was the sense that I dont’ need to stick to the rail trails, that I can handle routes will rolling hills (though not the steep climbs, at least not with my 8-gear IGH).  I thought I’d be more exhausted but thankfully not … and it was 33 miles with all of the extra riding. I’m scheduled to do the 50-mile trip on the Cape Cod RAil Trail this weekend but am somehow looking forward to it less since it is so flat. we’ll see…

One of the disconnects within the biking community that I simply don’t understand is this:

Why do so many cyclists, who routinely tell others (esp. SUV drivers) how to live their lives, bristle with indignation when they are told to do a simple thing that makes biking safer–i.e., to wear a helmet?

It would take a few hands to count the number of times I have been flamed or nastygrammed by someone not-so-gently reminding me that only kids under 16 are required to wear a helmet in Mass,, that doing so is a personal choice, don’t-tread-on-me and so on.

In the same vein, MassBike posted as one of the profiles in its “I’m a ___, and I Ride” a photo of a student riding without a helmet. When I complained about their choice of photo/profile, let’s just say my comments were not received warmly. The reaction is particularly ironic given that the student cyclist killed in a collision with an MBTA bus last week was not wearing a helmet.

I can’t understand why MassBike and other cycling organizations do not advocate for more stringent bike-helmet laws (while at the same time advocating for a “vulnerable road users bill”). I can’t understand why cyclists won’t put on helmets. Sure, it makes your hair look wavy. Sure, it’s bulky (though the Dahon Pango folding helmet will cut that problem in half). Sure, it’s a little hotter in the summer. Sure, it adds some number of ounces for the weight weenies out there.

But it’s frankly stupid to ride without a helmet, at least right now in the Boston area. Maybe we’ll be like the Netherlands someday and there’ll be enough of a critical mass of bikers that it’s suddenly super-safe. But it certainly isn’t that way on Huntington Ave or in most of the area, and we shouldn’t act as if that nirvana is just a little ways away.

Wear a helmet already.

didn’t see this coming, but this morning I knocked ten minutes off of my 14-mile commute. all without changing my route.

the difference? music. not headphones – riding with headphones sounds like a big no no — but by mounting my Blackberry on my handlebars and having it play at a medium volume.

for whatever reason, it really helped me maintain speed going up the hills on my route into Boston.

I’m so psyched…if I can keep this up, it means that biking is just as fast as taking the commuter rail (well, driving to the commuter rail + taking the train + taking the subway + walking to my office). driving is a half hour off peak but can be an hour and a half in rush hour.