Auburndale, Waltham and Belmont

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Today was a gorgeous day, but e-mail distractions prevented me from hitting the road until about 9am, which is unfortunate as the weather got pretty hot toward the end of the ride. I started out going along the Charles (Boston side), all the way to the West through Brighton, Newton and down to Auburndale, where Commonwealth Ave. crosses over Rt.128 - right by the Kayak place. Along the way I rode past a beautiful little spot with a railroad bridge and a pedestrian bridge going over the Charles. In fact, most of the path along the Charles is quite lovely, with some beautiful spots along the way.

I then headed north on Norumbega Road, and ran across a cool tower called the "Norumbega Tower," which according to Wikipedia was erected in 1889 to mark the supposed location of a Norse fort and city. I then proceeded north, through Brandeis, North Waltham, and up until I hit Rt.2. Realizing that I could not ride down Rt. 2, I headed back a couple of blocks to take Concord Ave. back toward Belmont. Eventually I rode around the south side of Fresh Pond, down to Memorial Drive - which is closed to car traffic on Sundays - and back along Storrow Dr. When I crossed Comm Ave on Mass Ave I stopped by Back Bay Bicycles where they keep a pump outside during business hours. I had only ever used my small hand pump, and it seemed like my tires were running soft. The tire says it should be kept between 100 and 125psi. When I plugged in their pump, the tires were reading somewhere south of 40psi. No wonder I got another flat tire last weekend! Probably every time I went over something the tire was pinching the tube all the way to the rim. Once I pumped up to 110psi I noticed that the road seemed a bit rougher... I will be curious to see how it feels next week.

Total ride length was abotu 34mi (my GPS was on the fritz for the first few minutes, Google tells me it was 33.6mi, my little bike computer said exactly 35mi). I stopped a couple of times along the way, Google claims my average speed while moving was a whopping 13.7mph, with a total elevation gain of 2,761ft. Interestingly, using the same data MapMyRide tells me my total elevation gain was only 502ft. Now, that's a big discrepancy! My legs of course tend to agree with Google :-).

Moon Island attempt

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Today I thought I would try to go to the south side of the Boston Harbor. I saw on the map Moon Island, connected to Squantum, and then in turn connected to Long Island. I rode through some not-so-bike-friendly roads, including a bridge under construction (Neponset Ave, connecting Dorchester and North Quincy), which had extremely narrow lanes that made me go real fast to avoid having cars try to pass me.

There is a nice stretch of road on East Squantum Rd. where you get a good view of downtown Boston, and Logan airport beyond it. The view is not as nice as the view I got last weekend in Winthrop. but it is still quite nice.

As I got close to Moon Island I got another flat tire - again the rear wheel. I popped off the tire and found that the leak was actually right at the base of the valve stem - very strange as this was a new tube. Anyhow, it was not patchable but I had a spare tube and was able to fix it. I then rode on another 1/4 mile just to find out that Moon Island and Long Island are off-limits. As it turns out the island is owned by the City of Boston and is use as the Police Department firing range and a Fire Department training facility.

On the way back I had to hurry home so I took a fairly direct route, up Neponset Ave to Dorchester Ave, Southampton and then Mass Ave. In all, a shorter ride than I wanted to do, but not bad.

Deer Island - no flat tire!

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Today I decided to try to make it to Deer Island again. I followed the same route as last week, along Memorial Dr. then through Charlestown, Everett, Chelsea, East Boston, Winthrop and on to Deer Island. The ride is mostly nice, though there are some stretches (especially through Chelsea/Everett) where the roads are awfully bumpy. Also, I thought I was going to blow a tire going over the Andrew McArdle bridge - the metal grating on the bridge has a spacing that is way too big for road bike tires - I had to stop immediately and clamber over to the sidewalk, where a more conventional grating size made it manageable.

It was very cool riding over the causeway on Saratoga St., crossing into Winthrop on 145. The road is juts past the end of one of the runways at Logan, and because of the wind patterns, aircraft were landing from this end - buzzing overhead as I rode along. I also stopped at a very cool little spot called "Simon J. Donovan Beach." The beach is not exactly a place where I would hang out, but you get a great view across the bay to Logan, and downtown Boston beyond.

Deer Island itself is very cool. It's no longer really an island, apparently it became connected during a hurricane in 1938, and a road was built over the new connector a few years later. You are actually pretty far out into Boston Harbor, you can look back toward the city and see many of the islands that are often visited by ferry from downtown, including Spectacle, Georges and Long. I found the wastewater treatment plan to be quite fascinating in its own way. There are two wind generators, today it was pretty windy so they were spinning at a good clip - I love the swooshing sound they make.


On the way back I took a slightly different route: after getting off Deer Island I climbed up to the water tower at the southern tip of Winthrop, then rode along the coast up to the rotary where Revere begins. I then headed west on Rt.16, which had nice wide emergency lane until it crossed over Rt.1, at which point it became a less-than-ideal ride with cars zooming by and absolutely no emergency lane. I then headed south on Rt.99, back down into Charlestown past the Bunker Hill Community College, then crossed over toward the Museum of Science, down to the Esplanade (where I got free ice cream, there was some sort of regatta taking place), and back home. Total mileage just a hair over 30 miles, took slightly less than 2.5 hours including a few photo stops and the ice cream break.

Short, expensive ride to Chelsea

Today I was planning to ride out through Charlestown, Chelsea and Winthrop to Deer Island. I made it as far as Chelsea when I noticed my rear tire seemed low. I pumped it up a bit but realized soon that I had a flat. Luckily I was near a sort of dock area where I found a water hose and a bucket, so I set out to fix the flat. Found the hole, patched it up (the tube looked pretty old), and then as I went to pump it the entire valve stem ripped.

After considering my options and thinking about walking to a Target about 2 miles away, I decided that it was a bad idea as it would be unlikely that Target would even have the right type of tube. Fortunately I happened to be on a street near a couple of major taxi depots, so there were empty cabs going by all the time and I got one to bring me home with the bike in the trunk. $32 later, I now have to go find a new tube and fix it. Oh well. Maybe I'll try Deer Island again later today or next weekend.

Watertown, Belmont and Charlestown

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Took another nice long ride to celebrate Independence day. My legs felt fine after yesterday's 20+mi ride, so today I pushed a bit farther and did about 24mi. First I rode west, with waypoints in Watertwon and Belmont, then went east through Cambridge, past my place, all the way to Charlestown, before heading home. A couple of worthy places.



The Oakley Hill Golf Club in Watertown is situated atop a hill with beautiful views of the surrounding areas (though a woman who lives there told me the views are not what they used to be because of the trees). There is a beautiful old building that I thought was the club house, but in fact it was converted to condos in 1984. Also got a snapshot of a funny sign about low-flying golf balls...

Speaking of funny signs, while coming back through Charlestown and the Paul Revere Park again, I noticed an inscription on the concrete wall underneath the Leverett Connector (for you non-Bostonians, this is a long off-ramp from Rt. 93 that in my opinion is the stupidest part of the "Big Dig"; I still believe that this was meant as a temporary structure but was left there as the contractors ran out of money). Anyhow, the base of the connector, just behind the Garden, has a huge inscription that says "The greatest neighborhood this side of heaven."
No shit? This has to be one of the funniest and most feeble piece of marketing I have ever seen. I don't even want to think how much it must have cost... and it is nearly invisible -- I have probably driven by there dozens of times and never noticed it before...

Southie (mainly)

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Nice long ride, really enjoyed looping around Castle Island after crossing Southie on Broadway (and stopping for a new battery at Radio Shack). This is a well-traveled path probably familiar to a lot of people who ride around Boston. One place I liked is Dorchester Heights, a hill with a 115-ft tall tower that celebrates the importance of this hill during the America Revolution. Apparently the occupation and fortification of this spot in 1776 represented a significant turning point in Washington's campaign against the British in the Boston area.