Auburndale, Waltham and Belmont

View 2011-07-31: Auburndale etc. in a larger map


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 :-).