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.