Cycling Coast to Coast

Day 2 of the trip!

We’re staying at St. Anthony’s Church in Revere, MA.  They’ve been incredibly generous, providing us with both lunch and dinner tonight.  We’re staying in their Bingo Room, which is enormous.  Apparently they have hundreds of people show up for Bingo Nights; so many that there needs to be an extra “remote” room in the back.  Another fun factoid: the church’s congregation is primarily Italian, and the church itself is a replica of St. Anthony’s Church in Padua, Italy.

Yesterday, a group of 9 of us all took the T together from MIT to Wonderland, where we got picked up by the trip van and driven to the church.  After checking in and picking up our gear, we played some getting-to-know-each-other games, and listened to some presentations about trip policies, etc. Jose and Dave also did a full check of all of our bikes.  We also started to paint the trip trailer. I took some photos, but unfortunately don’t have them uploaded yet.

It’s so great to finally be here at orientation, and meeting everyone on the trip.  Most of us are recently-graduated seniors from East Coast colleges, with lots of different reasons for doing this trip.  I’ve some some really interesting conversations with other riders, and I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone better.

Today, we had a bike skills clinic, practicing clipping in and out, turn signals, emergency stops, looking behind yourself, and drinking from water bottles while riding.  Then, we went on a short, shakedown ride to Deer Island, where there we gorgeous views of the Boston harbor, downtown, and the airport.

Tomorrow, we’ll have our wheel-dipping ceremony at Revere Beach at 9am.  After dipping our rear wheels in the Atlantic, we’ll set out for Andover, which is only 23 miles away.  It’s a short ride for our first day, and we’ll have plenty of time in Andover to run errands and visit a bike shop.  I’ve already got a short list of additional items that I need to get.

Some goals I have for this trip:

• Be safe.  I’ve been lucky enough in life so far to avoid any serious injuries (e.g. broken bones), and I intend to keep it that way.  I know that cycling is inherently a dangerous sport, but I can minimize the risk by being aware and smart while riding.
• Have fun.  Self explanatory, I hope.
• Be positive, and minimize complaining. There will definitely be tough days on this trip; I knew that when I signed up.
• Learn more about the affordable housing cause
• Improve my cycling skills and my bike repair/maintenance skills
  

Last post before we leave for orientation, and Bike & Build officially starts!

All my stuff is packed, and I’ve mailed the last of my stuff home, and a few things ahead to mail drops.  Dani and Lauren stayed on our hall last night, and a huge group of us will be leaving from MIT together at noon to take the T to orientation.

The last day we spent leisurely walking around Provincetown.  In the morning, we went across the street to a Portuguese bakery for breakfast, and then spent the rest of our time visiting the small shops along Commercial Street.

Unfortunately, we never made it out to the nice beaches at the tip, but it was a relaxing morning and afternoon.  We stopped for ice cream and lunch, and then caught the 3pm fast ferry back to Boston.  The ferry ride was only 90 minutes long, and soon after we got underway, we all spread out the benches and napped for the entire trip back.

The next morning, we had breakfast at the the motel, but before we set for the day, we pumped up our tires, only to discover that Talia had another flat! Turns out the tube she had patched the previous day wasn’t patched well, and had leaked overnight. We swapped it out for a new tube, and got on the road around 10am.

Within a few miles, we hit rolling hills again. About 15 miles in, we stopped because little Jess was having really bad knee pain and couldn’t continue riding. We waved down a guy driving a pick-up truck, and he was nice enough to give Jess and I a ride to the nearby visitor’s center. The rest of the group followed on bike.

At the visitor’s center, we found out that there was a walk-in clinic in Hyannis, a couple miles away. We called a cab for Jess to take her to the clinic, and the rest of us got directions to bike there.

At the clinic, they took X-rays of Jess’s knee, and the final diagnosis was that she had iliotibial (IT) band syndrome. She wouldn’t be able to ride for the rest of the trip, but the good news was that it wasn’t too serious and there were exercises and stretches she could do to make it stronger.

Even though Jess couldn’t ride, she wanted to finish the trip by catching a bus to Provincetown, and we would meet here there in the evening.

Once we saw Jess safely settled into a taxi on the way to the bus station, we headed out and got back on route. Pretty soon, we settled into a nice quick pace, and I think we averaged 18-20mph for the next 10ish miles until we reached the Cape Cod Rail Trail. We were all pretty excited when we reached the CCRT trailhead. Finally, a nicely paved, mostly flat road! We turned into the trailhead parking lot around the same time that a roadie in full team kit riding a Cervelo was being dropped off, so we got him to take a group photo for us.

Before we hit the bike path, we decided to stop at the bike shop conveniently located at the trailhead to buy some more spare tubes. Just as we had decided this, however, Talia noticed that her rear tire was flat. Again. Road debris: 4, Talia: 0.

So we went to the shop to get more tubes, and Talia asked the shopowner to take a look at her rear tire, because really, 4 flats in 100 miles of riding? None of the rest of us had had nearly that much bad luck. He helped her swap out the tube for a new one, and found a shard of glass in the tire. We’d checked the tire and rim thoroughly in the morning, so I guess Talia really just has bad luck with flats. We asked to see if they carried any flat-resistant tires like Specialized Armadillos or Continental Gatorskins, but it was a small shop geared towards recreational riders and bike rentals for tourists to the Cape, so they didn’t. “I ride any old tires and almost never get flats, wanna know why?” he asked us, “Because I watch where I’m going.” I guess that’s one way to look at it…

We grabbed a couple complimentary maps of the rail trail, and finally got going again. The trail was almost completely empty and very well paved. Within the first few miles, we passed some cranberry bogs and pretty lakes. After 10 miles on the trail, we stopped for an ice cream break.

The CCRT ended in Wellfleet, and once we reached the end of the trail, we took Ocean View Drive, and, as the name suggests, had some great views of the Atlantic Ocean. The last 20ish miles were rather hilly, but we pushed on knowing that we were almost there!

We rolled into Provincetown right around sunset, and met up with Jess at Moffett House, where we were staying. We were all so hungry that, once we’d put away our bikes, we didn’t even bother changing before heading to dinner.

Another guest at the house recommended a place called the Lobster Pot, so we went there for dinner. After a long day of riding, the prospect of greasy fried food was really appealing, so we all shared fried calamari, fried clams (a first for me), stuffed portabello mushrooms, and fish and chips.

After dinner, we returned to Moffett House to shower. Best of all, we discovered that there were washers and dryers in the House, so we got to do laundry. Since we were all traveling light, it was an awesome surprise to be able to wash our sweaty and dirty clothing.

This entry is way overdue, but finally, an account of our trip to Cape Cod! 

A couple months ago, I got it into my head that it would be a really great idea to bike to Cape Cod from Boston, both as a fun trip (I’d never been to the Cape before), and also as a good test-run for our coast to coast trip this summer. A couple of friends on my hall had biked to the Cape last summer (one of them on a fixie), and had had an awesome time. They had biked about 70 miles to the other side of the canal, camped overnight, and then taken a bus back to Boston the following day, but they told me that there was a well-known route that could take you all the way to Provincetown, at the tip of the Cape.

After a bit of research online, I found that there was indeed a well-documented bike route from Boston to Provincetown, called the Claire Saltonstall Bikeway. The entire trip is about 140 miles, so we decided to split the cycling into two days: 70 miles the first day from Boston to Sandwich, and 70 miles the second day from Sandwich to Provincetown. We would stay overnight in Ptown (as the locals call it), and then take the fast ferry back to Boston on the third day. Joining me on this trip were Devon, both Jess’s, and Talia (who’s on the Southern US route).

Our goal was to hit the road around 9am on Wednesday, and reach Sandwich by dinner time. We all figured that 10 hours was plenty of time to bike 70 miles, including time for lunch and rest stops. You can probably guess that this didn’t end up being the case.

I guess it was a sign that one of us got a flat before we even started riding. At 9am, Devon, big Jess and I were waiting in my dorm courtyard for little Jess and Talia when they called and said that Talia’s rear tire was flat.  They stopped to fix her flat, so we ended up heading out around 10am.

The most confusing part of our trip was getting out of Boston. After Jamaica Pond, we must have taken the wrong exit at a rotary and ended up on the wrong side of Arnold Arboretum. I’d been to the Arboretum a couple times before, and had my bike map of Boston with me, so we were able to quickly cut across the Arboretum and get back on track. About 11 miles into our trip, however, we got really confused trying to get onto Neponset Valley Parkway. Luckily, we ran into a police officer who gave us directions.At around 1pm, we had only gone about 20 miles, and we were all getting hungry, so we stopped at a supermarket in Randolph and bought some bread, ham, cheese, and fruit for lunch.

We had bad luck with flats all day; the finally tally was Talia, 3, little Jess, 2, and Devon, 1.  With all these unplanned stops, we were running way behind schedule and it seemed like we wouldn’t get to Sandwich before dark.

About 15 miles before reaching Sandwich, we hit Long Pond Road, which was all rolling hills.  I’d been warned by my friend Sarah (who had done the ride before on a fixie), that the next 10 miles really sucked.  On a geared bike, however, it wasn’t so bad, and actually a lot of fun as we could pick up enough speed and momentum on the downhills to get us most of the way up the next uphill.  The last hill though, was a long and steep climb that sapped most of our energy.  We reached the top right around sunset, and we could see the Sagamore Bridge in the distance.

At this point, we turned our lights on, and I switched out my dark sunglasses lenses for amber ones.  We got a bit lost on the way to the Bridge, and once we’d reached it, it was completely dark.  We walked our bikes on the sidewalk across the bridge, and then made our way the rest of the 2 miles to Sandwich Lodge, arriving just after 9pm.

Once we’d checked in and locked our bikes in the room, we headed next door to the British Brewing Company for dinner.  Food had never been so appealing, and we all got sandwiches to commemorate our stay in Sandwich, MA.