Cycle Center of the Universe: Cape Cod

First off: I have GOT to start taking more pictures! I did a whole bunch of cycling and saw a whole bunch of cyclists and took exactly ZERO pictures! Not good.

What was good though was to see so many people cycling around for pleasure and transportation NOT in the city.The region's MUPS are very long and connect residential, recreational and down town areas to each other. They also provide a great way to avoid trying to have to find a place to park in the crowded, narrow down-town village streets. The only thing that is "bad" about these bike trails is that, like all of their kind, they run along abandoned railroad beds. This offers quite a mixed bag of sight-seeing opportunities that range from breath-taking to kind of grungy. Unlike many other bike paths that I have been on, they offer many, many dining, drinking and snacking opportunities. It is entirely possible to consume far more calories than are burned riding on these trails!

Once in town the streets are often designated as Bike Routs and, even when they are not so designated, are full of cyclist of all ages. The motorists are quite tolerant of this activity and wait behind the poky cyclists with no horn tooting or near-missing. Every place of interest has a bike rack or two outside it and the attractions are full of people in cycling clothing or helmets. Less one take it that I found only recreational and transportational cyclists on the cape, I have to tell you that the back roads and main streets are littered with Roadies! They tend to ride solo or in pairs, not like around here, so no one really minds them sharing the winding country roads at all. It's like bike-utopia.

Tried a New Trail today.

This morning, after work, I got the chance to try to tackle the Nashua River Rail Trail. This was the un-friendlest rail trail that i have ever been on, including the Minuet Man! I started out at it’s far northern end, in Nashua itself. There is a large parking area. A path leads a short distance to the east where there is a small pond. Dirt paths go off from there. There are no water, vending or sanitary facilities here and only a very few trash cans. The area is kept neat and clean though and is in good repair. The path itself is both less than I expected and more.

I tend to be disappointed in the “big” bike paths. I guess that maybe they have been around long enough for the vegetation to grow back in close or perhaps they just didn’t design them to we open and airy “back then”. In any event, I found the path to be narrow and slightly over-grown. For the most part the trail is well maintinaed and clean. There are a few bumpy bits and one or two areas where significant amounts of dirt has come onto the trail. It is not arrow-straight as some of the other trails are. Sadly, there isn’t a lot of interesting scenery along the path but neither is there a lot of Urban Blight os industrialization visible from the path. There are benches and places to reast. It crosses throught down-town Pepperhil and there is a convenience store and an ice cream shop there, among other things.  One enterprising abutter has installed a couple of lawn chairs and a coke machine on his property facing the trail!

The other trail users were a varied lot. By far the number one largest group that I saw on this week day morning was older people on hybrid bikes! There were a few roadies, me being one of them today. I saw a guy “traing” as hard as he could on his dual-suspension MTB. He was spinning quite fast and had a very harsh look of concentration on his face. He was concentrating so hard, in fact, that he did not even respond to my cheery hello  as I passed him on the path going down and going back up it. In fact, the vast majority of the people that I passed on this path refused to aknowledge my greeting or even manke eye contact! Not the friendly, family, comunity feel that I tend to expect on bike paths! Two people stod out as “friendly”. The middle aged guy on the “fixie” and, more importantly, the young blond girl riding with her friend. Other than that. a couple of grunted “hello”s was the best that I could get out of any of my fellow Trail Travelers.

All in all it was an enjoyable morning though. I did not do the whole trail as I wanted to save some “steam” for riding with my family laer on but I think next time I’ll go all the way down and back. I will continue to ride cheery, no mater what.

Out and about on Bikes

So far this year I have tried to Ride the Georgetown-Rowley State forest three times. All three times I have wound up walking out! The first time is was my seat. The second time my chain broke. This time, my riding buddy got a flat. No problem! I had a spare tube in my pack and tire irons and all that. So we swapped out the tube and my buddy started pumping. He pumped and pumped and pumped with the little stick pump. The pump got hot. He got tired. The tire got WAY under-inflated. He was way to big of a fellow to ride out on it without bending the rim and he was way to pooped of a fellow to keep pumping so... out we walked.

Then I went to work for a couple of days and stuff. I got out today with my youngest on the back of the 820. Here he is relaxing in front or a relic of the old railroad we were biking on. He get's pretty comfy back there and we had his favorite Buzz Lightyear water bottle so he was pretty well chill. He wanted to see a bunny.

We saw THIS bunny! Biggest, friendlyest, most domesticated bunny that we have seen cycling together. Wait. Domesticated? Yep. This thing was as tame as can be. We actually cam across it right after another guy. We tried to catch it but it was not quite that tame! We called the ACO. I hop thay were able to round it up and return it to safety.

Well it was advice I guess

I went for a nice ride around town. I felt like I rode my ass off but it was only six and a half miles. No route. No cadence. No agenda. Just a ride-about. It was nice to get out and about and I got an errand done so I feel very U.C. right now.

I also checked out the "bike path" that our city is dumping a bunch of money into. Once again, this fracked up city is dumping good money after bad as far as I can tell. See, what they have done is make a path that starts at the Hobo camp under the bridge by the river and goes straight to...you guessed it... the liquor store! Pure genius! Of course, being in the scketchyest part of town and running through trash strewn riverside wild-land that has ALL been a traditional hiding spot for the cities drug addicts and homeless population, not a single family is ever likely to go here. The path actually doesn't even run along the river but 20 yards away from it on the other side of the trees and brush where the homeless dudes roam, ipso-facto: NO VIEW! Perfect. Thank goodness The Mayor green-lighted this gem!

Commuter Bike!

Stopped on an errand on the way home today and found this old timer tied to a cable. Bad lighting I'm afraid, but I hope that you get the idea.

They Laughed at my Little Girl!

We were out in the local State Forest last week end trying to link together some trails into an epic loop. That turned out to be a sketchy proposition at best. What did I say the other day? Something like "piles of horse crap are NOT trail maintenance". Well, they can't repair bridges either. Whatever I guess. It must have been a pretty good ride since I broke my chain. In TWO places! Well, after doing the walk of shame to the car, I loaded it up and brought her Home. Not my home but HER "home": the shop where I bought it. 

Oh, sure, they fixed her right up, but they laughed at her! It seams that Cinderella was not supposed to have a ball gown after all.  It seems that the 16 year old shop rat, as well as the owner, felt it odd that my 15 year old Sorrento was equipped with a Shimano XT rear derailure. "It's what I had laying around" was apparently not the right answer. "must be nice. I wish that I had XT just laying around". Considering that I was in a pretty swanky bike shop in a pretty swanky tow, I wasn't expecting to be viewed as a snob based solely on my collection of spare bike parts! Now I am thinking about getting the whole XT Gruppo for the DB. What a stir that would cause!

Now, this is interesting

So, an Aussie Mountainbiker has won Le Toure De France. Wow.