When I was a kid we had a picture book that may or may not have been entitled, Fortunately, Unfortunately. I remember almost nothing about the story except that every thing that happened kept alternating between a Fortunately and an Unfortunately. The day of our first century, from Berwick PA to State College PA, was a little like that.
The day started well enough. Fortunately, we managed to beat the rain leaving Berwick, and after a couple short detours we were cruising. Unfortunately, my front derailleur (the gadget that pushes the chain from one gear to another) was acting up, so I pulled over to attempt to fix it but kind of made it worse instead. Back on the road it (Fortunately) wasn't bringing me down too much, and Kyle R., Katie and I got some sweet pacelines going and knocked off a big chunk of miles averaging almost 20mph.
Around this time my cyclocomputer stopped working (Unfortunately). This is the gadget that tells me how fast I'm going, how far I've gone, and a few other pieces of less crucial information. It also takes a beating, as it's strapped to my handlebars in all sorts of weather. Some water or road grit or something got inside the little bugger, because the button that changes the display mode stopped working. This meant that for much of the rest of the day I was stuck in clock mode and unable to see my mileage, which is a problem because all of our route directions are based on mileage. Fortunately, at this point I was riding with other people who had working computers, so they could keep us on track.
The middle of the day was great: nice weather, beautiful scenery, making good time and having a great time. Until ten or fifteen miles after lunch #1 (on 90+ mile days we have two lunches), when I got my first flat--ever. Fortunately, everyone I was riding with stopped to wait while I fixed it and we were back on the road before too long.
Unfortunately, on a curvy, hilly section of the ride about ten miles later, I got flat #2. Learned the hard way to check my tire more thoroughly when fixing a flat. Also unfortunately, the people I had been riding with had just rounded a bend and didn't hear me yell that I was stopping. Unfortunately again, on closer inspection my tire was full of little pieces of crap, and I decided that I needed a new tire. Fortunately, I had a spare tire in my bag in the van. Unfortunately, I had no cell service to call the van. Nor did anyone else that rode by. So I asked them to keep riding and keep checking their phones, so that as soon as they had service they could get through to the van, but no one ever got through.
Two hours later I'm still sitting by the side of the road when sweep rolls up. (In case I haven't explained it already, each day two riders are designated to ride sweep. This means that they will ride at the very end for the entire day, and help anyone they encounter with problems they may be having. They also carry a first aid kit, extra tire tubes and extra snacks.) Fortunately, Lindsay and Emma, who were sweep that day, picked up my mood in a major way. Also fortunately, Lindsay had the idea (that should have occurred to me two hours earlier) to walk down to the nearest house to use their landline. (In my defense, none of the houses were exactly visible through the woods so it wasn't an obvious option. Even so, I will never make that mistake again.)
So, fortunately, Lindsay got ahold of the van and they headed back toward us. Unfortunately, it was another half hour before the van got there, and then it took me 15 minutes or so to switch the tire. All in all I was stuck on that hill for 2 hours and 45 minutes, which is an ETERNITY in cycling time, the equivalent of 30 miles of fairly hilly terrain, almost a third of the total distance for the day.
Fortunately, once I was moving again I was in a pretty good mood. Lindsay and I ride at generally the same pace, but unfortunately Emma's bike was stuck in second gear in front, which was slowing her down a lot on hills. So the pace was slower that I wanted to ride, but with my computer wigging out I couldn't set off on my own or I would miss the turns.
Fortunately it was still a gorgeous day and the scenery was still lovely: short rolling hills of farmland. Many of the farms were Amish, and we waved to a lot of people driving horse-drawn buggies in the opposite direction.
Unfortunately, the wind had picked up, and by the time we left second lunch there was a considerable headwind. Lindsay, Emma and I tried to paceline but we kept losing Emma on the hills so it wasn't really worth it.
As a Fortunately/Unfortunately aside, I had unfortunately forgotten to call my old friend Kevin (who currently lives in State College) until that morning, when I left him a message. Fortunately, just around second lunch he called me back and we arranged to meet up that evening. Assuming I made it in before midnight, that is.
Back on the road, my computer had fortunately gotten stuck in auto mode, which scrolls through displaying the trip mileage, trip time, clock, and total mileage. Since I could finally see the mileage (even though it had reset itself a bunch of times since that morning) I set off on my own in an attempt to make it into State College in time to get to the bike shop before they closed at 7, so they could look at my derailleur, which was still having fairly serious problems.
Unfortunately, once I left Lindsay and Emma I was without anything to distract me from brooding about how ed I was to have been stranded, and how much pain I was in.
Some very unfortunate backstory: starting on about the second or third ride day, I had been having severe, stabbing pain in my upper back. At the beginning it would start around mile 40, but since the days were ending at mile 50 or 60 it wasn't that bad. But as the days wore on, the pain started earlier and earlier, and the days lasted longer and longer. By the time we left Berwick the pain was starting after only 10 or 15 miles.
So, to wrap up this story, I fortunately made it into State College in time to go to the bike shop, and they fixed my derailleur and gave me a couple suggestions on seat and handlebar adjustments to help the back pain. Unfortunately, I was in an absolutely foul mood. While everyone else was celebrating completing our first century, I was sitting out on the porch trying to fix my bike in the middle of a thunderstorm, while sobbing with exhaustion and frustration and trying to eat some dinner at the same time.
Fortunately, I finally settled things with my bike, got myself showered, and called Kevin. He came up to the house where we were staying and the two of us walked around the block and had a great time, albeit brief, catching up.
After Kevin left I went upstairs and collapsed into bed (read: Thermarest and sleeping bag on the floor with a fleece sweatshirt for a pillow) for some very, very well-deserved sleep.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Monday, July 7, 2008
A first attempt to catch up
Wow, I have been a terrible blogger. I log in to blogger for the first time in weeks and the title of my most recent post, "one state down..." is a jarring reminder of how badly I have been keeping up with this. We are now in our eighth state since that last post. New York, New Jersey (for about 10 miles), Pennsylvania (and its three separate mountain ranges), West Virginia (for under 10 miles), Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois have rolled away under our tires. Yesterday we crossed the mighty Mississippi into St. Louis, the "gateway to the west."
The road here has been long, and it has been short. It feels at once as though we've been on this journey together for months, and as though we've just begun. It's very hard to believe that we've gone about a third of the distance from Boston to Santa Barbara, and that the days will soon tick down to the halfway marker.
Anyway, there are many stories to tell and very little internet time to tell them in. After a short swing through New York and an even shorter swing through New Jersey, we entered Pennsylvania:
I somehow lost some pictures so this is from someone else's camera, and I couldn't find anyone else who had a copy of the picture of us turning around so that New Jersey would be in the background and spelling out NJ. Alas. New Jersey doesn't really count anyway.
Our first destination in PA was Mt. Pocono. Stop and think about that for a second.
Yes, our destination was the top of a mountain. I don't have the elevation graph from the cue sheet on hand to show you, but it was relatively flat for the most of the day before curving upward exponentially--not exaggerating--in the last 10 miles. The last 3 miles in particular were a single unrelenting ascent, which was slow and laborious but punctuated by inspirational chalk messages on the road from the riders that the front of the pack and a poster taped to a speed limit sign by one rider's unexpectedly visiting girlfriend that read "Almost there Bike & Build!" And waiting on the church lawn at the top of the hill were my parents, who were almost as excited to see me as Arlo, our puppy. After a nice dinner with the folks at the only restaurant in town I headed back to the church and they headed back to Ithaca.
The next morning we set off for Berwick, PA, famous for a nuclear power plant, a Wise potato chip factory and a ridiculously good high school football team. That evening we were featured on the local news, supposedly including part of an interview with me, but I still haven't seen it. I also got another visit, this time from Billy, a friend from Providence who has since moved back home to eastern PA. The next morning we rolled out of town with the steam from the nuclear power plant silhouetted in the sunrise.
The day out of Berwick was our first century: our first 100 mile day. For me it was also the day that everything started going wrong...
The road here has been long, and it has been short. It feels at once as though we've been on this journey together for months, and as though we've just begun. It's very hard to believe that we've gone about a third of the distance from Boston to Santa Barbara, and that the days will soon tick down to the halfway marker.
Anyway, there are many stories to tell and very little internet time to tell them in. After a short swing through New York and an even shorter swing through New Jersey, we entered Pennsylvania:
I somehow lost some pictures so this is from someone else's camera, and I couldn't find anyone else who had a copy of the picture of us turning around so that New Jersey would be in the background and spelling out NJ. Alas. New Jersey doesn't really count anyway.Our first destination in PA was Mt. Pocono. Stop and think about that for a second.
Yes, our destination was the top of a mountain. I don't have the elevation graph from the cue sheet on hand to show you, but it was relatively flat for the most of the day before curving upward exponentially--not exaggerating--in the last 10 miles. The last 3 miles in particular were a single unrelenting ascent, which was slow and laborious but punctuated by inspirational chalk messages on the road from the riders that the front of the pack and a poster taped to a speed limit sign by one rider's unexpectedly visiting girlfriend that read "Almost there Bike & Build!" And waiting on the church lawn at the top of the hill were my parents, who were almost as excited to see me as Arlo, our puppy. After a nice dinner with the folks at the only restaurant in town I headed back to the church and they headed back to Ithaca.
The next morning we set off for Berwick, PA, famous for a nuclear power plant, a Wise potato chip factory and a ridiculously good high school football team. That evening we were featured on the local news, supposedly including part of an interview with me, but I still haven't seen it. I also got another visit, this time from Billy, a friend from Providence who has since moved back home to eastern PA. The next morning we rolled out of town with the steam from the nuclear power plant silhouetted in the sunrise.
The day out of Berwick was our first century: our first 100 mile day. For me it was also the day that everything started going wrong...
Thursday, June 19, 2008
One state down...
So Fitchburg to Amherst was a hard day of cycling. Amherst to Pittsfield, as it turns out, was at least as hard. Here's the elevation chart from that day's cue sheet:
Those would be the Berkshires. Including one 1/4mi stretch of road that was a 17% grade that flattened out to an 11% grade for another half mile. For context, roads in the west are never more than a 6% grade because between building all the roads in the east and building all the roads in the west it was decided that anything over 6% was too steep. For more context for you Ithaca folks, Buffalo Street is apparently around a 10% grade.
But we killed those hills and made it into Pittsfield in one piece. In Pittsfield we stayed at the YMCA, and it was indeed fun, because they let us use their pool and sauna. I went to bed early that night despite the final championship game being on. This was a good decision. The next day was a little over 80 miles and I woke up tired and sore from the previous two days of mountains.
Pittsfield to Poughkeepsie day was way more fun, even though it was long. For one thing, here was the cue sheet for that day:
Dani, one of the riders, saw this and practically burst into tears of joy. Those first 15 miles were still pretty rough, though. But, Pittsfield to Poughkeepsie day was also awesome because less than ten miles in this happened:
New York generally provided way more photo opportunities than Massachusetts:
Those would be the Berkshires. Including one 1/4mi stretch of road that was a 17% grade that flattened out to an 11% grade for another half mile. For context, roads in the west are never more than a 6% grade because between building all the roads in the east and building all the roads in the west it was decided that anything over 6% was too steep. For more context for you Ithaca folks, Buffalo Street is apparently around a 10% grade.But we killed those hills and made it into Pittsfield in one piece. In Pittsfield we stayed at the YMCA, and it was indeed fun, because they let us use their pool and sauna. I went to bed early that night despite the final championship game being on. This was a good decision. The next day was a little over 80 miles and I woke up tired and sore from the previous two days of mountains.
Pittsfield to Poughkeepsie day was way more fun, even though it was long. For one thing, here was the cue sheet for that day:
Dani, one of the riders, saw this and practically burst into tears of joy. Those first 15 miles were still pretty rough, though. But, Pittsfield to Poughkeepsie day was also awesome because less than ten miles in this happened:
New York generally provided way more photo opportunities than Massachusetts:
New York also provided a roadside farmstand where we stopped and ate an entire quart of strawberries. Amazing.
And then we got to Poughkeepsie where we had a day off to build and beds to sleep in. One state down....a bunch more to go.
Ride Day #3: 51.8 miles, 4500 ft of climbing, overall elevation loss of 50 ft
Ride Day #3 for me started out as an awful day and ended as the best day yet.
Night before in Fitchburg I stayed up too late to watch the Celtics game and (unrelatedly) started having some...intestinal difficulties. So next morning I woke up feeling not so hot and set off on another drizzly day: bit more than 50 miles through some pretty intense hills. To give you a sense of it, here's the elevation chart from our cue sheet (the handout we get every morning that has directions and other pertinent information) for that day:
Around mile 15 I seriously crapped out and reluctantly called the van to come pick me up. I didn't want to give up for the day but as soon as the van came I climbed in and passed out in the backseat. After a nap and some food and a solid two and a half hour break, though, I was feeling much better. It took a lot of arm-twisting, but as the last riders were rolling out from lunch break I convinced Kyle, one of the trip leaders, to let me get back in the saddle.
Best decision I ever made.
I started out with a few other people but after less than a mile I pulled a little ahead and rode the rest of the day by myself. It was an incredible afternoon, and I rolled into town in a fantastic mood, even though physically I felt far less spectacular. I also learned two very important lessons. The first: granny gear is there for a reason.
Let me back up a little. In fact, let me back up all the way to the beginning. Most bikes these days have multiple gears, just like cars, so that you (or the engine) can have an easier time at low speeds or going up hills, but then get more bang for your buck at higher speeds with a higher gear. My bike has 27 speeds: 3 gears in the front and 9 in the back.
I thought I was a pro at cycling up hills because I lived in Providence for five years (and rode a crappy mountain bike that weighed about seven times as much as my new road bike). The best strategy for Providence-style hills, i.e. very steep but only a couple blocks long, is to get up as much momentum as possible going into the hill and then not give up an iota of it until the last possible second. This means that you start the hill in a very high gear, and downshift as little as possible. This strategy works great for short hills, but it works not at all for long hills. This is where granny gear comes in.
Granny gear is our fond term for the absolute lowest gear your bike can be in, which is pretty low when your bike has 27 gear combinations. Until the other day I had never used the granny gear on my new bike--I had never even gotten close. But chugging up those hills all by myself on the way to Amherst I realized that sometimes you can't power up a hill, because sometimes that hill lasts a full half mile. Sometimes you have no choice but to put it in granny gear and just crank away at 6 miles per hour till you get to the top.
This sounds obvious, but it's not because if you have a choice, it's much easier to get up a hill if you can go faster. If you're in a higher gear you can get more distance for each pedal revolution, the tradeoff being that it's harder to pedal. If a hill is short enough it's worth working harder to get up that hill a little sooner, but these hills went on and on and on. So I learned the very important lesson that there's no shame in using granny gear, and that going 6mph gives you more time to enjoy the scenery anyway.
The second lesson I learned?
I can do anything.
Night before in Fitchburg I stayed up too late to watch the Celtics game and (unrelatedly) started having some...intestinal difficulties. So next morning I woke up feeling not so hot and set off on another drizzly day: bit more than 50 miles through some pretty intense hills. To give you a sense of it, here's the elevation chart from our cue sheet (the handout we get every morning that has directions and other pertinent information) for that day:
Around mile 15 I seriously crapped out and reluctantly called the van to come pick me up. I didn't want to give up for the day but as soon as the van came I climbed in and passed out in the backseat. After a nap and some food and a solid two and a half hour break, though, I was feeling much better. It took a lot of arm-twisting, but as the last riders were rolling out from lunch break I convinced Kyle, one of the trip leaders, to let me get back in the saddle.
Best decision I ever made.
I started out with a few other people but after less than a mile I pulled a little ahead and rode the rest of the day by myself. It was an incredible afternoon, and I rolled into town in a fantastic mood, even though physically I felt far less spectacular. I also learned two very important lessons. The first: granny gear is there for a reason.
Let me back up a little. In fact, let me back up all the way to the beginning. Most bikes these days have multiple gears, just like cars, so that you (or the engine) can have an easier time at low speeds or going up hills, but then get more bang for your buck at higher speeds with a higher gear. My bike has 27 speeds: 3 gears in the front and 9 in the back.
I thought I was a pro at cycling up hills because I lived in Providence for five years (and rode a crappy mountain bike that weighed about seven times as much as my new road bike). The best strategy for Providence-style hills, i.e. very steep but only a couple blocks long, is to get up as much momentum as possible going into the hill and then not give up an iota of it until the last possible second. This means that you start the hill in a very high gear, and downshift as little as possible. This strategy works great for short hills, but it works not at all for long hills. This is where granny gear comes in.
Granny gear is our fond term for the absolute lowest gear your bike can be in, which is pretty low when your bike has 27 gear combinations. Until the other day I had never used the granny gear on my new bike--I had never even gotten close. But chugging up those hills all by myself on the way to Amherst I realized that sometimes you can't power up a hill, because sometimes that hill lasts a full half mile. Sometimes you have no choice but to put it in granny gear and just crank away at 6 miles per hour till you get to the top.
This sounds obvious, but it's not because if you have a choice, it's much easier to get up a hill if you can go faster. If you're in a higher gear you can get more distance for each pedal revolution, the tradeoff being that it's harder to pedal. If a hill is short enough it's worth working harder to get up that hill a little sooner, but these hills went on and on and on. So I learned the very important lesson that there's no shame in using granny gear, and that going 6mph gives you more time to enjoy the scenery anyway.
The second lesson I learned?
I can do anything.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Ride Day #2
Forty-some-odd miles to Fitchburg, MA: first half in pouring rain, second half mostly uphill. Felt pretty good though, and ready to get back on the bike tomorrow. For the next week we have a bunch of days around 50 miles each, but after that our average daily mileage will be more in the 70-80 range, so this was still a pretty light day.
Last night we had dinner at the Webbers' house again, which was wonderful. They really are fantastic people (and fantastic cooks!), and it meant a lot to them to have us all there.
I can't think of any more interesting updates right now...I guess I'm not cut out for the blogging life. More later for sure.
Last night we had dinner at the Webbers' house again, which was wonderful. They really are fantastic people (and fantastic cooks!), and it meant a lot to them to have us all there.
I can't think of any more interesting updates right now...I guess I'm not cut out for the blogging life. More later for sure.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Santa Barbara or Bust!
We are officially on our way across the country!
On Wednesday afternoon we met in Revere, MA (just north of Boston) for a day and a half of orientation: a bike maintenance clinic, a health and safety lecture, some getting-to-know-you games, safety drills, and a shakedown ride. I was definitely getting cabin fever, itching to get on the road, but it was fun to spend some quality time with the folks I'll be spending my summer with. They all seem like absolutely awesome people, and I can't wait to get to know them all better.
Friday morning we headed over to Revere Beach and dipped our rear tires in the Atlantic...
...and after that we were off! It was a very light first day, just 22.44 miles to Andover, MA, but it was great to get on the road. It's finally started to sink in, the idea of what we've begun.
Since it was such a short ride we got into town pretty early, which meant we had time to explore a little and go swimming!
A little backstory on why our first stop was so close: Boston to Santa Barbara is a new route this year, and it was designed by two Bike and Build alums who are also two of our four trip leaders, Kyle and Jose. They designed this route as a memorial to Chris Webber, a B&B alum and later program director who was hit by a car (not on his bike) and killed a little more than a year ago. Chris grew up in Andover, and his parents still live here, which is why we made this our first stop. We're staying at a school but Joan and Bill Webber have been incredible hosts to us, inviting a huge group of rowdy and hungry kids into their home and feeding us four separate meals of fantastic home-cooked food.
Today we woke up early once again and headed just down the road to Lawrence, MA, where we worked on three different houses with Merrimack Valley Habitat for Humanity. Pretty amazing story here too. This Habitat chapter had been working on rehabilitating three adjacent houses, and after a year they were almost done. One of the families had even begun to move furniture into one of them, and none of the units were more than two weeks away from completion when a nightclub under renovation next door caught fire in the middle of the night and burned down almost the entire block. The Habitat houses were completely lost, and they had to start over from scratch.
But they did start over, and even though it's only been 5 or 6 months they've made amazing progress. Then throw 32 young energetic people into the mix and you can get a lot done in an 8-hour Saturday. One group of B&Bers were digging holes and filling them with cement for fenceposts, another group was building and raising a wall:
One of the other trip leaders, Skip, and I were putting up scaffolding with the help of a few other people, and then a few of us were putting up rafters:
(That's me in the last picture.) Anyway, it's been a fantastic start to the trip and I can't wait to get back on the bike tomorrow. Next stop: Fitchburg, MA.
On Wednesday afternoon we met in Revere, MA (just north of Boston) for a day and a half of orientation: a bike maintenance clinic, a health and safety lecture, some getting-to-know-you games, safety drills, and a shakedown ride. I was definitely getting cabin fever, itching to get on the road, but it was fun to spend some quality time with the folks I'll be spending my summer with. They all seem like absolutely awesome people, and I can't wait to get to know them all better.
Friday morning we headed over to Revere Beach and dipped our rear tires in the Atlantic...
...and after that we were off! It was a very light first day, just 22.44 miles to Andover, MA, but it was great to get on the road. It's finally started to sink in, the idea of what we've begun.
Since it was such a short ride we got into town pretty early, which meant we had time to explore a little and go swimming!
A little backstory on why our first stop was so close: Boston to Santa Barbara is a new route this year, and it was designed by two Bike and Build alums who are also two of our four trip leaders, Kyle and Jose. They designed this route as a memorial to Chris Webber, a B&B alum and later program director who was hit by a car (not on his bike) and killed a little more than a year ago. Chris grew up in Andover, and his parents still live here, which is why we made this our first stop. We're staying at a school but Joan and Bill Webber have been incredible hosts to us, inviting a huge group of rowdy and hungry kids into their home and feeding us four separate meals of fantastic home-cooked food.
Today we woke up early once again and headed just down the road to Lawrence, MA, where we worked on three different houses with Merrimack Valley Habitat for Humanity. Pretty amazing story here too. This Habitat chapter had been working on rehabilitating three adjacent houses, and after a year they were almost done. One of the families had even begun to move furniture into one of them, and none of the units were more than two weeks away from completion when a nightclub under renovation next door caught fire in the middle of the night and burned down almost the entire block. The Habitat houses were completely lost, and they had to start over from scratch.
But they did start over, and even though it's only been 5 or 6 months they've made amazing progress. Then throw 32 young energetic people into the mix and you can get a lot done in an 8-hour Saturday. One group of B&Bers were digging holes and filling them with cement for fenceposts, another group was building and raising a wall:
One of the other trip leaders, Skip, and I were putting up scaffolding with the help of a few other people, and then a few of us were putting up rafters:
(That's me in the last picture.) Anyway, it's been a fantastic start to the trip and I can't wait to get back on the bike tomorrow. Next stop: Fitchburg, MA.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
my longest ride yet...
...but I'm not sure exactly how long it was. I messed up my cyclocomputer so it was slightly overestimating the mileage. But by estimating based on the length of one section of the ride that I know, I'm guessing about 45 miles total. Not bad, huh?
The quality of the ride was somewhat lacking, though. I had this great plan to bike to Newport and back, but several things conspired against me. The ride to Bristol along the East Bay Bike Path flew by, I think in part because I was going faster than usual thanks to my new clipless pedals!! (These are pedals that your special bike shoes actually snap into, which means that it's way more efficient, because since your feet are attached to the pedals you're moving the gears even on the upstroke. Thus you can go faster, and going up hills in particular is much easier. So much fun!)
I stopped for lunch at this great little cafe in Bristol, then got back on the road. This was where the first big problem arose: there is no way to get from Bristol to Newport without clocking a bunch of miles on 4-lane, no shoulder roads. Fortunately most of these have a speed limit of 35mph, but it's still pretty freaky. The first big adventure is going over the Mount Hope Bridge, which is beautiful but kind of scary if you're on a bike and there's no space for people to go around you. Once you make it over in one piece, you've got to figure out how to get south through Portsmouth, which is a challenge because the only roads that go the whole way are both state highways. After attempting one plan which was aborted when it became clear that this was a serious highway, I stuck to the smaller of the two main roads until I reached the imaginatively-named Middle Road, which goes along the top of the low hill that is the Portsmouth section of the Portsmouth/Newport island.
Middle Rd, despite the name, is absolutely lovely. It's mostly working farms and old, old houses--not the kind you see on the streets of Providence, but old farmhouses with fieldstone walls along the road and cutting through the fields and woods. Made this chunk of the trip worthwhile.
At this point I was thinking I would take the bus from Newport back to Bristol, then bike home along the bike path. Aside from the annoyance of going back along those big roads through Portsmouth, biking round trip would have been in the vicinity of 80 miles, and it was getting a little too late because it had been slow going on the way there (what with stopping every few miles to look at the map, backtracking, and zigzagging to avoid big roads). But by the time I got to Newport it was officially raining and the temperature was in the 50's, so I decided to call it a day and take the ferry from Newport straight back to Providence.
Finding the ferry was an ordeal in itself. I started by looking for a library, where I could use the computer and figure out the ferry schedule and where it docks. But my map of Newport was a bit tricky to read, and Newport has conveniently neglected to put street signs on all of the roads I needed--the small streets are labeled, as are the big streets, but the middle-sized streets which are ideal for biking were not. After some more backtracking and a stop an historical society-type library with no computers, I finally I found the public library, got online, and discovered that I had 25 minutes to catch the ferry or I would be stranded cold and wet until the next one 3 hours later. I got directions from a librarian, but biked past the ferry 4 or 5 times and asked where it was another 6 or 7 times because it's a deceptively small boat that looked dark and empty, and there were no signs or ticket booths or anything indicating that this was a working public transport boat.
Finally I went back to the visitor's center and confirmed that this unmarked and seemingly uninhabited boat was actually the one I wanted, and bolted back over because at this point it was 4:53 and the ferry was supposed to leave at 4:50. I sped up the sidewalk along the dock as they were getting ready to shove off and yelled, "Hey, is this the ferry to Providence? Can I still get on?" Thank goodness, they waited for me.
5 minutes later I was snug and warm and on my way home.
Lots more thank-yous are in order:
Heather and Bruce Lane
Dan and Doreen Koretz
Kathleen Suryan and Richard Benton
Tommy Quirk
Meg Peterson
Connie Bart Kintner and Paul Kintner
Sarah Watamura
Scott Ewing
Sarah Adams and Dwight Shank
Sarah Tamor and Alex Ward
Nancy and George Schuler
Vanessa Gilbert
Jeff and Mary Jo Wood
Dooley Kiefer
Sandy Condry
Archie and Joan Riegel
Peter and Enid Littman
Eytan Kurshan (a Bike and Build alum!)
and everyone who came to the party on Sunday.
Thanks to all of you, I'm more than three-quarters of the way there!!
The quality of the ride was somewhat lacking, though. I had this great plan to bike to Newport and back, but several things conspired against me. The ride to Bristol along the East Bay Bike Path flew by, I think in part because I was going faster than usual thanks to my new clipless pedals!! (These are pedals that your special bike shoes actually snap into, which means that it's way more efficient, because since your feet are attached to the pedals you're moving the gears even on the upstroke. Thus you can go faster, and going up hills in particular is much easier. So much fun!)
I stopped for lunch at this great little cafe in Bristol, then got back on the road. This was where the first big problem arose: there is no way to get from Bristol to Newport without clocking a bunch of miles on 4-lane, no shoulder roads. Fortunately most of these have a speed limit of 35mph, but it's still pretty freaky. The first big adventure is going over the Mount Hope Bridge, which is beautiful but kind of scary if you're on a bike and there's no space for people to go around you. Once you make it over in one piece, you've got to figure out how to get south through Portsmouth, which is a challenge because the only roads that go the whole way are both state highways. After attempting one plan which was aborted when it became clear that this was a serious highway, I stuck to the smaller of the two main roads until I reached the imaginatively-named Middle Road, which goes along the top of the low hill that is the Portsmouth section of the Portsmouth/Newport island.
Middle Rd, despite the name, is absolutely lovely. It's mostly working farms and old, old houses--not the kind you see on the streets of Providence, but old farmhouses with fieldstone walls along the road and cutting through the fields and woods. Made this chunk of the trip worthwhile.
At this point I was thinking I would take the bus from Newport back to Bristol, then bike home along the bike path. Aside from the annoyance of going back along those big roads through Portsmouth, biking round trip would have been in the vicinity of 80 miles, and it was getting a little too late because it had been slow going on the way there (what with stopping every few miles to look at the map, backtracking, and zigzagging to avoid big roads). But by the time I got to Newport it was officially raining and the temperature was in the 50's, so I decided to call it a day and take the ferry from Newport straight back to Providence.
Finding the ferry was an ordeal in itself. I started by looking for a library, where I could use the computer and figure out the ferry schedule and where it docks. But my map of Newport was a bit tricky to read, and Newport has conveniently neglected to put street signs on all of the roads I needed--the small streets are labeled, as are the big streets, but the middle-sized streets which are ideal for biking were not. After some more backtracking and a stop an historical society-type library with no computers, I finally I found the public library, got online, and discovered that I had 25 minutes to catch the ferry or I would be stranded cold and wet until the next one 3 hours later. I got directions from a librarian, but biked past the ferry 4 or 5 times and asked where it was another 6 or 7 times because it's a deceptively small boat that looked dark and empty, and there were no signs or ticket booths or anything indicating that this was a working public transport boat.
Finally I went back to the visitor's center and confirmed that this unmarked and seemingly uninhabited boat was actually the one I wanted, and bolted back over because at this point it was 4:53 and the ferry was supposed to leave at 4:50. I sped up the sidewalk along the dock as they were getting ready to shove off and yelled, "Hey, is this the ferry to Providence? Can I still get on?" Thank goodness, they waited for me.
5 minutes later I was snug and warm and on my way home.
Lots more thank-yous are in order:
Heather and Bruce Lane
Dan and Doreen Koretz
Kathleen Suryan and Richard Benton
Tommy Quirk
Meg Peterson
Connie Bart Kintner and Paul Kintner
Sarah Watamura
Scott Ewing
Sarah Adams and Dwight Shank
Sarah Tamor and Alex Ward
Nancy and George Schuler
Vanessa Gilbert
Jeff and Mary Jo Wood
Dooley Kiefer
Sandy Condry
Archie and Joan Riegel
Peter and Enid Littman
Eytan Kurshan (a Bike and Build alum!)
and everyone who came to the party on Sunday.
Thanks to all of you, I'm more than three-quarters of the way there!!
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