Weekend at the End of the Year

Whoa, unexpected. The weekend separating Christmas (this past Thursday) and New Years (this coming Thursday) turned out to be exceptional for riding. Saturday - bright, sunny, a blue sky with puffy white clouds, almost 50 degrees, a light breeze. Sunday - rain at dawn then clearing, the streets dry out, the sun emerges and then slips behind high gauzy cottony sky wash.

And I have time to ride both days! Om Shanti! So do.

Saturday, clear, sharp light, I head out to the Holden Reservoir and up the great climb of South Rd, then onward toward Paxton, the climb up Asnebumskit Rd, eventually the rushing descent on rt. 56 and Kettle Brook Reservoir # 2 and the back of the Woo City Airport.

Kettle Brook # 2

Sunday, dramatic skies tumbled with grey, trees silhouetted in black, great vistas from Green Hill, neighborhoods on deeply sloped hills and congested intersections trying to get under interstate 290.

Looking out from the Sprinkler Factory on Harlow St

It's a shame that Woo City has been cleaved by the interstate; its presence causes necessary intersections that end up like clogged drains at peak traffic times or just dangerous cross streets at normal times. On Sunday the passage onto Lincoln St isn't that harrowing and I ascend the hill without competition, locate out the Sprinkler Factory Gallery, of which I've heard good things, and then make my way to Green Hill Park, a giant expanse of open space atop one of Worcester's seven hills.

Green Hill Park Golf Course

Meandering the neighborhoods is always a different kind of riding than that outside the city limits. In a neighborhood ramble, you have to encourage yourself to explore, to ride up a street just because it's hilly and can pose a challenge, whatever.

Beech tree on the campus of WPI

Coming home, cruising around the WPI campus (which I hadn't seen before), I had the option of going straight home, or extending the ride by climbing up to Bancroft Tower. I opted for the tower and the added climbing.

When all was said and done, I notched over 1000 feet of climbing on the day. Woo City can do that for you. You just have to be ready to climb and explore.

Bancroft Tower, Sunday, December 28, 2014

It's always worth climbing to this monument

The gas street lights of Woo City, Farnum St

Summary: Rides 87 & 88. Saturday, 25 miles, Sunday, 12 miles.

Alright, Not Done Yet: Ride 85

Okay, so life interrupted the compulsion of trying to blog every single ride for an entire year. There's a gap in the record because I got tied up with trivial matters like relocating my entire life to Woo City, like going to Italy for 10 days and assuming the role of Ambassador of Gluttony, like taking care of all the mundane but necessary tasks required to transform an 1886 Queen Anne Victorian house into Shad Headquarters.

But heck, suddenly I find myself in December getting back out there, exploring the neighborhoods of my adoptive city, navigating my way outside the city limits and circumnavigating the reservoirs. What the hell? Ride on, that's the obvious thing to do.

Images from ride #85.

Winter Style, South Rd Looking Uphill

Winter Style, South Rd looking toward Holden Reservoir

Holden Reservoir, Sunday, December 14

Claremont St, Near Clark University

Another shot of the same building
Claremont St

Also on Claremont St

Heritage Oak, Elm Park, Woo City

Ride Summary: About 21 miles, 13+ mph, Strava stats.

Rides 76 & 77: Hard to Keep Up With It All

I'm finding it increasingly hard to do it all - ride, blog, live, change houses, work, create. Time is finite while enthusiasm and curiosity is limitless! They clash and something must give, the wave particles flutter, the planet spin according to the laws of nature while the Dub thumps the dub-o-sphere with bass reverberations until the sun sets and riding safely evaporates.

Ride 76. Monday, September 22. Barney's Crew. A few guys (maybe have the group of 15) get caught at a red light. I alert Pete the organizer (I'm not sure of the etiquette - do we wait? or go on?). He says on this ride everyone's responsible for themselves and no one waits. If you get caught behind, well, the route is the same every week and everyone knows which way to go so no, no need to wait up. Instead, we blast forward. Ironically, or perhaps karmically, as we race through the last stretch of neighborhood on the way home, darkness at 6:53 settling in around us (a good thing we all have tail lights, some with head lights), Pete gets a flat tire! And though several of us offer to wait and help, Pete, perhaps recognizing the irony of not waiting earlier in the ride, tells us all to go ahead. And we do.

But it's so dark by the time I get back to my neighborhood, I'm like a shadow darting through the gloaming under the huge beeches and sweet gum trees; I decide that this is the last Monday night right for me this season.

Barney's, the departure in long shadows

Back to Park and Highland well after dusk

Unintended art, or perhaps
the subconscious made manifest

Ride Summary: 15.8 miles, 15.4 mph. Hoofing it. Strava.

Ride 77, Tuesday, September 23. Less than 24 hours later, Tuesday afternoon, another gorgeous early autumn afternoon, I can't NOT ride so saddle up and head out for a reservoir loop even though I'm tired and perhaps not fully recovered from last night's right. But I also want to re-do the Barney's loop (with a slight variation) so that I know the return sections - riding in a group the last three times I haven't paid close attention to where we actually were and which road to turn onto and into the neighborhood that leads back to Elm Park.

It all goes well, albeit with not quite the same urgency and speed as the group ride.

I take in the Holden Reservoir (sort of the de facto route to most loops out this way) but then coming back instead of actually jumping off into the neighborhood wind-about, I stay the course a little longer down Salisbury St toward Park Ave and duck into a different section of neighborhood and find myself heading up to Bancroft Tower in Salisbury Park, an interesting Woo City landmark that one can imagine has hosted hundreds of teen-age parties over the decades. Turns out that George Bancroft was a scholar and a eulogist at Abraham Lincoln's funeral and the tower erected in his honor stands proudly today and, amazingly enough, doesn't appear to have been defaced in the century+ that it's been there.

Bancroft Tower

Dubstoevsky at the tower

Nope, not Scotland; Woo City

The commemoration

Ride Summary: 18 miles, 14.4 mph. Not fast, but fun.

Ride # 75: Reservoirs A-Plenty

Team Shad HQ: The Library
Where literate cyclists Convene

Ride done on Thursday, September 18, 2014

Back when I was riding out of Lemonstar, the predominant feature of most of the westerly rides was hills. To the north and west of Woo City are hills as well but also reservoirs. Lots of them. In particular is Holden Reservoir, one of the largest and also nearest in terms of good cycling. Almost any ride out of the city to the northwest takes in at least a section of it. The good thing is that the road alongside the reservoir has been recently paved and so is fast and smooth in addition to being delightfully scenic.

But first you have to get out of the city itself and though it's possible to stitch together a route through neighborhoods and along secondary streets that don't have as much traffic, one inevitably finds the need to traverse your less-than-cycling-friendly avenues like Pleasant, Chandler St., Park Ave. Even June St (pictured below), though neighborhoody, intersects with major thoroughfares.

June St approaching the intersection with Chandler

But ten minutes of hyper-alert pedaling and a little luck with the lights and you're zipping freely through the last vestiges of "thickly settled" areas and picking up Oleana St which leads to Reservoir St and to scenes like this.

Holden Reservoir
On almost everyone's route

My solo venture today covered more or less the same ground as my first ride from Woo City when I met up with Raleigh Steve and she showed me his loop. Instead of climbing up Asnebumskit today, however, I went on to and through the center of Paxton on rt. 31. Not bad cycling though rt. 31 is a major road with fast-driving cars albeit not that many cars. It's one of those necessary segments of any ride in these environs, a span that links low traffic back country roads with one another.

In the case of this loop, I jumped off rt. 31 onto Suomi St, a small road heading south to Marshall St. which is bigger but that rolls through beautiful forested stretches. Eventually Marshall St intersects with rt. 56, another one of those well-paved connector-type roads ala rt. 31. I rode a stretch of rt. 56 with Raleigh Steve and it was fast, lots of swift downhill forested plunges on a good surface.

But on this ride I basically just crossed 56 onto Mannville St and was back in reservoir territory, the Kettle Brook Reservoirs to be exact. Very little traffic on this pleasant stretch.

Dubstoevsky at Kettle Brook

Kettle Brook Reservoir # 2

Southern End of KBR #2

Eventually, Mannville St intersects with Mulberry St and I took a left there and began climbing back northward through hardwood forest and areas that were once probably farms as the numerous stonewalls suggest. Mulberry St rounds the far tip of the Worcester Airport runway, something that in print doesn't sound all that appealing but is in reality quite bucolic and scenic, not to mention un-traveled. Here one sees that the "vast post-9/11 security apparatus" has not subsumed everything. Security, as mentioned in an earlier post, is a chain link fence and some warning signs.

Mulberry St and the far end of the Worcester Airport

Fifteen or twenty minutes later and this loop transitions back into busier streets and it's the stretch run back town HQ and the environs of Elm Park. Both times that I've returned on Highland Ave I've had to stop at the intersection of Highland and Park Ave. Might as well make this the standard end-of-ride photo whenever I end up paused here and waiting for the light to change.

Stuck pretty far back from the intersection at
Highland and Park

Ride Summary: 22.8 miles, 15.3 mph, about 90 minutes or so. Strava details.

Barney's Crew: Ride # 74

The Monday night ride from Barney's Bikes. Second time. George is here again, though we lost him last week. Tonight I ask him about his accent. Turns out that it is Ukrainian. Before we get underway, I meet another guy, Jorge from Cartagena, Colombia. It's an international group.

Like last week, someone mentions the Gear Works rides out of Lemonstar, rides I never went on. I explain that I'm generally not a group ride cyclist, that I mostly ride alone, but that because I've moved to this new place, Woo City, I'm branching out and exploring the group ride scene.

<Aside: "...exploring the group ride scene" sounds vaguely salacious.>

A great night. Crisp and cool. I wear a long sleeve Under Armour top under the yellow Mont Ventoux jersey that Scrod sent to me. It's that cool. There were 15 of us more or less. Some guys are definitely overdressed; others, under dressed. But I nailed it. Warm but never sweaty. Comfortable. Autumn riding.

And yes, it's true; you can really cruise in a group. I'm getting more comfortable with the dynamics of it all. For example, I'm not used to the arrogance of the peloton. Being predominantly a solo rider, I am always subservient to cars; I grant them all the power. In a group of 15 cyclists cruising along at 20 mph it's a whole different story. The power of the peloton renders individual anxiety about moving over and letting the car go by unnecessary. We form a power block on the road and any "single rider" trepidation I harbor gets flushed away by the brash and unshrinking certainty of the group. We fly forward. And I more than keep up. I ride strong and surge past several riders on the climbs.

But it's not a testosterone fest or a competition in any way. It strikes me as guys just airing it out, pushing themselves and, by extension, pushing the group. That's how it works, I'm learning.

Almost back to Shad HQ
The gloaming at the intersection of Highland and Park
September 15, 2014

Note: 36 years ago today the Grateful Dead played the second of three shows at the Great Pyramids at Giza, Egypt. Such an event is unimaginable today. Listen in particular to the opening cut, Ollin Arageed, it's some fine traditional jamming.

Ride Summary: 16.4 miles, 17.3 mph. That's getting it done. Strava Style.

First Forays in Woo City - Rides 72 & 73

I had a vague sense of the roads to the north and west of the city but was uncertain how to get there. In Lemonstar, I could be across town and heading into the hills in 5 minutes or so (traffic-dependent); but here in the big metropolis getting 'out of town' involves busy roads & intersections, unfamiliar neighborhoods, and sprawl. I photocopied a map section from the Central Mass bike map and set out on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

Paused at a light and uncertain which direction to go, I got lucky. A solo rider sidled up next to me and introduced himself. He was riding a 10 speed Raleigh with the shifters on the down tube and I thought to myself "Probably not too serious of a rider but maybe he knows the way to go to get out of here."

Turns out that Steve is a serious rider, or once was; nowadays he's hampered by too much work and too little time. Once, he told me, he had a fancy road bike but now he contents himself with the 10 speed. He ended up showing me a terrific ride, including the ascent of Mt. Asnebumskit, a nice climb, though short. I was riding the Crux so indulged in a little dirt road at the top of the ridge, a route that took us down the other side a short ways to a clearing that offered a fine long view to the west including views of the Kettle Brook Reservoirs.

The weird building on top of Asnebumskit

It felt like being back in the 1970s up there

Tower Style

Steve hoofing it up the last slope

The art of the spray paint can

The view west toward the Kettle Brook Reservoirs

The return loop brought us to a small back road that ran around the back side of the Worcester Airport. In fact, it curved around the far end of the airport. The only "security" visible was the rusty chain link fence with barbed wire around the top. Not exactly Post 9/11 secure, that's for sure.

Ride Summary (#72): Wasn't really going for speed, just exploration. Steve could really fly on his Raleigh, though, so we kept a descent pace. I ended the loop with about 25 miles under the tires.

***

There's a group rides that leaves Barney's Bike Shop at 6:00 PM on Monday nights. I'm not one for group rides, I rarely even do them but given that I'm new to the area and looking to learn new routes I decided to join the one Monday, Sept. 8. Barney's is about four long city blocks from Elm Park and Shad HQ so I decided to just rush down there on the road bike (instead of being a weenie and driving there). My tactical error, however, was electing to go the direct route, down Park Ave., a heavily-traffic'd city road, two lanes either direction. Ugly business.

Park Avenue

I made it without incident but vowed that the next time I joined the group ride I would get there via smaller neighborhood roads. 

A few guys were there already when I arrived about ten minutes before six and by the time Peter the owner of Barney's closed the shop there were about 20 guys and one woman (Catherine or Katherine, I never found out). I introduced myself to a few, it seemed as if most people knew each other. I met George (Croatian? I couldn't place his accent), and Seth (a burly guy, intelligent, a solid rider as it turned out), and the woman C/Katherine.

The ride was fast. At first I wondered if I could keep up and I found myself with the stragglers in the back of the group. But that was just along the 5 miles or so of relative flat, busy neighborhood roadway. Eventually we got out to the Holden Reservoir and when the road started to climb, I started to pull forward. I passed a few guys and settled in for the climbing, earning respect (I imagined) as I went.

These guys don't exactly do a loop; they ride out to the end of the road past the reservoir, then turn around and come back. Some folks continue on back home but others can turn onto Bailey Rd for more climbing and a slightly longer over all ride. I went with that group. More climbing. I felt good. Besides, given that the ride was limited in scope by imminent darkness, I had no reason to conserve energy. I booted it with the guys and kept pace.

We probably ended up averaging close to 17 mph but my own stats were skewed by having ridden around a few miles prior to hooking up with them. I did record the ride on Strava, though.

The view from the parking lot beside the bike shop.
The ride heads this way.

Gathering behind the shop

At speed along the reservoir

It was a good ride and a good experience and I'm going to do it again tonight (am scribing this a week after the ride). They say they ride into October so I'll have a couple more opportunities Although these days the light fades rather quickly; sunset tonight is 6:55 so we'll be coming home in dusk, as we did last week. Lucky for me, the return route brings us through Newton Square which is just a block up from Elm Park so I didn't have to fight my way home along Park Ave.

Almost back; corner of Highland and Park
This guy is a pro racer as it turns out
I overheard some conversations
Besides, he rode like an arrow and was obviously
better than the rest of us.

Ride Summary: About 18 miles over all. The actual group ride was about 15 and Strava indicates we averaged 17.1 mph. That's damn fast for me.

D2R2, August 23, 2014: Part II

Lunch Stop

I made it to the lunch stop, somewhere around the 66 mile mark. I was whupped but my cramping had become more annoying than debilitating; I would not have to limp home wounded and crestfallen after all.

At lunch, the first of two misfortunes befell The Virginian. An elderly guy in a beat up Suburu turned down the dirt road along which we'd all laid our bikes before going to the lunch tent. He clipped Ben's bike, thankfully just brushing the tire but coming close to actually running over the rear wheel. No damage but it was weird.

Nearing the farm with the savage dog

An hour or so later, cresting a ridge into open farmland and passing by a farmer with his dog, the dog rushed The Virginian and bit him on the calf. The cur tried to have a go at me as well but I bellowed at it and brandished my bike at it while the farmer scolded me for overreacting, the old fuck.

Wound inflicted by a wretched cur

Evidently the dog had had its rabies shots (as the old bastard farmer had asserted when we circled back to talk to him) because The Virginian did not come down with the dread malady. I joked with him later on in the ride that if I saw white salt rims around his mouth I wouldn't know if it indicated dehydration or the onset of rabies.

**

Among the little give-aways available at the registration tent was a bumper sticker, D2R2 in black letters in an oval frame. I told The Virginian that if I finished the entire 180K that I would put the sticker on my car. It is now the first sticker I've put on any car I've owned since my hand-me-down Volkswagen Bug from the late 1970s with the Grateful Dead stickers adorning it.

On the team car now

The remaining images offer some additional visual conceptualization of the D2R2. What an ass-kicking, gut-wrenching, soul-searching, eye-popping excellent time. Like nothing I've ever done before.

Catching a pair of riders in blue jerseys along a river

Respite before the Patten Hill Rd climb

In the nick of time - I was out of food and 
sorely in need of more
when we arrived at the rest stop to find this bounty

Patten Hill Road just ahead

Just beginning to climb Patten Hill
and already I'm off the back

Pickles and watermelon atop Patten Hill

The Virginian right at home out front

Heifer Style

Long views for tired eyes

Crossroads

Dubstoevsky in a spot of bother

The long grind of almost back but still 10 miles to go

Back!
Almost 12 hours after setting out

With the Niceness

Ride Summary: 180K (112 miles), 11.2 mph, 9 hours and 47 minutes in the saddle. Ouch.