Ride # 27: Drumlin Ramble

Saturday, March 29, 12:30, high 40s

I'd intended to ride big this weekend but then allowed myself to be diverted from that plan and instead I drove to the coast of Maine, Kittery Point, for an ad hoc gathering of old book-selling friends. That meant that I only got out for a couple hours.

But fine hours they were. Despite being dressed in full tights and skullcap and lemon/lime insulated windbreaker zip-up top, it's really no longer winter and I can no longer construe these rides as "winter riding." We have definitely crossed over into rough spring. Today for example was almost warm in the high 40s ... and yet it still held a lap dog's snarl and nip so you had to be careful not to under dress.

Headed out into the hills which, I now realize, are actually the Sterling Hills as well as the Princeton Hills. It depends on where in the hills you are. "Hey! Wheren' th' hill am I?" Ha.

Naked Drumlin

In a weird sort of suddenness, large swathes of bare ground have emerged. The Dexter Drumlin is completely bare. The Davis Farm lands are bare, big expanses of dun flank.

On this Saturday in late March the light is completely flat, not a shadow cast from the gauzy thick sky. An overcast of maudlin wan. The roadsides are etched by corroded snow banks, dull in muddy gouache. Every edge is round.

I see other riders today, several different encounters but they're all going the opposite direction. No rabbits to chase.

No road kill either. But plenty of live pigeons, doves, robins, blue jays, starlings, cardinals.

Ride Stats: 30.93 miles (48 k), 14 mph, 2 hours and a few minutes.

Ride # 26: From the Kremlin

3:00 in the afternoon, March 27, 2014
temps in the 40s

The not so quaint

The weirdness of Devens

Reporting live from inside the Kremlin
senior Russian correspondent,
Pedrag Dubstoyevsky

Ride Stats: 29 miles (46 k), 14 mph, a few minutes over two hours. Almost warm. 40s. Weak sun. The mad winds of yesterday's coastal blizzard are absent. Soon arrives the month of the Rasputitsa!

Road Kill: 1 robin (not photographed). Sad to think the bird had lived through such a crappy winter here and then never got to enjoy the imminently un-thawing ground and the sure to be fat and available worms.

Parting Shot

Shad-O

Ride # 25: Bone Dry

Tuesday, March 25, 2014, 3:00 o'clock
an austere 39 degrees (3+ C)
despite occasional sun

Spent the past weekend in Florida softening up on the Gulf Coast so the return to austere, bone dry conditions, cold & overcast, was the correct antidote to my momentary ease. Still, the rest came at a good time, I'd developed some nagging hip discomfort and time off the bike was good.

But time back on the bike is better.

Almost thirty miles today (a half mile short). The wonderfully ragged roads through the Princeton hills; abundant in sand, frost heaves, potholes, bereft of car traffic, white washed with salt. The landscape a forest of stark lines, granite, stone walls, and the immovable trunks of gray hard woods. Very far from Florida, not a drop of moisture in the air.

Felt vaguely stiff and uncomfortable out of the gates but five miles or so into the ride I started to loosen up, warm up, come around. The hills felt good. A blessing that. Today's meander was ALL climbing. The only 29+ ride I know that is entirely uphill. It hardly seems possible.

The maw of another climb

Near the furthest arc of the loop today, Gregory Rd, a road I can't come upon without thinking of Gregory Corso. Like Corso, the road is a shaggy ruin. A sandy, rutted, narrow climb up to Mountain Road, the road that runs along the base of Wachusett. Getting to the base of Wachusett from Chez Shad is, hyperbole aside, an hour+ of climbing. Not continuously but one climb after another. I love the climbing - it's slow, meditative, emboldening. I pay close attention to my cadence, my comfort, my consistency. I get out of the saddle and ride methodically, steadily, without breaking the rhythm. up Up UP. Ride to climb.

Intersecting with Gregory Corso

The road to the summit of Wachusett is closed this time of year, passage blocked by ski slope snow. While getting here was some initial low grade but steady climbing that morphed into several serious inclines, going back is not all downhill, despite logic that might suggest that going up means, ultimately, going down. But in this case, while indeed there is an initial sharp drop down from the mountain's base from Mountain Rd., there follows the long slog up the Justice Hill Cutoff, a branch road that's all UP. Then more UP on Justice Hill and Upper North Row Rd and onto the plateau of Sholan Farm.

Shad Style and Mountain of Zen Fritters

The final push home through the neighborhoods yields some additional climbing up and over Grove St and down again to Doyle Field and home to Shad Avenue.

Not very fast but felt good nonetheless. Kept turning the pedals with honest pulls the entire ride.

Ride Stats: 29.59 miles (47 k), 12.5 mph, two hours plus twenty minutes more or less. No road kill today. No special bird sightings, except for a massing of starlings chortling and chattering in the maple trees on Upper North Row Rd.

Parting Shot

Where the thunder comes from

Ride # 24: The Second Dozen

Returned from ride # 24, March 18, 2014 around 5:30 PM
Forgot to photograph the Before image

More bright sun and blustery wind, it feels colder than the 41 degrees the thermometer registered when I set out. The roads are cracked, sandy, and for the most part dusted white with salt, a sort of bone meal dryness. No humidity in the air. Sharp and crisp.

No road kill this ride. Sweet! Live on. And bonus, I saw a red-bellied woodpecker. Impressive bird. It was zooming from tree to tree in a forest stand near the chestnut restoration project I mentioned here on March 4. Also on the fly at the same spot were a chickadee, a hairy woodpecker, and a nuthatch.

The trees the red-bellied woodpecker passed through

 Ride Stats: 25.88 miles, 12. mph, 2 hours +. Clear dry, dry roads, temps in the low 40s, high 30s. Breezy.

Shadows on a Salty Road

Ride # 23: Sunday Sunshine

Sunday, March 16, around 12:30

Sunny, bright, clear-sky'd, dry air, blustery, much colder than the 35 degree temperature suggested. Yesterday's wind dried the roads so today the icy patches were minimal. Felt better today, the hip looser. I stretched before setting out. I think that helps.

An odd ride in a couple ways. Early on, I noticed a glass pot pipe laying on the shoulder (I thought "more odd road kill"). Then, toward the end of the ride, about the 28 mile point, this:

Check out the dude in the chair

The rag man draws circles

Ride Stats: 30.73 miles (48k), 14.7 mph, 2 hours 15 minutos.

Road Kill: One pot pipe, one chipmunk, one woodchuck (not photographed).

The Chipmunk

Ride # 22: Rare Roadkill

March 15, about 3 in the afternoon, 49 degrees

This ride almost didn't happen. All morning it was sunny, bright, blue sky, warm. I ran errands. Took care of business. Delayed riding. And when I did start to get ready I knew I had plenty of daylight ahead of me so I opted for some stretching first. I don't normally stretch before riding but I've been bothered all week by a nagging pain in my right hip point muscle where the connective band runs across from the lower back to the front of the quad.

When I stepped out onto the porch where the Crux Elite waited I received quite a surprise. To the west (where I was heading), the sky had turned ominously black. A huge swath of heavy cloud was moving in and the temperature was dropping as the wind picked up. Fuck! Then the rain started. Tentative at first and then full bore. Thwarted! I put the bike away and resigned myself to not riding. I considered retreating to the bathtub for a long soak.

Instead, I waited. I checked the weather radar on the internet and saw that what seemed to be an incoming storm was just a band of harshness moving through. So I waited it out. And when the coast cleared, I headed back out.

But where earlier it had been spring-like, sunny, welcoming, now it was windy, intermittently overcast, increasingly unforgiving. It was as if winter had bitch-slapped spring and was now ready to bitch-slap me. Except I flipped winter the bird just as the Virginian would have.

A Sholan Loop, the Princeton Hills. Road gutter rivulets from the melting. Frost heaves and tarmac breakdown. The harsh spew of sand. Roadsides still banked with begrimed snow. Farms. Giant winter marshmallows. The sprawl of machinery in the farmyard. Forests of skeletal trees. Landscapes of pure resignation. Shad in the midst of it all.

Running Rivulets

Farm Sprawl Style

Shad Aware of the Marshmallows

Shortly after I took the above photograph on Upper North Rd, in Sterling, I came upon some very esoteric road kill. It was a species known to appear in this area only rarely. At first, I rode by it but, realizing what I'd just seen, I turned around and pulled up alongside the corpse. There was no mistaking it. There, at my wheel, was the now empty and despondent can of Heady Topper.

Rarely Seen in These Parts

There was no mistaking it. All the identifying marks were evident. How this particular Topper came to this ignominious fate is impossible to say. I left it where I found it (echoes of Jerry Garcia singing "All I leave behind me is only what I found").

Unmistakable, if Seldom Seen

The good thing is that my hip seemed to loosen up as the ride went on. I purposefully changed positions a lot, tried to stretch it periodically, tried to notice when I was making undue demands of it and back off. I stood up more than usual when climbing, that seemed to allow it maximum unfolding and elongation. It seemed silly to stress it by staying in the saddle on moderate climbs; why not stand up and work the tall-in-the-saddle style?

As I climbed and descended, as I dodged broken tarmac and potholes, as I rough-coasted over frost heaved straightaways, I thought of Dominica. I realized that that's what riding in the Princeton Hills at the tail end of an exceedingly harsh winter is like. Dominica, that youthful, volcanic, rainforest'd ragamuffin island in the Caribbean where The Virginian and I rode in 2006, an island with mashed up roads and daunting climbs. That's what it's like here, now, in March, except colder, and with snow.

Shot from the saddle

A Shard of the Lemon Star

Ride Stats: 20.90 miles (33k), 12.5 mph, an hour and thirty-nine minutes.

Road Kill: 1 Heady Topper, a species seldom seen in Lemonstar or anywhere in Massachusetts. Indigenous to Waterbury, Vermont and areas of northern Vermont. Limited numbers, difficult to find. A Life List spotting for sure.

Ride # 21: Run Off

March 11, 2014, about 3:30 PM

The Big Melting. Bright sun, warm, almost 60 degrees. The trouble was deciding how to dress. I'm so used to donning layers and multiple head coverings and chunky thick gloves that today I struggled with what NOT to wear. In the end, I probably overdressed but not by much. I wore the thick zip-up neon lime-colored top as usual but just a short sleeve bike jersey beneath. Nevertheless, my arms sweated.

The more obvious ramification of the warm weather was the ubiquitous run off from the melting snowbanks. Many, many roads had long stretches of running water, unavoidable stretches. Cars would come and there'd be no choice but to ride through it and absorb the splashing. The plastic grocery bag between my tights and my shorts was effective for a while in preventing a wet butt but eventually the bag got all squished up and out of place and my butt got wet anyway.

Still, it was a big day. Loved the warmth. Amazing! To think, eventually I'll be riding in shorts and short-sleeved jersey. Today was a hint at that eventuality.

Another wasp nest. At the edge of a field that used to be a part of Mulpus Farm. I used to pick beans on this farm in the summer time back when I was ten. The farm has long since been broken up, subdivided, houses built on it. Now wasps inhabit its trees. But I guess they always did.

Wasp Nest on Mulpus Farm

Beehive but don't behave

At one point today, a gaggle of turkeys and I crossed paths, easily 25 birds. Impressive! I pulled out the camera and, while staying upright and circling around and only half way paying attention to potential oncoming cars, I snapped a few pictures. Later on, reflecting on my actions, I realized that in the desire to get a photograph to post on Shad Rides, I sacrificed the moment. Instead of observing these incredible beasts, of pausing and watching and appreciating their size, their power, their interesting social grouping, I fussed with a camera and struggled to take photographs. Oh well.

In the end, I managed 30+ miles and felt strong the whole way.

Remnants of a gaggle of turkeys

Ride Stats:  33.29 miles (53k), 14.7 mph, two+ hours astride the Specialized. Warm! In the 50s when I left and when I returned. No roadkill, except one of the turkeys almost got hit by a truck. It did not. Today's ride brought me through Lunenburg, Shirley, Groton, Devens, and Lemonstar. The rolling lowlands.

Ride # 20: Sunday Morning

March 9, 2014, Sunday Morning, 9:30

Sunday morning can be a great time to ride, mostly because of the diminished traffic. But my druthers would be to wait until the afternoon, especially on these winter days when the mornings are cold. Today, however, prior afternoon commitments mandated that if I was going to ride it would have to be in the morning and I'd have to be back no later than 11:15.

So I layered up fairly early and got out there by 9:30. It was approaching freezing and the sun was bright in a cloudless sky and rising higher. There were plenty of patches of roadside ice splashes so I had to maintain constant alertness. No daydreaming today, it was all focus.

Opted for the suburban ramble through Lunenburg and Shirley on trusted and known toads, very deliberate. Nothing spontaneous or exploratory about today's ride, it was all matter-of-fact. I needed to put in some road work and salvage the weekend - I couldn't ride yesterday due to prior scheduled engagements. Plus, I ate and drank with abandon yesterday and woke this morning tubbed up, 3 lbs above where I'd prefer to be. NOT riding today was not an option.

Blue sky and railroad tracks

I opted for a time trial style run through Lunenburg and Shirley and it all worked out just fine. Dressed perfectly, visibility was good, traffic was light. The one small downside occurred as I reached the apex of the ride and turned to ride back. I encountered a not inconsequential headwind. That sort of sucked but there was nothing to be done but thrash forward into it.

The promise of Forward

Ride Stats: 22.6 miles (35k), 14.5 mph, about 90 minutes of saddle time. The whole ride pretty much above freezing.

Fat this morning (148.1 lbs) following yesterday's un-checked consumption (cupcakes, cake, beer, martinis, cassoulet).

No fresh road kill. Birds sighted include a murder of crows on the move; blue jays; robins; a mourning dove; juncos.

Ride # 19: An Unanticipated Circumstance

March 6, 3:33 PM, 30 Degrees

Gorgeous! All day a bright blue sky lit up by an unfettered sun. No gauzy overlay. No gray intimations of dourness. Instead, sharp light, clarity, angles and shadows.

My back porch thermometer reads 35 degrees, "an optimistic 35" I think to myself, and sure enough, riding out of town through the neighborhood called "The Bowery" and passing the aforementioned Landmark Storage, their time/temp sign indicates 30 degrees (-1 C).

Snapped on the fly

Decide to ride in the lower elevations today, in the small towns of Shirley and Lunenburg, towns of rolling landscapes and nothing like the Princeton hills. That's the good thing. Over here the terrain is not so pitilessly challenging. There are plenty of flats and gentle rolls, occasionally a good climb, really nice.

Cruising in the flat lands

The drawback, however, is traffic, especially during prime commuting hours. There are a lot more cars to contend with. The ideal time to ride over in these towns is weekend mornings.  But today was not a weekend morning. Still, the result was a fantastic two hour ride of considerable pleasure, difficulty, zen awareness, and challenge.

The unanticipated circumstance was this. The bright sun, clear day and above freezing temperatures (at midday and early afternoon the temperature approached the upper 30s) caused some melting of the snowbanks. That runoff, of course, ran into the road. When the sun descended past a certain point and the warmth disappeared, the temperature dropped. That caused the runoff areas to freeze. Thankfully, because the runoff spots were still damp, the freezing or frozen sections all appeared as a silvery glaze rather than the dreaded "black ice."

But I found myself having to pay extra close attention. These conditions persisted the entire way home. Compounding this, many of the roadsides when shaded in a particular way were edged by a thick crust of gray ice. You had to stay away from this. If your wheel so much as glanced against it, down you'd go. So many times today I found myself riding further out into the road than I normally would, at least on the Crux. But I feared that roadside ice lip, and I feared those car-splashed splotches of silvery fresh ice across the tarmac.

Ride Stats: 28.96 miles (46.5 k), 14 mph, 2 hours astride. No road kill today. No particular bird sightings.

Parting Glance: Shad Rides

Sun!

Performance Enhancing Shad Roe

When I saw the shad roe in the fish display at a local Whole Foods, I couldn't resist. It was like a portent of good things to come (and to perhaps even arrive ahead of schedule - like being at mid-season riding weight two months before "the season" commences). Because March is way too early for local shad roe. I presume this batch was from much further south, the Chesapeake maybe, or probably even further down the eastern seaboard, possibly even Florida. For although we associate the great shad runs with the mid-Atlantic rivers all the way north to Maine, it's true that some Florida rivers host shad runs as well.

The thing is, shad roe is a Super Food. Certainly, it's a Super Food for me, the original Shad Rides. There is some ethical speculation about whether my consumption of shad roe constitutes cannibalism but I'm not worried about that. Besides, in cycling, there is only one cannibal, the original, Eddie Merckx. Some say he earned that moniker because of his "insatiable appetite" for victory, while others maintain he was called that simply because he devoured his competition.

Regardless, I feel ethically sound in consuming hundreds of thousands of shad eggs at a sitting. I am absorbing the tenacity of the shad itself, or so I hope. I want to be that smallish, silvery dart that for much of the year inhabits the mysterious dark of the ocean depths but that eventually becomes obsessed with returning to fresh water and so joins a mad crusading peloton and launches an attack on whatever fresh water river is programmed into its DNA.

The nutrition facts on shad roe are positive. So much so that the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) permits the following statements to be made for shad roe:

"Fish, shad, american, raw is an excellent source of Vitamin B6, Vitamin D, Vitamin D (D2 + D3), Riboflavin, Niacin, Phosphorus, Selenium and Protein. This means that the food contains 20% or more of your RDI for these nutrients.

Fish, shad, american, raw is a good source of Vitamin E (Alpha-tocopherol), Thiamin, Pantothenic Acid, Iron, Magnesium and Potassium. This means that the food contains 10% or more of your RDI for these nutrients."

There are tricks to preparing shad roe, and I share those tricks below.

*** WARNING: GRAPHIC FOOD IMAGERY TO FOLLOW ***

The appearance of raw shad roe is not to everyone's liking. However, if you're a fan of offal then you'll have no compunction about shad roe which actually comes in two oblong sacs, the hundreds of thousands of eggs contained within a transparent membrane.

Raw Shad Roe

A key step in preparing shad roe is to deal with the membrane. This is done by placing the roe sacs in a bowl and then pouring boiling water down the side of the bowl until the sac is covered. This tightens and seals the membrane so that the whole sac can be easily sauteed. In the event that the membrane is damaged, the boiling water treatment causes the roe to "bloom" or burst out of the casing. This results in what looks like a growth of sea anemone. Luckily, this particular membrane was flawless so that once sealed it was ready for the buttery skillet.

Membrane Sealed

The next step in the process is simple and involves butter, parsley, garlic, and salt. Not hard to figure out what to do with that. 

Ready for the skillet

All you need to do is saute it in a hot skillet with some butter (and/or olive oil) and preferably some minced garlic. I added some turmeric & paprika for both color and flavor, and also threw in a handful of freshly chopped parsley.

Ready to Plate

The result? The perfect shad training meal. (That's a wedge of chard Parmesan gratin alongside).

Super Food

Ride # 18: Spring Be Damned

March 4, 2014, 3:00 PM, 30 Degrees

More raw grayness. There's a coldness about today. Nothing at all springlike. 30 degrees (-1.1 C). Warmer than 6 AM this morning when it was 3 degrees (-16 C). Now? A dim sun in a woolly sky wants to do better, but ultimately fails. It becomes ornament, bereft of any obvious warmth.

Sunbow at the edge of the solar halo
Lucas Rd

Tuesday afternoon. Pedaling by 3:30. The roads are bone dry. Long white swathes of salt stain. Crusty sand at the edges. Horrible snow banks stained wretched brown/gray/black/sludge tones. Frost heaves. The roads in the Princeton hills have deteriorated badly this winter. Cracks and rifts, crumbling pavement, berms in duress. But at least today they are dry. All the melting occurred this past weekend. Just asphalt now, and sand.

On Mirick Rd, at pretty much the widest outer swing of today's loop through the Princeton Hills and high into snow country and hard wood forest, I come across a chestnut restoration project. Behind the informational sign board (which I don't read), a stand of young chestnut trees growing on the hillside. With the Niceness!

Mirick Rd Chestnut Restoration, Princeton, MA

Two striking bird encounters. First, shortly up the road from the chestnut restoration project, I disturb a small coterie of birds. Off they go darting through the trees, all of them hued in blue. I'm amazed, perplexed, I can't see well in the overcast light, I think they might be bluebirds, how odd, really? bluebirds? but these are mostly white beneath and the blue is subdued, but then finally I see one a-lit on a branch close to the road and I clearly see its rusty brown breast and I conclude that they must be eastern bluebirds.

The second sighting was a hawk, a large hawk gliding low overhead and following the corridor of the road. This happened in the same place I saw (and photographed) a hawk on Sunday. I immediately assumed that it was the same hawk and that somehow this elegant creature was now my guardian raptor. I called out to it respectfully, attempting to make known my reverence for its very being. I wanted it to hear me as well as see me. Then I rode on.

Ride Stats: 23.08 miles (37k), 12.5 mph (slow today! The clothing bulk. The sand. The caution). One hour fifty minutes astride. No roadkill! 30 degrees when I left, 28 when I got back (-2 C).

Parting Glance

Sun down over Sholan

Ride # 17: Intimations of Spring

March 2, 1:00 PM, 40 degrees

Not warm, but above freezing. 40 degrees actually. But mostly overcast. Occasionally a ray of penetrating sun.

After yesterday's hard slog, I was a little reluctant to go out today, but then I couldn't NOT ride. It was Sunday, I had all afternoon, it wasn't snowing or raining, what else was I going to do? Eat? Drink beer? Read the newspaper? All that could wait.

So I saddled up and went out for a ramble. Felt better than expected. No residual soreness or stiffness from yesterday. And because it's not so cold today, I streamline my layers so feel svelte and ready to climb.

Shad from below

Today I detected a stirring in the landscape. An impatience with winter on the part of trees, plants, animals. Mammals have emerged from their deep winter slumbers; that's reflected in the increased road kill. Today? Another opossum (three so far this winter), a skunk, and a squirrel (see photos below).

But perhaps the biggest indicator is the bird activity. I notice that they are more vocal these days, there are more varieties and in larger numbers. I continue to see flocks of robins, they gather in the soft roadside where the snow banks have melted back - are they hoping for worms? Attracted to the salt run-off? Today I also see a big flock of European starlings. Surprised, I see an eastern bluebird. Also plenty of crows, blue jays, sparrows, juncos, and raptors. A couple raptors in trees at field's edge. And the one below which flew down the road in front of me then landed in a tree.

Hawk Style

These are the gut-it-out rides, the I-should-be-riding-rides, the blue collar rides. These are the rustic, sloppy rides on roads broken, cracked, potholed, and frost-heaved. These are the workman-like training rides, the plod and pedal, the spit and hack. These are the necessary rides, the foundation rides, the conditioning rides. It's been a good weekend for that reason. Back-to-back rides, one a fairly good-sized meander. And next Sunday daylight savings time kicks in, a huge development.

Ride Stats: 23.85 miles (38k), 13 mph, 1 hour 40 minutes (more or less). Temperature above freezing the whole ride.

Road Kill: 1 skunk, 1 squirrel, 1 opossum

Skunk

Squirrel