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.