Holy Cross, Recommended Only on Sunday: Ride 5

For some reason, I had this idea that I could get to Holy Cross relatively easily, without too much traffic and without traversing too much urban waste land. Bone head thinking. Once across Main St, I tried to go past Union Station but the intersection was packed and the light was against me, so I went back and picked up Salem St and then Southbridge St and rode across the long crappy flats alongside a giant DPW or RR lot, some kind of fenced-in industrial site, and finally onto Cambridge St. Lots of traffic the entire way. Dangerous, tense, noisy, angry. I didn't stop to make photographs.

Though at one point I did stop, on a side street just off Cambridge St and just before beginning the first ascent of the day. I had that street to myself.

Pitt St, I think

Pitt St in the other direction

Finally I'm able to pick up McKeon Rd and pass under rt 290 and along the base of the backside of Holy Cross Hill. It's a massively steep climb on Loyola Rd, including one sweeping switchback, until you come to the top of the hill and an expanse of college parking. I feel good the whole way, standing up and powering steadily upward, maintaining my cadence the entire climb.

The top of Holy Cross hill

But as terrific as the climb is, getting there sucks, and so does leaving it. I realized that the best, perhaps the only, time to incorporate Holy Cross in a ride is on a Sunday morning when traffic on the major roads you have to take to get there are traffic-free. Otherwise, it's a nightmare.

From there I picked my way through busy intersections and found myself not infrequently having to choose between a bad option and a worse option. Eventually, I wove my way to Clark University, then across Park St to Lovell St and up into the neighborhoods near Worcester State University. Except for not being able to go for long distances before encountering some busy cross street, the riding in the these neighborhoods isn't bad. The streets are largely quiet and mostly of good surface quality.

One of the quiet neighborhood streets

The goal at this point was Newton Hill and the cart track through the woods and the disc golf course. A few spots of ice spilling across the way were all that inhibited an otherwise excellent off road jaunt up and around Newton Hill to the wide open grassy crown. Traversing through a few technical spots my mind strayed to the Rasputitsa and I thought, yes, I need to train on this kind of terrain. I need to climb on earth and deal with roots and rocks and soft places and occasional single track.

Nearing the top of Newton Hill

Atop the second of the three Worcester Hills climbed today
January 22, 2015

I'd wasted a lot of time getting to Holy Cross and the light was beginning to fade but I had one more hill to ascend, Salisbury Park and the climb to Bancroft Tower. I picked my way off Newton Hill (had to carry the bike over a couple icy sections), crossed Highland St onto Haviland St, then climbed steadily up to the rocky monument. I arrived just as the sun was falling below the horizon.

Bancroft Tower atop the third hill of the day

Time to head toward Shad HQ

Instead of heading directly home, I opted to descend around the back of the tower, down Hall St (a short dirt road) and circle back to climb the hill a second time, this time up Farnum St, certainly one of the steepest climbs of all. I should have done it a third time but the light was fading quickly so I went back to headquarters and called it a ride.

Ride Summary: Strava indicates an elevation gain of 1,429 feet over 16.2 miles. I'll take that.

Geese on the Wing: Ride 4

Eventually it will snow and storm and turn the streets crappy and dangerous. That's what happens in winter in New England. But for now, all is bare and good. Still, the days are short and though I work from home two days a week and can be on the bike by 3:15, that still doesn't leave a lot of time for long rides; these days sunset is around 4:47 PM and trust me, you don't want to be riding around the city streets in the deep gloaming (even if you are festooned with blinking lights and are dressed in day-glo lime green).

But I make the most of the conditions. Yesterday, Tuesday, January 20, 2015, I set off a little after 3:15 with intentions of ascending to Green Hill Park and then, possibly, if I navigated unfamiliar streets with the proper guess work, I'd climb up to Holy Cross before circling back for an assault on Bancroft Tower.

As fate had it, I didn't navigate all that well and so spent a lot of time trying different neighborhood streets in my efforts to get to Green Hill Park. The good thing is, it was well worth it. First, because getting there involves a lot of climbing - serious inclines up crazy streets through deeply impoverished & totally sketchy neighborhoods. And second, because the streets are largely bereft of traffic; all the cars are on the main thoroughfares.

Coming to the top of Green Hill Park
January 20, 2015

And Green Hill Park, on a cold and sharp January afternoon with the sun going down and the buttery light washing over the long rolling dun-colored hills, is magnificent! I rode all over the public golf course on the tarmac paths and saw, at the far end, a herd of turkeys scrambling off one of the greens into the brushy thicket. But more than that were the geese. It being sundown, they kept coming in at intervals, honking and flapping, to land among a burgeoning colony of several hundred birds. I actually reversed course and rode back the way I came because I didn't want to disturb their hunkered-down-ness.

Green Hill Park
Geese on the Wing
January 20, 2015

So ultimately I had to eschew my assault on Holy Cross. Instead, I picked my way back through the neighborhood, found my way back under rt. 290, across Main St and then climbed George St for a second time. From the top, on Harvard St, with illuminated headlight and daylight fading quickly, I powered over to the Bancroft Tower neighborhood and hoofed it up up up to the tower's rocky monumental prominence. Then rode back to Team Shad HQ in the aforementioned to-be-avoided-gloaming.

Ride Summary: Ride # 4 on the year, Tuesday afternoon, January 20, 2015. Something like 10 miles but 800+ feet elevation gain. My bike computer didn't work because of the cold and at one point, I think in the park while videoing the geese, I lost my strava connection. The long and short of it is, there's plenty of climbing to be done in the Woo. Strava.

Parting Shot

Green Hill Park Pond
Virtually begging for skaters

Frozen Ponds, Tuuk Blades, a Cold Woo City Dérive

Left Team Shad HQ with the temperature hovering around 23 degrees F but the sun was high, the sky clear and blue, and there wasn't a whisper of a wind.

I dressed smartly and got it right so I wasn't cold at all, not even my feet or hands which, given all the layers that go to the legs and upper body, suffer from minimal layering. My feet get a pair of warm socks, the thin leather biking shoes, then a thin Gortex anti-wind pair of booties; my hands, a pair of cold weather riding gloves (no under layer). But today for whatever reason (solar flares? inner soul fusion? the cosmic fireplace?) neither hands nor feet nor fingers nor toes got cold.

No great ambitions for this ride, just an eagerness to pedal, to propel myself on rubber circles over frozen asphalt with the bright, unadulterated sun beating down on the sharp angles of architecture, all these magnificent buildings built over the last 150 years or so lining the roads for my eyes to absorb (when I'm not preoccupied watching the traffic, the road surface, the intersections, the dirty clumps of frozen ice). Brilliant weird buildings - warehouses, triple deckers, subsidized housing, fading mansions, unadorned vinyl-sided neighborhood slack homes, brick apartment buildings with dates and names in relief, huge municipal buildings like memorial sculptures to a time and place that, day-by-day, fades a little further into memory.

These neighborhood rides are coming into focus; they will almost certainly include an ascent to Bancroft Tower, a spin through the Worcester Art Museum area, and probably William St; sometimes George St (not today, though), and, if going to the hills on the other side of 290, a climb into Green Hill Park which I did do today, the pond there a massive sheet of ice at least 6 inches thick (I eventually rode to the pond's edge, got off the bike, and tip-toed out onto the frozen surface - why was no one skating?).

Oh, skating, yes. I bought new skates! My first new pair since the late 1970s. My first pair of skates with Tuuk blades. Unbelievable, what a difference! So with sharpened skates I forayed on the Elm Park pond on Tuesday and Salisbury Pond in Institute Park on Friday (yesterday). The Elm Park ice was mediocre but the Salisbury Pond ice was quite good in many places and there was plenty of room for skating backwards at speed.

The view from Elm Park Pond
Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Salisbury Pond in Institute Park, Friday
January 16, 2015

Today, Saturday, January 17, 2015 in the great city of Woo, I could have skated but opted for the bike. I opted for the demands of the tarmac, the paying-attention-to-everything, the certainty of breath, the rolling state of meditation, the pounding heart in the well-layered chest. And the beautiful, unexpected places you find yourself in when you're on a psychogeographical cycling dérive to nowhere-in-particular ("live without dead time").

Woo City

Dubstoevsky on a psychogeographical  dérive

Ride Summary: Ride #3 for 2015. The bike computer froze but the cell phone stayed alert and Strava logged the stats. Plenty of climbing even on a shorty ride of 10 miles around the 'hoods. Bancroft Tower and Green Hill Park (accessed by Catherine St), both solid blood-pumping climbs.

Cold Before the Storm

27 or 28 degrees, Saturday morning. Early sun a faded thought by the time I leave around 11:00. Gauzy overcast, gray, there's a snow event forecast for later this evening but that's hours away and I'm thrilled to be out exploring the city. Any time you can ride on the first two days of the new year, you're grateful and you go for it.

Up the hill and down across Main St to Summer St, then under 290 and out Shrewsbury St. Turn back in toward the city on Plantation St all the while with the goal of scaling the back side of Holy Cross. Vernon Hill meander, Hamilton St, long residential streets with low slung houses, then blocks of triple deckers, then hills. Eventually, without knowing exactly how, I find myself at the top and ride around the upper visitor parking lot of Holy Cross, a grand vista of Woo City spread out below.

Saturday, January 2, 2015

Ride Summary: Strava, 16 miles more or less. Below freezing the entire ride.

New Years Day 2015

Bright sun, cold, no snow or rain or ice. Perfect winter riding conditions. Welcome to 2015! It's a holiday, even the main streets and intersections are empty of traffic, the city a visual treat, with hills. Plenty of climbing today. Green Hill from Lincoln St., Newton Hill. 800+ feet of elevation by the end.

Long cluttered views from the wind-swept hill top, western sun glare etches the oak trees in spidery shadow.

It's the first day of the year and ride number one is done. 13+ miles, the aforementioned elevation stat, about an hour and fifteen minutes in the saddle. With the Niceness!

January 1, 2015

William St

George St looking up

Salisbury St

Salisbury St

Harvard St

Newton Hill Summit Spire and Dusbtoevsky

New Years Cheers to Nic Knack, to The Virginian & I Ward of Team Shad, to The Little General, to The Mighty Scrod in Frankfurt, to all cyclists everywhere.

Summary: 13 miles. Strava. 30 degrees and sunny.

Hills! The Last Ride of 2014

George St, December 30, 2014

The 89th and last ride of 2014 took me on a perambulation around the Woo City neighborhoods and included a number of strenuous climbs, not least of which was the fabled George St, site of the George Street Challenge. The promo video made by the Major Taylor Association says George St is a 24% grade. I didn't time myself, I just launched from Main St and roared up as best I could, faltering near the top but prevailing and then pausing briefly to snap the above photo.

But George St is just one of many challenging climbs around the city. There's Farnum St near Elm Park, there's Newton Hill, there's Havelock Rd. There's Green Hill and the climb up to Holy Cross, neither of which I did on this ride. Nevertheless, in a short 12 miles of circuitous neighborhood meandering, I managed 1,178 feet of ascending.

We are now fully in the midst of winter riding and I love it. The key is proper dress. As long as you keep warm, winter riding is fantastic. Everything is crisp, sharp, dramatic. Architecture's clean geometry stands out, the red brick and granite edifices suffused with rich afternoon sun, dazzle. The woods, bereft of foliage, afford clean sight lines through the trees so that the very contours of the earth reveal themselves. Slicing through the side streets and odd corners of the frigid city, I feel powerful, youthful, imbued with wonder. When not huffing up some sharp incline with head bent and eyes to the tarmac, I look around amazed, overjoyed to be alive & pedaling through this old city.

Elm tree and moon atop Amherst St hill

I'm starting to put together a more coherent route now that I've explored many parts of the city so far. Set out from Elm Park, up William St, down to Main St, zip down two blocks to George St., climb up that to Harvard St., take a right, down to the Worcester Art Museum, left onto Institute Rd, through WPI, then across Park Ave (still on Institute Rd) and then a right either onto Hall St (a dirt road) or up a little more to the awesome steepness of Farnum Rd (with its still-in-use gas lamps) and up up up to Bancroft Tower (featured in this blog before, here and here), around the Beechmont/Salisbury St 'hood, then backtrack to Highland Ave, cut across and into the woods of Newton Hill (a towering mound that is officially part of Elm Park and that's comprised of trails and a disc golf course and a summit with a tall monument pole and a great view in all directions), ride the trails to the summit then head carefully down the rough & steep descent to the roundabout where Highland, June, Newton, and Pleasant Streets all converge, shoot out of that and pick up Monroe or Howland Terrace and on to Hadwen Rd off of which you can launch an assault on Havelock Rd and once on top, then it's back down one side or the other and a return to Elm Park via a variety of side streets (including the poet street, Longfellow).

Of course, this is just one iteration, albeit one that is all about climbing and mostly occurs on the west side of the city. To the east of Main St and on the other side of rt. 290 is Green Hill and Holy Cross and also vast areas of old industrial lots & red brick warehouses & battered neighborhoods of rickety old triple deckers & gritty side streets & hints of unknown menace. There's the area around Clark University and the noble Queen Anne Norcross Brothers buildings on Claremont St, also University Park and the Canterbury/Cambridge St stretch. And that's just what I've found so far.

Ride Summary: 12 miles, 1178 feet elevation. Strava route.