Westborough

We left Quincy this morning and headed west through the familiar territory of the Blue Hills. Believe it or not we haven't been on our bikes since Memorial Day weekend. That's not the smartest way to prepare for a bike tour, but there it is.

As I said we started out through the Blue Hills, then we headed through Dedham, Westwood, Dover, Sherborn, and Holliston. There is some really pretty country through there and we had a wonderful time riding almost all quiet, rural roads. We must have seen at least 100 cyclists out in groups from 1 to several dozen. It struck me as a bit odd to see so many cyclists on a Saturday as Sunday is more the day for large group rides.

We stopped in Holliston at the Holliston Grill for our second breakfast of the day, then we continued on through the center of Hopkinton then headed southwest past Lake Maspenock. As we approached the start of a long, steep climb up away from the lake Jodi shifted into her granny gear and managed to drop the chain off the front chainring and it jammed between the chainring and the frame. It took us a couple of minutes to free the chain and get it back on the chainring and thinking we had solved the problem we started back up the hill. Jodi soon discovered that all was not well as the chain was skipping and refused to shift. At the top of the hill we pulled over in the parking lot of a local nursery and investigated. We discovered that one of the plates on Jodi's chain had been bent. Jodi did what she could to straighten it and I checked the GPS for the closest bike shop. We found there was a shop in Westborough so decided to head there and get Jodi's chain replaced. Believe it or
not the ACA route we are hooking up with actually goes through Westborough, though we were planning to meet up with it further south. We got to Westborough and the bike shop is located on Rt 9, which is basically a highway but with stoplights and stores along it. Not very comfortable cycling but we only had to ride it probably less than a mile to get to Frank's Bicycle Barn, where Jodi had a new chain installed and we had them break off about 8 links of the old chain so we could carry them as spares. I have always carried spare chain links but when Jodi had her problems I realized the links I carry are from my old bike which uses a 7-speed chain and would not work with the 9-speed chains Jodi and I both have now. Duh!

By the time we got to the bike shop we had over 50 miles under our wheels for the day and considering our not so intense preparation for this tour were getting tired. The campground we were originally heading for today are probably 25 miles from Westborough so we decided to see what was available for lodging here. We are now comfortably ensconced in a very nice room in the Westborough Inn, and just got back from dinner at a local Italian restaurant. The weather is heavily overcast and super humid so I am not missing sleeping in our tent a bit tonight.

Hopefully the weather will hold and we won't get rained on too much tomorrow. We are headed for the northeast corner of Connecticut tomorrow morning, then we'll head west across the top of Connecticut. My guess is that we'll end our day tomorrow somewhere near Windsor Locks where we will cross the Connecticut River.

It's amazing how quickly we fell back into the rhythm of bicycle touring today. Within a couple hours of our start I could feel the old familiar rhythm in my pedaling and how I look at the world and the day's task of getting from here to there and not getting irretrievably lost.

Good night from Westborough, MA!
Allen Freeman
allen@allenf.com
www.allenf.com

We're Off!

7:45 AM under cloudy skies with fog, and we're off!

Allen Freeman
allen@allenf.com
www.allenf.com

Packed & ready To Go

I packed my panniers and strapped the tent to the top of the rear rack this evening. Jodi hasn't really started packing yet but she has tomorrow off and can spend the day getting her bike squared away. I'm working tomorrow so don't have that luxury. Packing today also gives me tomorrow to remember anything I might have forgotten, something that seems to happen more and more these days.

Anyway, here's a picture of my bike packed and ready to roll. It's not a very good photo as I photographed it indoors against the dark walls of our livingroom, but it's dark and wet outside so this will have to do.

Weather Forecast

I don't know why I do this, but I almost reflexively check weather forecasts while getting ready for a bike tour. And while we are touring if we find ourselves in a motel room it is just about mandatory to spend a bit of time with The Weather Channel. It's really rather silly because we are going to ride no matter what, and once you're out there it is rather obvious whether it is raining or not, and thus whether to put the rain covers on the panniers or not. So why waste all this energy wondering about the weather? I don't know; maybe just because I'm human and I am looking for an oracle to tell me the future.

Anyway, it looks like we stand a pretty good chance of getting caught out in a thunderstorm or two sometime in the first few days of our tour. And it looks like we'll enjoy sunny weather, and hot, coming up to the big Independence Day weekend. I wonder where we'll be on the Fabulous Fourth!

Sat Jun 28
Scattered T-Storms
85°/70°
40 %

Sun Jun 29
T-Showers
79°/69°
60 %

Mon Jun 30
Scattered T-Storms
77°/63°
40 %

Tue Jul 01
Scattered T-Storms
81°/60°
40 %

Wed Jul 02
Sunny
84°/63°
20 %

Thu Jul 03
Partly Cloudy
86°/66°
10 %

Fri Jul 04
Sunny
86°/62°
10 %

Sat Jul 05
Scattered T-Storms
84°/60°
60 %

Preparations

Jodi and I are getting ready for this summer's bicycle tour. It's not an epic trip like Tanzania two years ago, or our long-anticipated but not yet realized trip to Eastern Europe. We're keeping it simple and keeping it local this year. On Saturday morning we will roll out of our condo parking lot and head towards Washington, DC. Actually, we'll head to Bethesda, MD, just north of DC. Jodi's sister and her family live in Bethesda and their house is our target.

We'll be following a portion of Adventure Cycling's Atlantic Coast route. I followed another portion of this route back in 1999 when I started from DC heading south with the intention of riding to my parents' house in South Carolina. (http://www.allenf.com/EastCoast99.htm) That trip was aborted when I ran into Hurricane Floyd. Hopefully this year's trip won't be quite as eventful!

Our route will take us southwest from Boston towards north-eastern Connecticut, then across northern Connecticut (lots of hills!) and into New York State. We'll cross the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie then head south swinging west around New York City and heading for the Delaware Water Gap. From here we'll swing a bit west through Valley Forge and into Pennsylvania before heading south again. We'll either go through Baltimore or swing out to the west to go around it, then head in towards the DC beltway until we finally arrive in Bethesda.
It looks like the whole trip should only be about 700 miles, a comfortable, easy, two week ride.

We have started to make piles of gear on the living room floor, and come Friday evening we'll have to stuff it all into our panniers. We haven't used what I refer to as "the big tent" in four years, so I set that up the other day to make sure we had all the stakes and poles and that everything was in good shape. Since I have spent the last year or so converting my backpacking gear over to ultra-light stuff, it seems like a monster. I'm glad we'll be carrying it on our bikes and not on our backs! It is a luxurious abode, nonetheless.

We should have decent cell phone coverage in the area we are touring this year, so I will be bringing my Palm Treo and a foldable bluetooth keyboard which makes writing emails much easier. I'll be using this to update this blog. If you'd like to follow along on this year's tour there is a link to the right that will allow you to subscribe and be notified by email whenever the blog is updated.

Start Up

Two years ago when Jodi and I went to Tanzania for vacation I created
a blog using Blogger to simplify keeping folks up to date on our
whereabouts. It worked well and I decided I would like to do the same
thing this year. Instead of using a hosted blogging service I have
installed Wordpress on my own web server with the intention of using
that. Unfortunately I've had trouble getting it set up to be able to
post to the blog via email, and to allow readers to subscribe to
updates. I'm sure I could get this all straightened out eventually,
but we are leaving in only 5 days and there are lots of other things
that need my attention right now, so I am falling back on Blogger once
again.

I'll be using my Palm to send email while on this trip. I have a Bluetooth wireless keyboard to use with it which makes typing a whole lot easier than trying to use the tiny thumb keyboard with my big clumsy hands. I could use GMail to send emails and thus be able to take advantage of email distribution lists to send posts to multiple people, but using Gmail means I have to actually have a signal and be online in order to create emails, and I can't be sure that I'll always have service at the time and place that I am writing the emails. So instead I will be using Versamail, the email client that comes installed on my Palm. Versamail doesn't support email distribution lists, but I can write the emails while offline and then send them at a later time whenever I have a signal on my cell phone. By sending an email to a special email address, whatever I send will appear here as a new post. You can be assured of knowing when I add a new post my using the link at the left to subscribe.

--
~~~~~
Allen F. Freeman
allen@allenf.com
www.allenf.com