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| The route went clockwise. Why? |
I met up with a couple of friends, Jonathan & Alan, early in the morning and we rode together to the start/finish, Temple Emmanuel in Newton. There we met with a couple more friends with whom I've been doing a bunch of riding this year, Richard & Jay. Another friend Barnet joined as well. There were another five or six people from other synagogues doing this route. Yeah, it's a small ride.
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| Jay, Jonathan, Alan, Barnett, Richard, and me before the start |
After a, well, I guess you'd have to call it a safety talk ("in car versus bike, the car wins every time": super helpful), confusion about the arrow color we'd be following ("orange, no purple!"), and a group photo, we were off. Sort of. Someone had trouble clipping in and we were allegedly supposed to ride as a group. The group immediately split and someone in the front decided it would be best to take a shortcut. "This way is better!".
The arrowing was ... subpar. The map on the Garmin didn't agree with the map on the RideWithGPS app that didn't agree with the printed cue sheet. This wouldn't have been such a big deal if we weren't doing whacky ass zig zags through Newton to Watertown to the Charles River bike path to get to Cambridge and the Minuteman. Every intersection was a shouting match. I had reviewed the route ahead of time and couldn't make heads or tails of why we were supposed to be going this way. Once we'd get to the Minuteman I knew it would be fairly simple -- even better, I was very familiar with big chunks of the route from the end of the Minuteman.
After a slow argumentative zig zag we got to the extension of the Charles River path. This is little wider than a suburban sidewalk. I wouldn't bike it on a summer day in nice weather by myself, let alone as part of a group of cyclists. A few of people in the group would bellow "runners up" as we were threading our way through. Really, there are pedestrians here? Thanks for the newflash.
One of the riders barked at me a little earlier in the ride. Very unpleasant guy. Let's call him Larry to protect any reputations. He was sort of the ringleader in increasing the temperature of the ride -- yelling at people, etc. I really wanted to get away from him. I spent some time chirping at him. He didn't bring out the best in me, that's for sure.
Anyway, eventually we got to the Minuteman. The group had sifted out a bit and all of "my people" were to the front. So, I just upped the pace a tad. Not a lot, mind you. I wasn't hammering by any stretch of the imagination. It was enough for us to gap the unpleasant bunch. And from here on in, things were a lot better.
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| The end of the Minuteman |
In fact, as it turned out, the people who weren't in my group bagged the ride entirely (with one exception, David). For the rest of the day it was Alan, Richard, Jonathan, Jay, and me with Barnett and David.
The week before Richard had gone out and done the ride on his own (so why didn't all the people shouting at each other earlier just listen to him when we got to intersections?). His knowledge of the route was really helpful since the arrowing continued to be hit or miss.
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| Impromptu pit stop in Concord |
When we arrived at the first stop, a synagogue in Acton, Beth Elohim, we realized we had dropped Barnett. It turned out he'd had a puncture. We waited quite a while for him and ended up grabbing some extra food to take to him. The exit from the shul doubled back along the route. We did see him, but his rear tire was visibly underinflated. He needed to get to the pit to use the floor pump to get it up to pressure. He ended up being swept back to the start. It was a very hot day and he hadn't been riding much prior to this ride.
We continued on to the second pit stop, a shul in Wayland, Or Atid. It was quite hot, but we were all in a much better mood. With fewer turns it was much easier to read & remember the next few cues from my printed cue sheet. Additionally, Alan and Richard both had the RideWithGPS app, and of course, Richard had the memory of doing the route the week before. Not yelling at each other angrily became the joke for the rest of the ride.
A couple miles before we got to Or Atid we ran into someone else who was doing the TdS. He'd elected to start earlier/ride solo. He was standing by the side of the road. I checked in with him and he seemed to be pretty shaky. As in his hands were literally shaking. I asked if he wanted to join in with us and he declined. I felt pretty bad. I talked to Jonathan about him as we were riding. Jonathan is a doctor and he agreed the guy looked like he was in pretty bad shape.
We hung out for a while at Or Atid. Drinking lots of fluids and eating some snacks. The shaky guy showed up and he did decide to bag the rest of the ride. David said he was having some big leg cramps and decided to do the same and then changed his mind. I thought it was a bad call on his part. Once you decide to bag out, bag out. Particularly when you've got leg cramps. It's not like we had SAG wagons passing us. If you had to stop in the middle, it could be a long wait for a ride.
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| Super happy at the second pit stop |
The route back was pretty good until we got past Weston. Then it inexplicably went through Waltham. It had some more weird turns on some pretty busy roads. And then we hooked up on a still under construction closed section of bike path. Seriously, it was part of the official route and was intermittently unpaved.
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| Part of the route. Seriously? |
Well, we got through it. We hit Comm Ave, got back to the start/finish, collected our participant socks and then rode back to Brookline to get ice cream at JP Licks.
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| All smiles at the finish |
It was a great ride when it was good. I really enjoyed riding with my friends once we lost the argumentative people. I didn't like a lot of the route choices. It's a tough call because the cause is so good, but it seems very unlikely I'd do the TdS again.
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| A chocolate frappe before the rain hit. With the extra riding and confusion it came out to 69 miles/110 km for the day. |
