Riding the South Coast of Massachusetts and Rhode Island
Author: capejohn
A bike riding footie fan living and riding in SouthCoast towns of Massachusetts.
My bicycle rides include commuting, day trips as well as long and short tours.
Find me online
https://amidnightrider.com/
https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/my/?o=1mr
https://www.facebook.com/john.sullivan.79677471
There is an arrowed bike route that is a good mix of suburban and rural riding. I don’t do the whole route and track my mileage with my Garmin Tour GPS unit. I had been riding for around 45 minutes when I looked at the display and it read 2 miles. I had forgotten to press start so the device only recorded my MPH. Those lost miles were the bane of this ride. Every once in a while during the ride, those miles haunted me.
I decide that when I get home, I’ll use my car to record the miles that I lost and upload them to Strava where I’m recording my stats. Then I thought that the average speed would be out of whack for me. Then I thought that I would just drive slow. Right, that would go over with the drivers behind me on this endeavor. Then I though, who cares. So I didn’t go. I did however, shoot some video between the hauntings.
The storm passed, the sun began making it’s way through the clouds and the sky began to turn blue. It was 3:30 in the afternoon and it was time for a bike ride. The road bike got a tune up from Scottee’s Bike Shop in Westport. It was my second visit and I couldn’t be more impressed with the quality of workmanship, the friendliness of the wrenches and the reasonable prices.
Most of the regular road bike riders were done for the day. There was one unusual group that I ran into yesterday and today they passed me just at the right time. A couple more roadies on this route but basically it was me,some horses and a fruit stand.
Everyone is back to school or working on weekdays. It’s just me and my camera riding here and there.No one around for biking or tennis during the day. Continue reading “There Is No One To Play With”→
We will be feeling the effects of Hurricane Hermine for ta bit here on Cape Cod. The forecast is for high winds and rain for the next two days. Nick and I took advantage of this sunny Labor Day Sunday to do a 40 mile ride. We thought of going further, to the Cape Cod canal, but we both agreed to turn back at the 20 mile mark.
Today felt very melancholy and the ride matched the feeling. We took our time, averaging 12 MPH over the 40 miles, stopping every so often to take in the atmosphere and capture the moments.
Left the camp ground at 6:30 with a nearly dead phone and Garmin. I tried to charge my phone at the Camp Store, left it charging for an hours and got 5%. It seemed odd. I tried again in the camp bathroom building again with no luck. When I left the camp ground, I looked up the directions with my 5% and wrote down the turns. Naturally I got lost, and never found the first turn. I stopped a rider on the trail and he got me pointed in the right direction as far as the lake.
I plugged my phone into the extra socket for the ice machine at the general store, hung around for an hour and still go next to no charge. I decided to look up directions from here, got them and when I plugged in again for a little more charge I saw the warning. “Using the wrong cord will cause extremely slow charge. Use the cord provided with your device.” I was using my Nikon camera cord.
I rode the Cape Cod Rail Trail to the access point in Dennis. On the way, I stopped at a bike shop and the owner gave me directions to RT 6A. I wrote them down. When I got to the terminus of the bike trail, I again asked for directions from two guys just beginning their ride. “You should have gotten of the trail a few miles back” 6A was only a short distance away”. I knew I needed to cross the mid cape highway and that’s where I spotted the police station. The officer at the desk put me on the right track and once I got to 6A there were no more turns. Just miles.
Tunnel on the Cape Cod Rail Trail near Orleans.
I asked along the way about how far I needed to go to get to the Canal. The woman at the market said around 10 miles. I rode for a while, stopped at another store and got the same 10 more mile answer. Finally, after riding for a couple of hours, I got the correct answer when I stopped for a snack and soda. 10 miles.
Yesterday I told a riding buddy that when I got to the canal, I would most likely camp out for the night. He said your only 25 miles from home when you get to the canal. Once I did get there, I got a surge of energy and decide to finish the ride.
On the first day, we crossed over the canal using the Bourne Bridge and rode along the canal on the Cape side to Sagamore. Today I crossed the Sagamore bridge and rode the mainland side to Bourne. As I was climbing the bridge a youngster crested approaching me with a skateboard. When we crossed paths we spoke about being on the bridge. I told him my story and his was that his family was camping along the canal in Bourne and he was bored. He skated the mainland path to Sagamore, and was going to skate back to Bourne on the Cape side and walk over the Bourne Bridge.. It was a great day for biking as well as skateboarding.
A Midnight Rider 