Category Archives: Tourism

#bosnow, or “How Nemo found us”

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After 13 months of living in New England, I got to experience my first real snow (thanks Nemo!). “Real” means 2 feet of snow (by official measure) and giant 4 ft. snowbanks due to freak winds, as opposed to the paltry foot or so I had previously thought was “a lot.”

The snow/wind combo was pretty crazy Friday night. I stayed home while Dan cross-country skied to Somerville to hang out with some friends. Saturday morning, the snow was pretty much over by 10 a.m., and there was a small snowbank on our back porch. We had to shovel just to find the back steps.

photo of dan with knee high snow and 4ft snow drift.

Dan started the day by helping me find our driveway from the building’s back porch. Note the absurdly large snow drift behind him.

It took about two hours of shoveling to get a path from the front door to the driveway and then clear that enough to unbury Dan’s truck. Our friend Matt rode over on his mountain bike and helped us carve a path from the backyard to the front so that we can take the trash to the curb someday soon, if the world ever starts functioning again.

a lot of snow.

Absurdly large Niner for scale. Matt is much taller than me. This is the sidewalk in front of my apartment. The front yard is an 8 foot pile of snow.

Matt wanted to ride around town and check out the snow. I though that was the best idea ever, so I grabbed my commuter — the SOMA mixte with skinny cross tires on 700c wheels, one tire is bald — and tagged along. We rode down the Alewife Brook Parkway to West Cambridge. It was like what the world will look like after the zombie apocalypse or society-destroying-pandemic finally occurs. People were just walking down the highway. I typically don’t ride on Alewife Brook because it is a horrible mess of traffic and angry people trying to go as fast as possible while stuck in traffic. Today, it was empty, except for pedestrians walking down the road, because there was no where else to go. We tried to take some side streets through West Cambridge toward the river, but they hadn’t been recently plowed. I needed a lot of momentum to stay upright on skinny tires, but with people and their pets in the roads and plows trying to come through, I had to stop a lot, and a couple times the snow was too deep to get started again. This was the first time that someone non-helpfully told me that I needed snow tires (3 times all together). None of these non-helpful people were on bicycles, so I assume they are all qualified experts.

Looking for Nemo at the Charles River (from Allston-ish, Harvard in the background)

Looking for Nemo at the Charles River (from Allston-ish, Harvard in the background)

We ended up crossing the river, just because we could, and cut through the Allston Harvard Campus before heading back to Cambridge, with a quick visit through MIT, and then back up Mass Ave. I learned today that Arlington did a much better job of keeping Mass Ave and Broadway plowed than Camberville did of keeping their major thoroughfares plowed — with the exception of Brattle and Memorial Drive, as they were pretty much awesome. Most of the roads I was on had at least an inch or two of packed snow on them, with plenty of giant snow-obstacles created by people digging out cars. I also learned that a lot of bars seem to be open during snow emergencies — good luck finding a drug store that’s open, but you can “self medicate” with booze all you want in these towns.

I also learned that snow storms make people much more outgoing toward strangers here. I got a “good job!” for biking in the snow and also a high five on Highland for the snow biking. I slipped and cursed, but managed to land upright, after catching the edge of a snow filled hole on Mass Ave; and, some folks walking down the street asked me if I was okay. This is a really weird thing to have happen. I biked up a steep snow covered hill, one I wasn’t sure my skinny tires could handle, and some guy standing by a work truck at the top cheered me on (“you made it!”) — a super unusual occurrence!

bicycle in a ton of snow.

The snow mixte is victorious.

The snow storm might be over, but the snow is still here! A previous tenant left a boogie-board style sled in the garage, so I’m hoping to drag Dan to a hill for some sledding…

Arbitrary Hill Climbing

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There are a handful of rides that it seems like everyone does here. One of them is Wachusett. A number of social rides, charity and competitive events involve climbing Mt. Wachusett, which I believe might be the largest hill in the (greater) Greater Boston Metro area. No matter how you slice it, a round-trip ride from the real Boston Metro to Wachusett is about 100 miles, give or take.

At the beginning of the summer, I participated in the RSC Crazy 88 ride with about a billion other people, but the “short” 88 mile option + my commute to and from RSC put the total distance over 100 miles, and so I decided to skip out on the longer option that would have included the Mt. Wachusett climb but made the day 120ish miles and sounded miserable in the heat. I’ve regretted it ever since. It’s probably the biggest climb we have around here, and after moving here from a mountain town where you were pretty much required to climb several hundred feet just to get back into town after a ride, I appreciate these rare hills more than I did when they were plentiful.

Another thing that happened this summer: I borrowed a GPS device. Now that I’m relatively comfortable using it, I find myself happily planning rides that are longer and have a lot more turns than I typically would prior to having a digital back seat driver.

This is what you can see from the scenic overlook stop on the way down the mountain. pro tip: stop and take a picture on the way up — that one had much better views.

I like riding my road bike, but I am no bicycle super-star. I’m not very fast. I often get dropped during group rides. I like paceline style rides, but I don’t like tight, fast pacelines on roads I don’t know with total strangers who may be more sketch than me. And I don’t train, ever. I ride when I want, hard as I want, for as long as I want. Sometimes this is a lot. Sometimes this is very little.

From having spent too much time with people who view themselves as competitive cyclists, I know that I have a bizarrely skewed view of what riding a bicycle “hard” or “long” is. It also means that I’ve ridden a few centuries – from the basic “let’s go to New Hampshire for no good reason” to actual organized events with options of that distance. However this is something I’ve always done with others – and a ride of any distance with others is significantly easier than a solo effort at a similar pace or intensity.

I stopped for a minute on the way home to properly eat my sandwich. This was my lunch time view.

The hardest part of riding to Wachusett was setting aside the time to do it and spending an entire day on a bicycle. It wasn’t an incredible feat. I was more tired than I would have liked to be on the way back, but that’s largely my own fault for not being a fitter cyclist. After riding along on my sister in-law’s first century, which she completed with very little training, I realized that the biggest challenge is just the “keep going” part. If your bicycle is in good shape, you have enough snacks to keep up your energy, some basic level of fitness achieved by being an active human being, and are prepared for the potential pitfalls – any long ride will probably go just fine.

A few days after this ride, Dan came home from his “do-I-really-need-to-get-a-job-now?” mid-Atlantic and New England motorcycle trip and told me that we had to go camping and hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I said, “okay” – as in, “sure, we can do that sometime.” But Dan had really meant “We are going to go camping and hiking in the White Mountains, ASAP;” and on Friday, I came home from work to find all of our outdoors stuff packed up, and I had 40 minutes to pack my clothes, food, and personal stuff for the trip before we drove up in the dark to camp in the National Forest.

Dan had planned a 9ish mile hike to the Franconia Ridge, home of Mt. Lafayette and Mt. Lincoln. We did the “counter-clockwise” version of the hike from Falling Waters Trail to the ridge, and than down via the Old Bridle Path trail. The views from the top were really amazing. It’s been a very long time since I’ve hiked on such exposed ridges. I was reminded of places that I have hiked in the distant past – specifically the exposed summit and giant piles of rocks and vicious wind on San Gorgonio in California and the weathered granite of the High Peaks region of the Adirondacks. Beautiful.

There is a little spur trail on the Falling Water Trail that takes you to Shining Rock. This is Dan sitting on the rock while his t-shirt dries in the sun. Taking this side trail is infinitely worth it.

After bagging 2 peaks in a day, Dan decided that we should work on getting all 48 peaks in the White Mountains that are part of the official “four thousand footer club.”

Remember that last picture of Dan? He was looking at this.

I was so much sorer from merely walking nine miles with a small backpack than I was after riding 100 miles on a bicycle. I haven’t done any serious hiking in years, and I remember it being a lot easier – I figure a good bit of that was youth, but I think a fair amount of ease also had to do with being in climbing and running shape way back then. The likelihood of me getting back into climbing is about zero – it’s expensive and involves driving. My body doesn’t think running is anywhere near as fun as it did when I was 20, but I’m going to make more of an effort to try to include some running in my life, at least in the winter — when bicycling isn’t as appealing on cold, dark and icy streets — just to make the increased quantity of hikes over the next couple of years a little easier.

Peak bagging, centuries, and must-do bike rides are all part of the same silly club: relatively arbitrary challenges for people of some means who want hobbies that are more physically active than merely collecting knick-knacks. This isn’t a horrible dig, as I’m obviously a participant — but it requires a little bit of disposable time and income, and a comfortable enough life to think that we should seek out these activities as challenges.

One of the people I work peripherally with works with a group of women who have to travel 6-10 miles by foot each day in a desert to fill containers of water to cook for their families. They carry much more weight in these trips than most backpackers would ever consider. I can’t imagine trying to explain to these ladies that I want to climb up a bunch of large hills just because it’s hard and the view at the top is nice. I have a bunch of time each day after getting safe drinking water out of the tap in my house, and I think it would be fun to get my lumpy self up a big hill or two under my own power.

The first trail takes you to the ridge, and from Little Haystack, this is what Mt. Lincoln looks like. After you get to the peak of Mt. Lincoln, you get to go up a couple hundred feet higher to summit Mt. Laffayette.

Whenever I see something about some incredibly arbitrary every-man challenge, usually some kind of long-day charity event advertised as a hardship or challenge on behalf of the charity and suffering people, or those weird for-profit 5ks with mud pits and $70-100 entry fees, I think about the absurdity of it all. When I was riding my bike home from climbing Wachusett all-by-myself, I was kind of divided between feeling like I did something, and thinking: well, not really. Because, honestly, what did I do besides set aside 7 hours of my life and eat some weird food that fit in my pockets? Biggest accomplishment: I enjoyed the view from the top. and I found some enjoyable roads and climbs along the way.

Pushing limits blah blah blah. Maybe other people really do. Maybe they become better/smarter/stronger just by being a little faster and going a little farther, but I generally think of my activities as being what keeps me from the dangers of sedentary living in a generally comfortable world (I find it makes me ill, achy, cranky, tired, and dull; I’m not sure how people live sedentary lives). Pushing a little harder helps me keep up for just a little bit longer with people who I like to spend time with who are much faster and fitter than I (which isn’t really difficult).

I like hikes with nice views, and I like seeing the countryside on my bike. Keeping my basic level of fitness high enough to do the things I enjoy takes a little work for someone who spends a lot of sedentary time in an office – and it gets a little harder each year to keep somewhat fit as gravity continues to conspire against me. As far as this new hiking challenge goes, I think what I am looking forward to most is all of the time spent outside, moving, breathing, and enjoying being alive with my best friend — and hopefully a few other friends brave enough to hike with us every once in awhile –- whether we manage to hike to the top of every peak isn’t that important to me — that part is just too arbitrary.

Paddle Powered Vacations

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Last year, Dan and I joined some friends on their annual trip through the Delaware Water Gap. They usually had a group of about 10 people on the famous River Trip, and we’re now a permanent part of it. I like camping and canoeing, but I really love eating, and this trip combines all three.

Dan + Me in a canoe

I get to captain the canoe because I’m a better sternman than Dan. It’s the one activity that I am better at than he is. He’s a better cook, better cyclist, more mechanically inclined, better speller, etc, etc, etc….

The Delaware Water Gap is kind of amazing. The park rules limit motorboats to 10 mph through the length of the park, and in late summer, the water level is generally low enough that many motorboats might not be able to navigate certain sections, which means that it is very quiet. Canoes and Kayaks rule the flat water. Occasionally you see a small inflatable raft spinning in circles with 5 confused people in it. The rental companies provide the rafts for lazy-river floats, but many of the people in them aren’t really sure how to use a paddle. There are a lot of people fishing from boats or just wading into the river to cast their lines. I only saw minnows, some kind of small bait fish, and some tadpoles, but Dan saw a small mouth bass or two beneath the surface. I did see an a bald eagle, and it called out as it flew overhead. For the record: eagles really do sound exactly like the sound clip in the Colbert Report theme song.

This annual trip involves 3 days of waking up, drinking coffee, paddling, eating snacks, making camp at a primative site, cooking food on a fire, telling stories and playing made-up games. wash, rinse, repeat.

I think this is the I-80 bridge.

Returning to civilization after this trip is really hard. For a few days, everything you need to live fits in a couple of dry bags, and can be thrown into a boat. Canoes can carry a lot more weight and bulk than a backpack or bike panner, so it’s much posher than wilderness via foot or two wheels. Three days of easy, simple living is just enough to make you feel like all the silly digital stuff we do in office jobs is a big exercise in pointlessness. Simple food, good friends, and a warm fire seem pretty sufficient for a meaningful life.

After getting home, I went through my closet and filled a big bag for goodwill. I organized a bunch of stuff, and threw out and recycled old stuff of no value. I still have about 1/2 an apartment worth of stuff, but as much as I want to just hit the road and travel for a long time, I’m somewhat tied to the things we own. I’m not likely to get rid of the superfluous clothes that I actually wear on occasion, furniture, or my rarely used sewing machine and art supplies. It’s kind of a dream to be able to pick up and go adventure, but it’s not the reality any time soon, so it would be silly to get rid of things that are useful for a generic American life. Apparently its good to have furniture to sit on, and wearing appropriate clothing for social and work functions is appreciated and contributes to continued employment and participation in society. An extended and unencumbered adventure is not in the cards right now for all kinds of practical reasons and the trappings of 21st century urban life remain.

Anyway, I have work that needs to be accomplished before deadlines arrive, and I appreciate that the money from my employer allows me to keep a roof over my head and pay for canoe trip vacations. With Dan’s extended vacation time finally running out, he’ll have to go back to work. I’m guessing that it will be awhile until we can afford the cost of the time to escape for more than a long weekend, and winter is approaching entirely too fast for a wimp like me.

We still have more travel in the works. We’ve been talking about riding bikes to the Cape, camping, and then taking the slower, less expensive ferry back to Boston. We’re going to go pick apples at one of the many orchards we’ve passed on our bikes to the west of Boston sometime in the next several weeks. We’ve talked about riding north to New Hampshire or Maine. I love the cooler weather, but I am hoping to squeeze the last bit of enjoyment out of the season before I start watching the sun preparing to set in the mid-afternoon. The one thing I dislike about New England is the long winter filled with such short days. It’s a hell of a price to pay for the beautiful spring, mild summer, and colorful fall.

 

Boats, and Boats, and Boats (part 2 – North Shore Edition)

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Daily Deals have been significantly influencing Husband Dan and my choices for weekend entertainment. A whale watching Groupon led Dan and I to schedule a trip to Gloucester in mid-June for a weekend of whale watching, eating, and bike riding.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lost_in_the_mail/7537267534/

I haven’t driven anywhere in a really long time. We left mid-late afternoon, before the big rush out of town. This isn’t even rush hour traffic, and I found it intolerable. I don’t know how people do this every day for a lifetime worth of career.

We used AirBNB to find a fairly inexpensive but better-than-a-tent place to stay so that we could escape from city living for a weekend. Friday evening, we walked through Rockport’s “Bearskin Neck” which is a narrow neck of land upon which a bear once died, and was subsequently skinned. Now, it is a tourist trap filled with places that serve lobstah, ice cream, taffy and fudge nestled between art studio/shops. We bought a bag of taffy and proceeded to work on rotting our teeth.

Rockport seems to really love Pirates. I’m guessing they are a lot more entertaining now than they were in the 1700s.

This oversized garden gnome was covered in or constructed of duct tape.

We went into Gloucester, and heard some bluegrass fiddle near a pier. We followed the sound down to its source, we found out that we had crashed a fundraiser for the marine historical society. Luckily, one of the organizers/attendees was totally sauced on plastic cups of wine and invited us to check out the boats. So we saw one of the most beautiful hand-built schooners I’ve ever seen. I have a secret love of wooden boats that doesn’t often get indulged.

Well-loved hand-built boats. The tent in the background was the crashed party location.

We walked back toward town and ended up in a bar with live music we could listen to without party-crashing. The sauced and saucy ladies from the party were there, as were some girls in poorly executed pirate costume shanding out free samples of dark rum. The busy bartender gave me too much change, and when I handed the extra $5  back to him with his tip, he gave me a free t-shirt just for being honest. The sauced ladies were indulging in the free rum and getting extra saucy. Just as we had to leave to get to bed at a reasonable hour, they were dragging (literally!) old guys onto the dance floor.

Unfortunately, the weekend we picked to spend a long Saturday on a boat and on bikes was somehow much colder than the days on either side of it. It was cold and threatening rain on the North Shore. The choppy waves ended up forcing our whale watching boat back to shore before we got to the whale hangout location. The vicious seas lead me to need a nap to stop the world from spinning, and combined with the icy/threatening weather, we figured we’d have a shorter 50 mile ride to see the scenic sights without having to over exert ourselves or spend a lot of time battling the elements, should it rain “for realz”.

We saw lots of these near the coast, but I’m pretty sure this picture wasn’t from the ride (as suggested by the presence of sunlight and lack of clouds)

We rode through Rockport, Gloucester, and headed south to Manchester-by-the-Sea, returning via the western edge of Beverly. It was really pleasant with rolling hills… something we don’t see too much of in our typical rides just west of Boston. Sometimes, I forget what hills really are. We both thought it felt like we were in another state, even though we were just a few miles north of city-living Boston. Dan thought it was the easiest 50 miles he had ever ridden. I thought that the world was still spinning around and around and around several hours after returning to shore.

 

Dan was getting a little loopy in the cold weather. His hands were replaced by lobstah claws!

Post-ride, we showered and headed to Woodman’s for some fried food. We don’t eat a lot of deep fried stuff. I was amazed to learn that the batter they use is wheat-free and indulged in the first fried scallops of my life.

We attempted to split a platter and some chowder.Despite riding all afternoon and skipping lunch entirely, the two of us couldn’t actually finish this meal-for-one.

Sunday, we woke up and packed up our stuff, to learn that the weather was beautiful and only a little chilly. We went to Halibut Point State Park to explore and see the ocean up close. I saw some huge bullfrogs. Dan thought they weren’t that big, but he’s spent more of his life living near wetlands than I have, so has a better pool of bullfrog experience upon which to base the opinion.

The Ocean is Big

 

The rocky shore created these lovely tidal pools filled with a ton of little snails.

The ocean is way too cold to touch. The water was incredibly icy.

Before we left, we bought some fresh seafood to help our vacation extend a few meals into our return-from-the-sea. We’ll be making a day trip back up soon to actually see the whales (I hope) and maybe eat some more fish. Longer rides are in the future as well, but getting to cut 25+ miles off the trip just to spin easy along the coast and eat fried food was worth paying money to stay in a stranger’s house.

 

 

Boats and Boats and Boats (part 1)

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Every Saturday morning, Dan has been waking up at 6:20 so that he can chug a coffee, ride to Lexington, and then blow-up what used to be considered a pleasant group ride to Harvard, MA and back.

I don’t really want to die and get dropped just because some guy has singlehandedly bumped the 17-18 mph fun ride into a 22 mph slaughterfest, so every Saturday morning, I sleep in until 7:30, make a leisurely breakfast, and then eventually go ride by myself (or occasionally with a friend) at a more civilized hour somewhere between 9:30 and 10.  Because of this, our paths don’t really cross again until mid-afternoon which might involve Haymarket, or other errands, or just being lazy around the house.

However, we’ve been spending Lazy Sundays on bike dates exploring Boston and eating treats. Two weekends ago, we went to see the Dragon Boat Races in Cambridge and realized that unless you have an extreme love of dragon boats, or are affiliated with a local financial institution (they all seem to have teams), once you’ve stuffed yourself with food truck and vendor fare and seen a few of the performances/demonstration — you’re probably done. And we had full bellies; and still had most of the afternoon left.

It’s a boat!

We then got back on our bikes and just kept heading east along the Charles. We couldn’t remember the name of the cable-stayed bridge and just kept heading towards it. We stopped at Lechemere Canal Park and realized that there is what appears to be free boat parking there. If I had a boat and a bicycle that fit in my boat I would have limitless multi-modal Boston transportation options and never have to wait for the T.

Somehow, we ended up in Charlestown. Which lead us to the Bunker Hill Monument.

Monument at Bunker Hill, (Breeds Hill, Charlestown, MA, US)

Tall!

We got there about 15 minutes before it closed, and Dan told me it would be a quick trip to the top. Somehow I did not get the memo about the 294 steps. In case you were not raised within the decimal system and have never seen a staircase, 294 is a really large number for steps. A major reason that I ride a bicycle is because I am too lazy to walk.

When we finally got to the top, I wasn’t looking forward to leaving and having to go back down 800 steps (they multiplied like bunnies when I wasn’t looking). I pretended instead to take pictures through the scratched and smudged Plexiglas windows with my phone to buy some extra time.

This is the view to the west-ish. I think you can see a haze that is Lexington and at least one of the many hills of Somerville. 

It really provides a great view of the entire area, and it’s free. You should ask Google for views of the Boston Skyline from Bunker Hill for ideas. I would recommend going on a clear sunny day with really high air quality (so you see further, not to prevent exercise induced asthma, but that might be another benefit).

After the trip back down, we followed some roads we had spied from the top to get to a little park by the river, and that took us to a bike pathy/sidewalky thing. We followed the path and made our way to the Navy Yard, because we hadn’t seen enough boats yet.

More Boats and A Giant Rock

There were a lot of tourist families who looked like they had been following a red line in the pavement for too long. They looked more exhausted than the poor schlubs who climbed to the top of Bunker Hill with us.

 

Another Boat! (albeit a more famous one)

We headed home because it was dinnertime, and took the direct route, which meant crossing into East Somerville near Sullivan Station. This is basically a hellish area to navigate by bike (and honestly not that great by foot either). It was too late to stop at Patsy’s, so the trip home was unfortified.

I tried to get several pictures of Dan on the bike, but he would always speed away. so camera shy.

This was my first real visit to Charlestown, and I liked it a lot.  A few years ago, I was in the area for several months for grad school and lived a short walk from Sullivan Station. I never once went to Charlestown. I don’t know why, because it was right there! I’d blame it on Ben Affleck, but that film hadn’t been released yet, so I knew nothing of the seedy back-story. It probably has a lot more to do with the lousy navigability due to poor highway design between Somerville and everything to the north/east.