For our cycling trip this weekend, HB and I headed back to the park near our home. I hadn't really taken pictures there previously, because the only other time we have cycled there together was my inaugural bike ride to become familiar with my bike. On that outing, the camera batteries died after 2 pictures. oops. Lesson learned about spare batteries.

The day was rather cool. I borrowed a couple of pieces of clothing from HB, specifically a long sleeved shirt and a jacket. All were a bit large but quite comfortable and warm. Plus, the jacket has all of these great pockets that are terrific for keeping the camera handy... tissues... lip gloss, etc.

Tangent
It is odd how there is some part of me that is drawn to the fluorescent yellow/green clothing. Why is that? As much as I'd like to be color coordinated with my bike (which would require me to wear red probably), some part of me really likes the flashy yellow-lime green. ;-)
end tangent

We headed off. I'm not quite as enamoured with this particularly park as the one in cranberry country, but there are definite advantages. These will become clear during the course of the story.

We were cycling along, and I was feeling more confident. The paths were relatively familiar, the air felt cool but clear, and I had moved past my warm-up and was feeling invigorated. We'd paused in a couple of good photograph-worthy spots.

Then bam, HB's chain gets busted as he was trying to go uphill and shift gears.

erg.

Well, he has this fancy-schmancy multi-tool (officially called the alien or some-such goofy name), but the trick with the tool is that you have to know what to do with it.

bummer, huh? After the link got bent and the oil-colored pin fell into dirt and debris, there was no point but to trek (pun, trek-bikes, get it?) back to the car. HB could coast anytime there was a good downhill stretch, which saved us a bit of time, but we were both pretty disappointed that our biking adventure had ended after we'd barely begun.

I did become a tiny bit more cheerful when we spotted a pretty, little spot in the woods that reminded me of the line in the Robert Frost poem

"Two roads diverged in a wood"

which is from the following:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-- Robert Frost

Eventually, we made it back to the car and drove to the store where we'd bought our bikes. This is the advantage of going to this particular park near our home; it is only 10 minutes away from the bike shop. The very nice cyclist who works at the store fixed HB's chain so quickly that we were back at the park within 30 minutes; we were able to squeeze in an additional 1.5 hours of cycling before the sun went down. The nice cyclist at the store even gave us a mini-lesson on dealing with broken links and fixing bike chains.

yay!

Happiness ensued, and we went back to biking along my favorite kinds of paths.

HB tried taking me on a couple of 'real' mountain biking trails that were very rough. I felt like my teeth were going to fall out from being bounced around so much. I must say, I think paved/gravel paths, horse trails, and fire roads are more my speed. The funny thing about one of the mountain bike trails is that there is an extra part (which we didn't explore) that includes riding across rickety-looking planks in a wet area. I think of this as being intended for 'advanced' cyclists.

It reminds me of the kind of thing we'd ride on in my pre-teen years back in the woods in Indiana... you know, back when we were rather fearless and no one wore bike helmets. Now, I shake my head and laugh at how reckless we were. It is amazing that I've never had a broken bone.

Ah well. Guess I'm just not cut out for bike riding where I fear for my life. That is probably just as well. ;-)

When we went back on the fire road (read: trails that are more my speed), there was another pretty spot.

All in all, the park really grew on me. By day's end, it garnered a special spot in my heart.

Posted by danielle at 04:13 PM

For our Sunday cycling adventure, HB and I were aiming for the Arnold Arboretum. But when I called the visitor center, I discovered that they prohibited picnics. So, we decided to park at Franklin Park, picnic there, and bike to the arboretum.

Well, Franklin Park was a little rough around the edges. Parts of it were pretty, but the trip from it to the Arboretum was not quite as nice as we'd hoped (to put it delicately). However, the arboretum was really beautiful.

When HB is asked about our weekend bike trip, he claims it was a "slow ride." grin What do you expect when the leaves are changing colors and everything looks so pretty? Gotta stop for pictures. ;-)
Hopefully, the pictures will do it justice.

Initially the sky was quite overcast, but the trees were still stunning.

One beautiful spot was near the bonsai house.

We almost missed the best part of the whole trip. Basically, we'd had some difficulty discerning our location with regards to the map.. but we both felt like we hadn't yet done a certain loop. HB initially didn't want to do it, but I was being stubborn, so we started up this path. When the incline became even more steep, I began feeling the burn in my thighs and was ready to turn back. This is where being married to an equally-stubborn man comes in handy. At this point, HB did one of those endearing "no, you said you wanted to go up this hill, so we are going to go up this hill." grin (you know I love you for your stubbornness, honey) So, up the hill we went. He biked the whole thing, I walked the last little bit... and the view! Well, it was amazing. The skyline of Boston with all of the trees in front of it was so pretty, even with the overcast sky.

Also, it turned out to be quite a dog haven. None of them came over at first, but then we suddenly had 4 interested doggies. One of the people had to finally throw a stick to get two of them to leave (nothing like a little distraction when you're a dog).

It was a nice break, for everyone.

While we were up there, the clouds finally cleared and the sun came out. It was interesting how much more depth the trees and leaves seemed to have with the sun casting shadows.

Who knows where we'll go this weekend...

Posted by danielle at 01:50 PM

This weekend, HB and I didn't go cycling on Saturday.

But on Sunday...
.. whooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeee! We found a super-cool set of biking trails at a state park near us.

"Gee, Danielle, what makes them 'super-cool'?" you are wondering, I'm sure.

WELL, they are small paved trails, intended for biking in the spring/summer/fall months and cross-country skiing in the winter. They are surrounded by pines and other greenery. At times, the bike trails were covered with pine needles and smelled really nice as our bikes crushed the needles on the trails.

Occasionally, something else would smell really good... but I could never quite figure out what type of growing plant was associated with the good smell. I always heard lots of birds chirping, and we saw some very pretty ponds (we'd probably call them lakes back in Indiana)...

The trees are starting to change, but just barely.

Also the trails are great for biking, in that
1) Practically no one is on them!
2) The steepness of the hills is just right for exerting myself some of the time and for getting in some good coasting at other times. They are not so steep that when I go uphill I want to stop and walk my bike. Of course, after a couple of hours, even those mild hills can get to me.
3) The curves, while making it tricky, also make it very pretty. There was one glorious yellow tree that I spotted as we rounded a corner.

Tangent for details about lack of people on the trails:
We passed about 4 people the entire day. One of them was a woman with a little terrier in her bike basket. No... it was only semi-reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz, because the basket was open and on the front of the bike, not the back. Plus, the woman was wearing pants, not a big skirt.

Another interesting character was this older gentleman in a flannel shirt who at first glance appeared to be just tooling around casually. But after seeing him at both ends of our trip, we realized he was making some serious mileage.
end of tangent

As much as I liked Concord last week, this was definitely better.

One final detail (out of chronological order), on our way there, I was excited to realize we were in cranberry country! Of course, the bogs/fields don't look like much - other than really strangely shaped fields. But the funny thing was that we ended up behind this huge truck that was piled full of cranberries.

Who knew they'd use such a huge truck for a cranberry harvest? Well, perhaps it is common knowledge around New England, but not for a Hoosier-girl. In this picture, you can actually see reddish/pink cranberries peaking out at the top of the truck. Another point of interest is that it looked like they'd just come from being harvested using the wet harvest method, because the truck was dripping water the whole way. It was all pretty interesting, especially since I'd never seen such a thing before. It made for a fun way to start our trip.

Here is one last picture from the trip.

Posted by danielle at 11:29 AM