Rites of Spring

I really should know better.

One of the joys of using your bike as your primary transportation method is that opportunities spontaneously arrive for you to explore new roads and new areas. I wanted to go to yesterday’s NSRWA Kayak Expo, which was held in Norwell, about 25 miles south of the city. I haven’t explored the south shore much, mostly because there are few good routes out of Boston in that direction, so I figured I’d try biking it.

Actually, because of the aforementioned problem, at first I had planned to do an intermodal, taking the subway to Quincy and riding down to Norwell from there. But, frankly, I despise putting my bike on a train or bus when I could just as easily ride. Which actually was fine, because in looking at my maps, there was a way that I could get down to Quincy via a short diversion on Chickatawbut Road after following my familiar route through the Blue Hills. And with the weatherman predicting temperatures in the high 40s, I decided to bike the whole way, instead of taking the train.

Now, the problem is that it’s still March, and I knew it was going to be a challenging ride. It looked to be about 25-30 miles each way, but a 60-mile ride in March is about as painful as 120 miles in July, when I’ve been riding a lot and am fully conditioned. Throw in the known hills in the Blue Hills, plus a reported 15-25 mph wind, and it started looking a bit ominous. But I didn’t need to push myself, and figured I had a good, solid rest break in the middle while checking out the kayak show.

So the upshot is that, yes, five hours of hilly riding against the wind when you’re out of condition is really painful. I made it home fine, of course—I’ve only aborted a ride twice: once for a crash, and once for heat exhaustion—but Chickatawbut Road, which I took out of the Blue Hills for the first time, was much hillier than I had expected. At the top of Chickatawbut Hill there’s a nice scenic view north to the Boston skyline in the distance. On the outbound leg it was pretty—seeing your point of origin on the far horizon really puts your ride in perspective—but on the return it was heartbreaking—I still have that far to go!

It was a lot of pain. Of course, that’s the cost of training and getting into shape, and each year one has to pay that price sooner or later: either on the painful early spring solo rides, or the late spring group rides, or—worst of all—on my summertime charity ride. So I guess I have to be philosophical about it. It is, of course, the old “that which does not kill us” spiel.

And I did learn a bunch of new roads, which is always cool.

Speaking of which, I have to take the opportunity to deride those folks who look at a GPS as an expensive toy with no useful purpose. By entering five points into my GPS, I was able to navigate directly to the expo, following my intended route without error, knowing not only when to make every turn, but how far I was from both the next turn as well as my end point at all times. It was like having an electronic map with one’s route all marked out, and with a little moving “You are here” icon. Could I have done the same thing with maps? Not really, because none of them get to an adequate level of detail, and they’re bulky and difficult to use while riding. The GPS has given me a lot more confidence about riding to destinations I’ve never been to before, or just striking off in a random direction, knowing that I can rely on the device to help me get back. And it will provide the same utility when I’m on the water in a kayak, where there really aren’t many useful maps. It’s been an excellent investment, and provided a lot of “serious” usefulness. You wouldn’t call a map a “toy”, and a GPS is nothing more than a much smarter, better map.

Happy Ostara, everyone! Time to climb back on again…