(no subject)

[ornoth_cycling]

Yesterday was quite an interesting day for me, so I thought I’d share.

Having already put 125 miles in this weekend, I decided that my goals for the day would be some hill climbing and a bit of exploring new routes.

After riding out to Alewife, I began my first exploration. Instead of taking the exceedingly popular Minuteman Bikeway, I turned off and took the less well-known Fitchburg Cutoff, a short stone dust path that runs parallel to the commuter rail line, from Alewife to Belmont Center. The path has been narrowed by encroaching vegetation, but it’s quite passable if you’re not focused on speed.

As I approached the end of the path, up ahead where it intersects with Brighton Street I saw three cyclists go by: one with a red, white, and blue helmet, and two others in blue and green Quad Cycles jerseys. I caught up with them and verified that the leader was indeed Bobby Mac, the guy who leads the Quad Cycles weekend training rides that I often take part in. That was really surprising, because I‘ve never known Bobby to ride in Belmont, and being there at just the right time—midday on a Wednesday—is just ludicrously improbable. We chatted for a bit, and I followed them back to the store, where I peeled off.

That was convenient for my interest in hill climbing, because Quad Cycles is right at the foot of one of the best climbs in the area: a 380-foot hill with an MWRA water tower on top. So I rode my usual route up Park Ave. to the top.

But I wasn’t through exploring. There are many roads that ascend that hill, but I’d only ever done two of them. So the next thing I did was try coming up the other side of Park Ave., from Belmont. Unfortunately, that side of the hill wasn’t much of a challenge, and the road was busy and in poor condition, so that’s been permanently taken out of consideration.

Then I went down Eastern Ave., which turns into Spring Street. My friend Jeremy had said that was a better challenge than Park Ave., and he was indeed right. At just shy of a mile, it’s the longest side of the hill, and because it starts at a lower elevation than the other roads—just 85 feet above sea level—it also sports the most altitude gain.

I was timing myself on each ascent I did, but I’d gotten no more than a quarter of the way up Spring Street when my cell phone rang. I pulled aside, turned off the stopwatch, and talked to my friend iniren for about 15 minutes. As I did, I saw a woman cyclist ride down the hill, and climb back up past me. She was wearing last year’s Pan-Mass Challenge jersey, the one with the Boston Red Sox motif; amusingly, it was the same one I had on at the time, and I waved and gave her a thumbs-up as she passed me.

After iniren hung up, I went back down Spring Street (seeing that PMC rider climbing the hill a second time), reset my stopwatch, and began a second ascent. But only six minutes after I hung up with iniren, as I was about a third of the way up Spring Street, my cell phone rang again! This time it was a consulting company I’d been interviewing at, calling to let me know that they were turning me down. That certainly didn’t help my mood any.

Then it was back down once more, for a third attempt to climb Spring Street. This time I made it to the top. It’s quite a climb, a great discovery, and is now one of my two preferred routes up that hill. If you’re familiar with Route 2, Spring Street parallels the long hill that climbs through Arlington and Belmont.

From there, I decided to explore yet another route. I’d recently seen an article about a Boston bike courier who used Oakland Ave. to train on. As Oakland goes over the hill, I first tried the west approach, but that, like the south approach of Park Ave., is barely a hill at all. Then I went down Oakland’s east approach, which is a bit of a hill, but it’s neither as long as Spring Street’s ascent, nor as steep as School Street.

Oakland did, however, dump me off near the foot of School Street, which is my other favorite approach. While Spring Street may be the longest climb and have the most elevation gain, School Street (which turns into Kenilworth Road) is by far the steepest and most monotonic grade. It’s death on a stick; that’s why I like it so well. So I timed myself going up School Street, as well.

After that, I made two more trips down and up Spring Street again. As I climbed one time, I again saw that woman cyclist. Judging by the number of times I saw her going up and down Spring Street, I became convinced that she’s a machine—probably one of those Fembots used by the villains in the Austin Powers movies. Though on one trip up, I did pass her as she stood at the side of the road, fuming at her chain which she said unshipped every time at that point on the hill.

By then I’d put in about six trips up that hill, and added about 20 miles to my weekly total, so I decided to head home. I took the Fitchburg Cutoff again on the way home, but had some difficulty approaching it via Channing Road, because the commercial landowners had fenced off the connecting property.

Once home, I had a couple surprises in the mail. One was a PMC donation from one of my aunts, and every donation is worth celebrating these days! The other was the pack of ten “LiveStrong” bracelets that I’d ordered from the Lance Armstrong Foundation. I figure that, as a symbol of support for cancer victims, it’d be a good thing to wear during my PMC ride, but I can also wear one every day in the hopes that someone might either recognize it or ask about it, giving me an opening for talking about my PMC ride and potentially gaining another sponsor for my ride.

Oh, and in writing this article, I also discovered that John Hirtle has put his most recent shots up on the Quad Cycles photo page. He takes snapshots during the weekend rides, and he got a pretty good solo photo of me on June 20th at Concord’s historic Old North Bridge, which is one of our rest stops. A cropped version of the photo illustrates this journal entry, and the original can be seen as picture #9 on this page.