Riding 400 Miles to a Picnic

In the second week in July, I took a bike trip to Boston.  Actually, it was a trip with a bike more than a bicycle trip, sort of like the trip I took last year across Eastern Europe. I rode the bike, rode trains, took a ferry from Orient Point, Long Island, to New London, Connecticut, and in between met friends and rode in some of my favorite places. 

The reason for the trip was to attend one of the pre-event Ig Nobel Prize picnics for volunteers.  I have been a volunteer for the Igs since I returned form Iraq in 2010. As it turns out, I was not the only person to ride to the picnic, but the other guy rode from across town. I will say more on the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and the picnic in the next post.

When I got back from the trip to Europe last year, I continued to ride long distances. I rode to Philadelphia and New York, but I did not meet people the way I did in Europe. I wondered why.

The reason became clear when I looked at how I rode: in America I ride with a goal. When I stop to eat I eat fast then get back on the bike and ride.

So this trip, I stopped to see friends and I talked to people when I stopped. On the first day, rode as far as Paoli and got on a regional train to Philadelphia.  I met a Marine and his grandson and had a real conversation, written here.

On the first day, I left the bike in Philadelphia, went home for the night and started from Philadelphia the next day.  Late in the day, I got on New Jersey Transit so I could meet up with my racer buddy Jim and ride from Times Square to Fort Lee, NJ.  We rode part of the way on the west side bike path which has new barriers every place that a vehicle could get on the path. Pairs or parallel concrete barriers make sure the path is closed to cars since the terrorist attack in the Spring. 

The next day I rode with Jim in the morning from NJ to Times Square, then met a political activist friend for lunch in Manhattan. After lunch, I went to the Holocaust Museum in BatteryPark, then rode through Brooklyn and started the ride across Long Island.  I was almost halfway up the island when I stopped. 

The next day, I rode to Orient Point.  When I stopped to eat, I talked to a couple who wondered what it was like to ride across Long Island.  I could tell them that the east and west sides were completely different.  The east end in Brooklyn up to 30 miles from NYC is traffic and busy, though not narrow, roads. Then just about half way, the island becomes rural. Farms, trees, and fields are the landscape from mid-island to the east extreme at Orient Point. 

When I rolled up to the ferry terminal I saw lines of cars waiting to board. From my experience with customs in Eastern Europe, I rode past all the cars right up to the boarding ramp.  The guy at the dock told me where to get a ticket.  I rolled onto the boat and went straight to the other end with the first cars off.  When I stopped, a guy with a Battenkill t-shirt walked up and introduced himself. He had done last year’s Battenkill race, a classic race in upstate New York. I raced in 2016. We shared stories about 68 miles of pavement, dirt and steep hills up and down. 

After the ferry, I rode northeast out of New London. It was almost 5 p.m. when I rolled off the big ferry. I planned to ride till dark and see if I could get close enough to Providence, Rhode Island to take a train to Boston that night—or ride the next day.

I made it Wickford Junction, the southernmost train station on the MBTA Providence line. It was a long ride in sweaty clothes to Boston.  But taking the train tonight meant I could stay in Cambridge and ride to my home in Stoneham the next day and still get to the picnic. I got up late, rode to Stoneham and visited my parents’ grave.

After the visit, I rode through the cemetery to the upper entrance for pedestrians.  Lindenwood Cemetery is on the side of a hill.  Narrow steep roads curve up and down in serpentine paths from the bottom to the top of the cemetery.  When I was in the 4^th and 5^th grade at Robin Hood Elementary School in Stoneham, one of my friends was Bobby Sweeney. He was fearless on a bicycle.  We would race down those hills skidding, sliding and occasionally crashing into headstones. Bobby almost always won the races and he crashed more than any of us.

After I left the cemetery, I rode to City Cycle on Main Street near the corner of Montvale Avenue. The bike shop is in the same location it was in 1959 when it opened. I talked to the owner, Eric Barras. I bought the last bike I owned as a kid at City Cycle. It was a green Schwinn Varsity ten-speed.  I bought when I was 12 years old in 1965.  I worked full time in the summer since I was 12, but I had Monday off and would take long rides on this bike. On summer day in 1966, I rode to New Hampshire and back. The 112-mile round trip was the longest one-day ride until almost 30 years later, when I got addicted to cycling again.  That Schwinn got stolen not long after my ride to New Hampshire. I gave up cycling for almost 25 years after losing that bike.

Eric is 79 and still fixing and selling bikes at City Cycle. He grew up in Lynnefield, but has worked at City Cycle for nearly six decades. 

After City Cycle, I rode through Stoneham Square and back to Cambridge, then to the Ig Nobel picnic in Brookline.  This picnic was my reason for the 400-mile bike, train, boat ride to Boston.  I was one of two people who ride to the picnic, but the other guy did not ride quite as far. 

Continued in the next post