Barking at shovels

Lincoln, Weston

Boston has the best suburbs of any city I know. Once you get past the zone of urban density -- the transition is somewhere in Arlington, going west from Cambridge, you get into an amazing tangle of winding, hilly country roads, mostly fairly narrow. All of them are forested, with old trees, and generally lined with houses built village-style. That is, every one was built individually, at different times by different builders in different styles. The lot sizes vary; the setbacks from the road vary; the house sizes vary. And of course, some of them are centuries old. There's some twee Ye Olde Signage, but for the most part, the area earns its character honestly.

It's a beautiful area to go biking in.

Andromeda and I did a 60-km figure-eight loop out to Lincoln and Weston, two of the most expensive of Boston's bedroom communities. I don't think I'm entirely stacking the deck by talking about how beautiful the area while using them as my example, because the whole area is like that -- Lexington, Concord, Bedford, Waltham.

Date	Route	Dist	Time	Avg Spd	Year Total
2004/05/23	Lincoln -- Weston	60.2 km	3:23:37	17.7 km/h	292 km

I believe this is the longest one-day ride I've ever done, and I'm glad to say I seem to have survived. I could even have kept going, except that my jeans were chafing rather badly. (I know, I shouldn't have worn jeans, but the day was cool enough that shorts didn't seem like a good idea. Maybe I'm actually reaching the point where I have a need for Shiny Bike Clothes.) Anyway, in April of last year, the 49-km ride to Bedford and Concord hurt me a lot more than today's ride did, and this one was 20% longer. I've definitely gotten stronger.