Jenn Martinelli Blogging in Boston

So far this summer have gone on several bike rides of about 30 miles or so. Friday night we decided that today (Saturday) we would step it up. We opted to do a 50 mile ride starting from the BU bridge - which means about 65 miles total because we have to ride from East Boston to the BU bridge to start the ride, and then get our tired asses home afterwards.

In order to facilitate this, Rob, who had slept very late on Friday, stayed up all night Friday night to get us up early - at 4:15 - so we could start the ride. He is a total superstar for doing this - and maybe a little insane. Who stays up all night and then rides 65 miles on a bicycle? Rob Reed, that's who.

We were on the road by 5am.

Here is the ride we need to do to get to the start of the "official" ride:

And here is the 50 mile loop we did:

First of all, it was ridiculously humid today. Ridiculously. Second, what on earth is going on with the sunrise? It seemed as bright as midday by like 5:30am. Are we hurtling toward the sun?

Anyway, so we have single speed bikes. (There are two colors of this model, we have the black with yellow accents not the yellow bikes.) The gearing is pretty good in that if you're going on a flat, downhill, or mild hill, it's the right size to make it totally ridable. But, I am wicked out of shape and could really use some extra gears on any hills of any significance. Fortunately, this 50 mile loop didn't have too many very bad hills. Nothing as bad as the killer hill on the ride we have done a lot in the past that starts out in Arlington. (If you're interested, check out that ride here.)

It's amazing how quickly it seems like you're out of the city from the start of this ride. As I said, it starts at the BU bridge and very quickly gets out into Brookline. Nice quiet tree lined streets and neighborhoods. A lot of this ride is shaded, thankfully, as the sun was brutal today. However, sadly, near the end when it heads through Needham Center there is no shade and it was getting close to 11am by the time we got there.

I have to give us credit as Rob rode up every single hill without stopping and I only walked up maybe 4 times (there were a lot more than 4 hills). We only actually stopped 3 times and two of those stops were only for a few minutes. The third was when we were getting close to home. We stopped at White Mountain Creamery near BC for ice cream and frozen yogurt.

Some adventures that happened during the ride were around mile 41 of 65 we had stopped at the side of the road to have a granola bar and a brief rest and there were a lot of cyclists around. There was a couple riding by who called out to see if we were OK (i.e. if we stopped because we were hurt or had a technical problem). We said yes, we're OK, but unfortunately, he was distracted and kept looking at us and the woman with him crashed into him and they both went down. We felt so bad! I went over to see if they were OK. They said yes, and I don't think they were injured, but they may have jacked up their bikes a bit. It took them a long time to get going again. Hey, I asked twice! Hopefully they didn't have a major problem.

We ran into a lot of crazy group bike rides around the middle of our mapped route. Groups of probably 30+ people riding really close together calling out directions to each other. They were no joke. I would be terrified to ride that close in a group. As it is I usually stay about 20 feet away from Rob which is probably unnecessary.

Another little special thing that happened was on a slight hill I was going pretty slow, I was going to make it up the hill fine, but for some reason I got a little too close to the curb and though I didn't crash into it, I got worried about crashing into it and fell over for no reason. I didn't get hurt and the bike only suffered a bent bottle cage. Phew! Of course then I had to walk up the rest of the hill!

Anyway, by the time we got home it was about a 7 hour ride and we were EXHAUSTED. We ate tuna sandwiches which seemed extra delicious, with a pickle on the side, drank a lot of water and diet soda, and then fell asleep for about 5 hours! Oops!

However, the rule we made before we went was if we did the whole ride we would get to have delicious burgers for dinner, so we are about to get some yummy takeout from Boston Beer Works! Hooray!