AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!
I am so pissed off right now.
I biked for 30, that’s right thirty, three zero, minutes and what happens?
hmmmm?
I get a frickin flat front tire.
So, I walked home with my bike.
DAMNIT.
It feels like EVERY farking thing is breaking right now. First my laptop (fan), then my favorite teapot, then I had issues with my brakes, and NOW, NOW my front tire.
grrrrrrrrrrrrr
I’ll look at the positive side later. After I’m done being pissed off.
So, I’m at home currently enjoying my glorious 3-day weekend. Betcha didn’t know (or maybe you did?) that today is Patriot’s Day here in the Boston area. Yup, today we honor the first shots of the Revolutionary War fired at Lexington and Concord by having a holiday where 20,000 people run from Hopkington into downtown Boston (a.k.a. the Boston Marathon).
Yeah, kinda strange.
But hey, I’ll take my 3-day weekends wherever I can get them.
Since I go into Boston every workday with a long commute, when I have a chance to Not Commute into the city, I take full advantage of it by Staying Home. So, you won’t see any pictures of the marathon from me, nope, not a chance.
So, how, perchance am I choosing to celebrate the holiday weekend?
Well, I tried to go for a bike ride (by myself, HB is in Mnpls) yesterday with plans to go again today.
TRIED being the key word in that sentence.
ugh. Did you notice the title?
Yesterday, I’m all geared up, ready to go, and I start by taking a warm-up lap around our subdivision. Just as I’m nearing the end of the circle and am about 10 houses away from ours and ready to go out the entry drive to the road, I stop to adjust the height of my bicycle seat. After adjusting it, suddenly my right rear brake pad is locking onto the rear wheel so hard that it is clearly going to stop me from going any further. Squeeze, release, squeeze, release. “What the heck?”
tweak, tweak, press around on the actual brake.
nothing. still stuck.
“grrrrrrrrrrrrreat. Now I have to go home.”
So, I walk all cock-eyed home, because I’m manually holding the brake pad away from the wheel rim. yup. This is NOT the way I planned to do my exercise for the day.
And, of course, the bike shop is closed at that point. And HB, my go-to-guy for bike repair is out on his own 4 hour biking trip (from Mnpls to St. Paul) and not answering his cell phone. *sigh*
Last night, after the sun went down and he was back from his ride, I was talking to him on the phone. He suggested that I look around online for how to fix the brakes. Well, first I tried to see if I could get it into my bike shop to be fixed (part of purchasing a bike there is free tune-ups for a year after purchase). But they are closed for the holiday too. I decided to try to do it myself.
As I read about brake repair, there are all these warnings about maybe needing an assistant for this step, or snapping the cables by over tightening, or having the bolts a bit loose and in an emergency, your brakes no longer work. EEEK!
rrrrrrrrrrrrrright, I start having visions of really screwing up my bike or myself in an emergency braking situation.
Then I get to a sentence about how a brake that may not seem centered could be due to an improperly aligned rear wheel.
AH-HA!
Because you see, just recently trying to get my bike in and out of the trainer, HB accidently released the rear wheel. hmmmmm….. “THIS could be it!” I think to myself.
So, I run downstairs and release the rear wheel, reseat it, and lock it in place.
TAH-DAH! brakes are centered and fixed!
Yay!
This means that I can now properly celebrate my extra day off by taking a bike ride, and doing a couple of other things (which will be photo worthy, if I actually do them, so stay tuned).
happiness reigns.
If you’ve read my cycling posts (my favorites are weeks 2,3, and 4), you’ll know that HB and I took up mountain biking this fall.
So, you might be wondering what one does during a New England winter with a form of exercise that is more appropriate for spring, summer and fall; when it looks like this outside.
Tangent
And just for reference, for those of you who saw the moment-by-moment blizzard pics, our driveway is slowly melting, but very very slowly.
End Tangent
Well, thanks to a Christmas gift from my parents, we have a great trainer that we can use inside.
We originally set it up downstairs, but you know, the TV downstairs is just not as nice as the one upstairs. For example, while I had the bike and trainer downstairs, I tried watching Finding Nemo (for the 2nd time) and even on maximum volume, I was straining to hear the great lines (Fin, Noggin, Duuuuuuude…. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming… Fish are friends, Not food…). But I digress. Fortunately, I’d seen the movie before, so I was okay with missing words here and there. However, it just wasn’t a good set-up for entertainment while riding, especially if I want to watch something I’ve never seen before. Plus, our “good” TV upstairs is the one that has the DVD player (a key component if I want to watch Shrek 2 or Harry Potter while riding).
So, I rearranged our living room and got it all set upstairs.
I went ahead and tried it out at the beginning of the superbowl.
But I got a little out of my biking groove by taking pictures. (I took them with the tripod and self-timer, which meant that I jumped on and off my bike a couple of times). Oh, the sacrifices I make for you! (ha! just kidding)
Cool, huh?
It has been a couple of weeks since HB and I went cycling on the weekend. HB wanted to go the the park close to our home again, but I was able to convince him to go to the park I like best in cranberry country. Yes, it is farther away, but it has those ‘super-cool’ paths that are paved and curvy.
One of the beautiful things we saw on our drive to the park was a bog covered with floating cranberries. It was on HB’s side of the road though, so I didn’t get a photo of it; I was rather bummed.
But I was cheered up after we drove a little farther and saw this helicopter with the same paint scheme as my bike! So, of course I thought it was cool for that reason. It was hauling these big gray blocks from one spot in the field onto a semi-tractor trailer.
Well, HB pulled off on the side of the road, so that we could watch it for a minute. We speculated about what it could be doing. HB thought it was hauling concrete blocks. But that didn’t seem right to me. Because why would you have concrete blocks in a field and be putting them on a semi? And why incur the expense of a rented (presumably) helicopter to haul concrete blocks? Then as we were pulling away, I figured it out. I bet they were containers of cranberries!
There was no way to really know for sure. But I bet that’s what it was.
That was really most of the cool-ness for the day. We did see a couple of horses being loaded into a horse trailer near the end of the day. The bigger horse was standing on the outside, closest to us, and was really keeping an eye on us. I like to imagine that it felt its duty was to protect the littler one that was with it.
We did not go by the lakes this time, since they are out of the way of the bike trails, and we were both pretty pooped. I was feeling particularly out of shape after not biking for a couple of weekends.
I must say, it is rather annoying to have the sun go down as early as it does. Even at 3:00 p.m., the sun was shining right in my eyes and almost blinding me. By 4:00 it was noticeably colder, and by 5:00 it was dark.
One last picture shows how the path was covered with pine (or other conifer) needles. There are so many needles, you almost can’t see the edges of the path.
It really smelled like Christmas…
The perfect ending to our trip was that on the drive home, the bog with the floating cranberries was on my side! Mind you, this picture was taken out the car window while going 40-50 mph, but I was thrilled to get a shot of it.
I don’t know what this weekend’s plan is for biking. We have a lot of yard work, so we’ll probably stay pretty close to home.
Point of clarification: We did find out later that helicopters are often used during the (dry) harvest of the cranberry bogs.
For our cycling trip this weekend, HB and I headed back to the park near our home. I hadn’t really taken pictures there previously, because the only other time we have cycled there together was my inaugural bike ride to become familiar with my bike. On that outing, the camera batteries died after 2 pictures. oops. Lesson learned about spare batteries.
The day was rather cool. I borrowed a couple of pieces of clothing from HB, specifically a long sleeved shirt and a jacket. All were a bit large but quite comfortable and warm. Plus, the jacket has all of these great pockets that are terrific for keeping the camera handy… tissues… lip gloss, etc.
Tangent
It is odd how there is some part of me that is drawn to the fluorescent yellow/green clothing. Why is that? As much as I’d like to be color coordinated with my bike (which would require me to wear red probably), some part of me really likes the flashy yellow-lime green. 
end tangent
We headed off. I’m not quite as enamoured with this particularly park as the one in cranberry country, but there are definite advantages. These will become clear during the course of the story.
We were cycling along, and I was feeling more confident. The paths were relatively familiar, the air felt cool but clear, and I had moved past my warm-up and was feeling invigorated. We’d paused in a couple of good photograph-worthy spots.
Then bam, HB’s chain gets busted as he was trying to go uphill and shift gears.
erg.
Well, he has this fancy-schmancy multi-tool (officially called the alien or some-such goofy name), but the trick with the tool is that you have to know what to do with it.
bummer, huh? After the link got bent and the oil-colored pin fell into dirt and debris, there was no point but to trek (pun, trek-bikes, get it?) back to the car. HB could coast anytime there was a good downhill stretch, which saved us a bit of time, but we were both pretty disappointed that our biking adventure had ended after we’d barely begun.
I did become a tiny bit more cheerful when we spotted a pretty, little spot in the woods that reminded me of the line in the Robert Frost poem
“Two roads diverged in a wood”
which is from the following:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
– Robert Frost
Eventually, we made it back to the car and drove to the store where we’d bought our bikes. This is the advantage of going to this particular park near our home; it is only 10 minutes away from the bike shop. The very nice cyclist who works at the store fixed HB’s chain so quickly that we were back at the park within 30 minutes; we were able to squeeze in an additional 1.5 hours of cycling before the sun went down. The nice cyclist at the store even gave us a mini-lesson on dealing with broken links and fixing bike chains.
yay!
Happiness ensued, and we went back to biking along my favorite kinds of paths.
HB tried taking me on a couple of ‘real’ mountain biking trails that were very rough. I felt like my teeth were going to fall out from being bounced around so much. I must say, I think paved/gravel paths, horse trails, and fire roads are more my speed. The funny thing about one of the mountain bike trails is that there is an extra part (which we didn’t explore) that includes riding across rickety-looking planks in a wet area. I think of this as being intended for ‘advanced’ cyclists.
It reminds me of the kind of thing we’d ride on in my pre-teen years back in the woods in Indiana… you know, back when we were rather fearless and no one wore bike helmets. Now, I shake my head and laugh at how reckless we were. It is amazing that I’ve never had a broken bone.
Ah well. Guess I’m just not cut out for bike riding where I fear for my life. That is probably just as well.
When we went back on the fire road (read: trails that are more my speed), there was another pretty spot.
All in all, the park really grew on me. By day’s end, it garnered a special spot in my heart.
For our Sunday cycling adventure, HB and I were aiming for the Arnold Arboretum. But when I called the visitor center, I discovered that they prohibited picnics. So, we decided to park at Franklin Park, picnic there, and bike to the arboretum.
Well, Franklin Park was a little rough around the edges. Parts of it were pretty, but the trip from it to the Arboretum was not quite as nice as we’d hoped (to put it delicately). However, the arboretum was really beautiful.
When HB is asked about our weekend bike trip, he claims it was a “slow ride.” grin What do you expect when the leaves are changing colors and everything looks so pretty? Gotta stop for pictures.
Hopefully, the pictures will do it justice.
Initially the sky was quite overcast, but the trees were still stunning.
One beautiful spot was near the bonsai house.
We almost missed the best part of the whole trip. Basically, we’d had some difficulty discerning our location with regards to the map.. but we both felt like we hadn’t yet done a certain loop. HB initially didn’t want to do it, but I was being stubborn, so we started up this path. When the incline became even more steep, I began feeling the burn in my thighs and was ready to turn back. This is where being married to an equally-stubborn man comes in handy. At this point, HB did one of those endearing “no, you said you wanted to go up this hill, so we are going to go up this hill.” grin (you know I love you for your stubbornness, honey) So, up the hill we went. He biked the whole thing, I walked the last little bit… and the view! Well, it was amazing. The skyline of Boston with all of the trees in front of it was so pretty, even with the overcast sky.
Also, it turned out to be quite a dog haven. None of them came over at first, but then we suddenly had 4 interested doggies. One of the people had to finally throw a stick to get two of them to leave (nothing like a little distraction when you’re a dog).
It was a nice break, for everyone.
While we were up there, the clouds finally cleared and the sun came out. It was interesting how much more depth the trees and leaves seemed to have with the sun casting shadows.
Who knows where we’ll go this weekend…
This weekend, HB and I didn’t go cycling on Saturday.
But on Sunday…
.. whooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeee! We found a super-cool set of biking trails at a state park near us.
“Gee, Danielle, what makes them ‘super-cool’?” you are wondering, I’m sure.
WELL, they are small paved trails, intended for biking in the spring/summer/fall months and cross-country skiing in the winter. They are surrounded by pines and other greenery. At times, the bike trails were covered with pine needles and smelled really nice as our bikes crushed the needles on the trails.
Occasionally, something else would smell really good… but I could never quite figure out what type of growing plant was associated with the good smell. I always heard lots of birds chirping, and we saw some very pretty ponds (we’d probably call them lakes back in Indiana)…
The trees are starting to change, but just barely.
Also the trails are great for biking, in that
1) Practically no one is on them!
2) The steepness of the hills is just right for exerting myself some of the time and for getting in some good coasting at other times. They are not so steep that when I go uphill I want to stop and walk my bike. Of course, after a couple of hours, even those mild hills can get to me.
3) The curves, while making it tricky, also make it very pretty. There was one glorious yellow tree that I spotted as we rounded a corner.
Tangent for details about lack of people on the trails:
We passed about 4 people the entire day. One of them was a woman with a little terrier in her bike basket. No… it was only semi-reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz, because the basket was open and on the front of the bike, not the back. Plus, the woman was wearing pants, not a big skirt.
Another interesting character was this older gentleman in a flannel shirt who at first glance appeared to be just tooling around casually. But after seeing him at both ends of our trip, we realized he was making some serious mileage.
end of tangent
As much as I liked Concord last week, this was definitely better.
One final detail (out of chronological order), on our way there, I was excited to realize we were in cranberry country! Of course, the bogs/fields don’t look like much – other than really strangely shaped fields. But the funny thing was that we ended up behind this huge truck that was piled full of cranberries.
Who knew they’d use such a huge truck for a cranberry harvest? Well, perhaps it is common knowledge around New England, but not for a Hoosier-girl. In this picture, you can actually see reddish/pink cranberries peaking out at the top of the truck. Another point of interest is that it looked like they’d just come from being harvested using the wet harvest method, because the truck was dripping water the whole way. It was all pretty interesting, especially since I’d never seen such a thing before. It made for a fun way to start our trip.
Here is one last picture from the trip.
Well, HB (Honey-Bunny, aka my hubby) recently decided to take up cycling as his form of exercise. After a couple of weeks of riding his, as he calls it, $80-8-year-old-Target-bike, he thought that for Christmas, my gift to him could be a new mountain bike.
Tangent: To some, it may seem strange to ask for a certain present for Christmas or a birthday, but it is quite normal in my family. It is actually considered a win-win situation for all.
I offered to give it to him now, while the weather is nice. Of course, I’d envisioned going to the store when he actually bought it, which is what we usually try to do for these kinds of presents. Well, you can imagine my surprise when I arrived home from church last week and here he was with his brand-new bike! Ha! Ah well, even if it wasn’t quite how I had envisioned it all happening, it was kind of funny and definitely cute to see him so excited.
During the week that just passed, he was very diligent about going out every day to ride. He was also stopping/shopping almost every day at every bike store that exists on his commute to and from work. He started coming home with bike trail maps for places in and around Boston… and we discussed over supper how neat it would be to explore certain trails. Well, one thing we’d always talked about doing, but had never done, was to walk (or bike) the battle trail around Concord. This created visions in my head of the two of us adventuring to new areas and exploring places like the battle trail. These visions ended up being the impetus to get my Christmas present from him early… and have it be a new bike!
grin
Saturday, he bought my bike, helmet, shorts, gloves, water bottle cages, and bottles. Who knew you needed so much stuff?
We suited up and we went to the nearby State Park, where he’d scoped out good beginner trails for me. It was very exhilarating to go downhill and really go fast. The uphill… well, lets just say that my legs (and butt) were quite sore by the end of the day.
Note the beauteous yellow and blue paint scheme.
To be continued…
Sunday, after church and lunch, HB and I headed out to Concord for our first true cycling adventure. We biked the battle trail (it follows the battles of the first day of the Revolution) which is really very pretty and nice.
We started at the Minute Man visitor center (the one with the multi-dimensional recreation/presentation of the initial battle of the Revolution) and biked toward the Old North Bridge.
Since we’d seen the sites previously on foot, we didn’t stop and look much, we just utilized the well-laid-out trail. We did stop near the Hartwell Tavern, because this was the first time we’d ever seen sheep in the fields and spaces near the trail.
Note that this picture of the Hartwell Tavern was taken on a different trip, during the summer season.
Very pastoral, eh? Note the traditional New England stone wall.
We biked all of the way through downtown Concord and to the Old North Bridge where we got to overhear part of a tour guide’s spiel about the battle at the bridge.
After a break at the bridge, we biked downtown, locked our bikes up, went in a couple of shops and stopped for ice-cream. Mmmmm… chocolate with peanut butter sauce… eaten on a nice shaded bench.
All in all, it was definitely a good inaugural biking weekend.