riding through the days of August

[rebeccaC]

met a woman and her daughter awhile ago on a ride into downtown LA. They are spending the weekend with me and we enjoyed a sunrise ride this morning. we rode south on the beach bike path to breakfast in manhattan beach. an easy ride, good conversation, lots of smiles and just an enjoyable time. we are now off on a ride to do some school clothes shopping.

photo by 11 year old gabriella, we are going to do a print of it tonight


why i ride

learning the real contours of back country roads
realizing that it's not always about getting somewhere, but rather the joy of randomness
having a curious young girl want to talk to me about bicycling
testing my potential
learning that pain is temporary
turning lifes friction into momentum

[Crankin]

Today I did a ride that was new for me. In fact, I've rarely even driven in some of these places.
Met our friends in Harvard center (we drove there, as we didn't want to do 75 miles today) and headed out through Bolton, Berlin, and Clinton. The first part of this ride was the same as a ride we did before we went to France, but it is quite rural and almost Vermont -like. Lots of hills. There was one kinda scary left turn onto a busy state road, to climb up to a viewpoint at the Wachusett Reservoir. I had done this once, but so long ago, I was riding my first road bike, and definitely took an easier way to get there. We stopped and took pictures, as DH had never seen this. Then, on to a ride around the reservoir, or part of it, actually. It's really pretty, but we spent a lot of time on 2 busy roads, mostly with good wide shoulders. It stayed cloudy for this part of the ride, thankfully, after a hot and miserable ride yesterday. We rode through the towns of West Boylston, Lancaster, and back to Bolton. First, we stopped at the town green in West Boylston and had a snack/porta potty stop, and then headed to Bolton Orchards, a lunch stop on a lot of our rides. After that, we only had 7 hilly miles left, where we took the scenic route, going up by the Fruitlands Museum, back to Harvard center. We rode about 40 miles, with 3K ft. of climbing. It always amazes me how rural Massachusetts gets, not too far from where I live. And, what's sadder, so many people who live in greater Boston never see any of this.
It's raining out now. Very glad we left at 9 AM and were back home by 1:45.

[azfiddle]

Another day, another ride up Mount Lemmon for me. Today was the final day of a series run by a group called the Tucson Tri Girls: The easy peasy Lemmon squeasy rides. They start in June, going higher up the mountain each week, and today they finished at The Cookie Cabin in Summerhaven. My 3rd trip to the top this summer, total of 59 miles with my husband delighting in riding his brand new Trek Domane and one of my good friends.
Untitled by Sharon Goldwasser, on Flickr
Untitled by Sharon Goldwasser, on Flickr


She's wearing the our Team Soul women's cycling club kit.

[khg]

I just did the Ride the Hurricane event today--the road up to Hurricane Ridge is closed to cars for half the day, and it's so fun! The quiet is lovely, and when not looking out for cars, and trying to keep squeezed to the right side of the road, you can look around and enjoy the views so much more. This is my second year doing it, and it is becoming one of my favorite events.

Here's part of why:


(Forest fires aren't the best, but lingering smoke from them did did make the views very atmospheric)

[marni]

todays ride started at 7:00 am with a feels like and real temperature of 75. 29 miles and 2 hours later it when we finished it was a real temperature of 84 and a feels like of 97 degrees. Add water and increase heat is also a good way to steam food isn't it?

[rebeccaC]

I just did the Ride the Hurricane event today--

no couch time for you i see ....beautiful skies!!!!!!

[khg]

no couch time for you i see ....beautiful skies!!!!!!

There's couch time now! (And between RAMROD and Hurricane Ridge, I spent as much time horizontal as I could...)

Today was the wonderful other side of bicycling--instead of giant mountains and delighted exhaustion, I tootled along as low-effort as I could. Home to work to dr's appt to home to haircut to grocery store to home. 21 miles all told, and it took me all day Some days I ride my bike for the challenge--some days I ride it because I'm lazy. I never once hunted for parking, nor had to walk further than 50 feet from my parking spot to the front door of my destination. Driving would have been way too much effort...

[khg]

Another day, another ride up Mount Lemmon for me.

Love it

[Crankin]

First day of our annual trip to the Berkshires. We drove out to Lenox and met our friends, who came out Monday. The ride we did today was one we got from Ride With GPS. Won't do this again. Pretty ride, new roads, but a big fail for me. We had to climb Becket Rd., about 5 miles up, with up to 20% grades. I did about a third of it, up the steepest part, but my legs were toast, and I was afraid I'd fall over. I walked, got back on for a bit, where it flattened, and had to walk again. So demoralizing. Only had to do this once before, out in this area, too. The rest of the ride had plenty of climbing, too, with 2 good downhills. Got back to Lenox, ate lunch at almost 3:00, bought some wine, and finally got to our B and B in Great Barrington at 4:30. Sat by the pool and collapsed. Hey, my average was still in double digits, even with the walking.

[marni]

todays ride was one of minor incidents and pickle juice solutions. I got to the meeting place for the group in good time only to discover that I had forgotten my helmet. Piled the bike back in the car, drove home to get helmet and then drove ahead of the group to meet up with the groups. This meant that I actually started riding atan hour later than usual- think an hour of temperature and humidity increase. We rode off on our usual route and I realized that in spite of not being warmed up, we were going at the goodly clip (for me at least) of 16+ mph and then I realized we had a fairly sturdy tailwind. So much for delusions of adequacy. Shortly after, one of the others last a light and went back to pick it up while having to play frogger to get it before the big trucks ran over it. Then at the halfway stop, she lost a pad off of her glasses and rode on for about 5 miles before she figured out what was going on, and so she and another rode back to search for it. Myself and my bbff rode on and about 4 miles before the car I cramped out. Thankfully I had a shot bottle of pickle juice which solved to problem long enough to get me back to the car. I finished limp as a soggy green bean and just glad to be off the bike. 31 mph at 13.7 in 2:13.

[creationsbyuli]

This week has been busy with my daughter's busy dance life so my new bike had to wait. I've only ventured out on my local little trail that starts just a small distance from our house. I had 30 minutes last night before I had to pick up said daughter at the dance studio. While it's no big ride, the scenery is pretty....

[Crankin]

I commuted today. It was a weird one. I left at 6:40, as I had an 8:00 client, with stuff to do before. Right when I left my neighborhood, I was blinded by solar glare for about half a mile. Considering this is a road with lots of potholes, and I often have to get out in the lane, I was expecting cars to not see me, even with my 2 flashers in the rear. OK, I was done at 5, which is a crappy time to leave for my commute. I actually had some stuff to do, and then I got 2 phone calls. In the middle of this I got a text from DH saying to look at the email he forwarded to me. Apparently, sometime today the construction work on the commuter rail bridge did some kind of damage today and the main road into town was shut down, with no re-opening time. I had an alternate route that is only about 2.4 miles longer; it was that or re-route myself about 7 miles out of my way. I left at 6, and while the route itself was OK, the street I took to get across the highway and nto a neighborhood that cuts off the closed part of the street was the most pothole ridden street I've been on since March. It was so bad, I should have been on a mountain bike. Saw a few other cyclists taking my route, but thankfully, the detoured cars were all going in the other direction. When I got into the very nice neighborhood that was a cut through, I was kind of looking around, when some goofy guy on a Bike Friday passed me. OK, we were coming up to a light where I had to turn left and it was green.I hate stopping at this light, so I sprinted and turned left, of course, from the left side of the road. This genius decided to turn left from the right side of the road, where he then almost cut me off when I got onto Main St. I booked out of there and dropped him. The rest of the ride was my normal commute. It's already noticeably darker at 6:30 PM .

[Crankin]

Spent a nice weekend at the Cape with friends; riding in beach towns/tourist areas is not my cup of tea, but we brought our bikes, "in case." On Friday, we went for a pretty strenuous hike in an area I had never been to (unusual, since I spent about 50 summers on the Cape, in some form). The next day, DH and I got up and went out at 6 AM, the only time I feel safe riding around an area, with people who don't know where they are, and lots of elderly drivers. We did 15 miles, pretty quickly. It always surprises me how rolling the riding is here. Pretty, but since the water is surrounding the area, not a lot of through roads.
It's super humid and hot out. Although it was not as hot on the beach, there is something about riding on the Cape that always gets my sinuses/allergies going, if it's summer time. This is the first time I've been on the Cape during the season in a few years, and this solidified my reasons why I stopped going there for vacation in the summer. Fall and spring is OK, but the riding is not great.

[khg]

My husband and I went and stayed in Packwood, WA for the weekend. The great thing about that location is that if you head south, you're biking on Mt St Helens, and if you head north, you're biking on Mt Rainier. In other words, there's a ton of incredible riding there!

On Saturday, we biked up to Windy Ridge on Mt St Helens--it was a really challenging ride. Different than a lot of mountain rides I've done in which you go up constantly, then come back down, this ride had a lot of up and down, with constantly changing gradients, some of them quite challenging. The scenery was gorgeous throughout--particularly amazing was a moment when you came around a bend in the road, and were suddenly in the blast zone from the 1980 eruption. There were a few dead trees standing, cut off at half-height or so, and then a carpet of fallen trees, all oriented the same direction. It was a very humbling view.

We meant to ride on Mt Rainier on Sunday, but my husband had some work stuff come up, so we came home and I did some painful-but-productive hill repeats by our house. We're hoping to head back next weekend, to repeat the Windy Ridge ride and also get our Mt Rainier ride in. I'll get a couple good rides in this week, then do that trip on the weekend, and then I will be doing nothing more strenuous than grocery store runs (14 flat blocks round trip...) for a few days. Hopefully the challenging rides, plus the several days of rest will leave me peppy and strong as I return to the Italian Dolomites to give summer a last hurrah--I'm simultaneously excited and wondering why I'm crazy enough to be doing this again, when I know for sure this time how hard it's going to be!

[rebeccaC]

I'm simultaneously excited and wondering why I'm crazy enough to be doing this again, when I know for sure this time how hard it's going to be!

but now you also know you can do it and how beautiful the rides are

......you make me feel like i'm lazy


nice image creationsbyuli !!!!!!