July 2009

Raining pretty hard this morning, so I took the T. The gf needed the car to drive to work, and my bike is just a little too nice to subject it to rain and dirt. There’s nothing like taking the green line B train a measly 1.7 miles to BC to make me realize how much better it is to commute by bicycle.

I live just steps away from the Warren St stop on the green line, which I thought (when moving into the place last year) would be great for being able to easily head outbound to work at BC, or inbound to downtown on weekends. Turns out, as many of you probably know, the green line B is next to useless if you need to get somewhere in less than 40 minutes. I can’t imagine depending on it every day.

So I headed to catch the train, but before I reach the corner a train pulls out and leaves. Whatever, it happens, I’m probably gonna end up waiting 10 minutes now, good thing I brought my iPod.

Okay, it has been 15 minutes now, and exactly 6 inbound trains have passed, and sweet I can see an outbound train on its way. I stepped out from the awning of the nearby apartment I used for shelter from the rain. Cool, the train is running express, and it doesn’t stop. Back to the awning I went.

10 minutes later comes the next train. This one will surely let me on. It does. Then it carries me up over the hill to the next stop, Washington St. Then the dreaded “this train is being taken out of service”. What? Well thanks for carrying me 1/5 of a mile, so now I’m just far enough away from home that I won’t walk back and just resort to riding my mountain bike in. In my opinion, being a little wet from a bike ride is not as bad as standing  in the rain waiting for a train that may never come.

So I step onto the platform with the dozens of other people who have been carried just 2 or 3 stops from their origin. The ‘disabled’ train heads backwards down the tracks, so I figure it will take forever for another one to arrive. They can’t really pass each other, can they?

Takes about 10 minutes until another train comes. Express to Boston College, right on. Halfway there I hear the “this train is being taken out of service” message again! Luckily, it seems it was just a mistake, or maybe it was a really cruel joke.

Finally arrive at the BC stop, then proceed to hike the 1/2 mile across campus. What a terrible location for a train stop. And a terrible design. There is no real way to cross Commonwealth on foot there without jaywalking.

Total time to travel 2 total miles from apartment to BC: 45 minutes. That’s an average of 2.7 mph. I’m pretty sure I can walk that fast.

Total time to travel those 2 miles on my bike: ~8 minutes. 15 mph.

I’m going to get fenders.

Our first (and only, so far) long road bike ride was during our camping trip near Old Orchard Beach, Maine, last year. The route (see map here) (and original source route here) started at our campground, ran along the beach, through Saco, and made a big loop among rolling hills and farmland near the Saco river. It was an excellent ride with almost no vehicle traffic, and I’d highly recommend the route.

Hey, good day to you, whoever is reading this. I’ve been biking in Boston for the last year, and have been a subscriber of BostonBiker for most of that time. I’ve lived here for just over a year, and I’m becoming more and more interested in the aspects of biking in the Northeast.

My name is Matt, and I grew up in Alaska. After those 18 years, I left to spend 5 years in Boise, Idaho. Now I’ve moved East to graduate school at Boston College, meanwhile experiencing all that comes with urban living in New England.

I was a big mountain biker for most of my life. Boise Idaho, for those of you unfamiliar, is a pretty excellent city to live in for a mountain cyclist. An extensive trail system begins right at the edge of town, a mere mile from the downtown area and university. On one ride in the upper Boise foothills, I found a nice large fallen tree to play with:

Style points
You might see that I’m riding a rather cheap Specialized Hardrock (Sport). I hadn’t yet invested much money into bikes, which is probably a good thing based on how they are treated on those trails. And I had a couple stolen. But I liked heavy bikes, since they gave me a good workout climbing those steep dry hills. I brought the Specialized with me to Boston, but without convenient mountain riding nearby, the bike wasn’t too useful. I then found a used Cannondale R700 with pretty good components. The speed of a road bike instantly hooked me.

Old Orchard Beach boardwalk, Maine.So now I ride in and around Brighton, mostly commuting but sometimes finding my way along the Charles, into Boston downtown, and up and down the hills of Newton. I love riding bike.