Excited that the ride is here. Started out at 8:40 this morning from home, and rode out on familiar roads to Concord and Carlisle, passing through typically lovely New England scenery which I see all the time but looked at in a different light since I knew I'd be blogging about this segment. Conditions were cloudy and a little damp, but the forecast didn't look too menacing today.
Took the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail as a straight shot out to Lowell, MA. This trail is being extended to Concord, and when it's done it will be an amazing route north and south connection. Along the way, I took my time taking photos and also stopped to help a cyclist (a PMC rider) fix a flat. Got to Lowell just about noon and enjoyed some delicious Mexican food. Lowell is a city on the rise, and has some really interesting neighborhoods along the canals and Merrimack river.
It's a pretty quick ride from Lowell to the New Hampshire line. "Bike Free or....". Funny, I could tell I was in New Hampshire right away when I saw what I first thought to be a pro-Hillary sign. Take a closer look... Right down the street was a Trump sign. Luckily I had music playing during my ride - the new Chance the Rapper, some classic Tribe Called Quest, all of Wilco's Alpha Mike Foxtrot, and finished with Radiohead's OK Computer.
It was misting for most of the New Hampshire part of the ride, and for about 20 minutes there was steady rain - I tucked into a general store and avoided the worst of it. I rolled into Manchester right at 3PM, at a little over 60 miles for the day. My friend Ken Sharples took this photo of me, a little damp but happy to be inside.
My friend Eric had his own version of "Bike Free or..." with his Live and Let Ride shirt. It was great being reunited with the 200 hundred riders who bused up from Trenton NJ, including my son Adam and the rest of my regular riding crew whose photos you'll see a lot of during this week.
Tomorrow we bike 66 miles to Leominster, MA. The weather forecast looks different depending on whose weather app you look at (from 0% chance of rain to 65-80%). We'll use good ol' visual confirmation tomorrow morning. No matter what the forecast, happy to be on the ride and to be with my son and great friends for the next week!
No comments:
Post a Comment