Long time no post. I won’t try to recount things that have been happening with me, although some of my latest experiences deserve the mantle of “Urban Adventure”.
My friend Julia was in town this weekend, and I wanted to post about some of the touristy things we did. Here is a short list of our activities.
“Eternal September” is, as wikipedia describes it, the era of mass consumption internet. In its most rarefied state, the Internet had only thoughtful participants who respected one another. A general code of conduct and decorum prevailed. Since 1993, when AOL and other ISPs have brought exponentially more, and less civil, users to the internet, that prior balance has been lost.
I’m sure this is mostly a matter of concern among technophiles, but I have been noticing the irritating effects of what may be deemed the Web 2.0 edition of Eternal September. Since the advent of blogs and commenting, people who could never write a web page have been able to make their voices heard. As a result, and perhaps this has accelerated with increased familiarity with public comments and a continued decline of decorum, every newspaper and widely read blog post have a full gamut of obnoxious comments.
We went to the Blue Hills yesterday. Although the Commuter Rail looks really close to it, in fact you have to take quite the detour by bike to get there. However, both Hyde Park and Route 128 are quite doable, and pretty rides to the Western part of the reservation.
We rode (frantically) to Back Bay, and got on the train just in time. We took it to Route 128 and then discovered that we were in what felt like the middle of nowhere (it didn’t help that this is Labor Day weekend so there is no traffic or other activity whatsoever.) We consulted the map and discovered that you can’t get across the tracks to Green Lodge Rd (which would cut 2 miles off the trip). Just to make sure, we consulted with the Amtrak ticketing agents, who comically pulled out a map of, well, all of Eastern Massachusetts, which did nothing to help us find a non-car route past the interstate.
The route we took from Route 128 station was University Ave south, Canton Rd East, Elm Street North, Green Lodge East, and Washington Street north to the trailside museum. This was not a very nice choice, as Canton is rather busy and narrow, but Washington Street is a very busy road which crosses Route 93 with basically no provision for bikes. The traffic moves very quickly, and despite the holiday was very heavy.
The reservation itself is very nice, and rather small; I think you could probably hike the entire length in a full day. As it was, we basically did the red dot trail up to the brick observation tower and came back. The views are spectacular with Boston rising up and then disappearing into trees, and the long coastline and many islands in the bay. It was funny to see my office building in the skyline, knowing that you can look out those windows and easily pick out this exact point, too.
On the trip back to Boston, we aimed to take the T from Hyde Park. Again, we timed it perfectly, but discovered that there are quite a few Commuter Rail stations in that immediate vicinity; we rode excitedly to Fairmount station, only to discover no trains (especially the one we were looking for) stopped there on the weekend. With minutes until our train, we sped a few blocks over to Hyde Park station, a couple minutes before the train pulled in. However, our error took us onto Truman Parkway, which has a separated, widely paved bike lane which I believe to be part of the Neponset River Greenway (which you can take, in sections, all the way to UMass Boston).
The correct route would have been Washington Street North, right at Canton Street, left at Atherton street, right at Brush Hill Road (you could also get on Brush Hill right after turning on to Canton if you please, and then left at Fairmount, which continues left into River and then directly to the T. This route is quite pleasant and scenic all the way until Fairmount Street, although I imagine the detour by way of Brush Hill would have also been pretty. Brush Hill would have also taken you right to Readville Station, although that sees less traffic, it seems.
Today the plan is to go to the Fells by way of the Orange line; once you arrive at Oak Grove, it is a pretty short trip (15 minutes walking I read) to get to the park.
I rode down a non-motorized park avenue today. Some thoughts:
Some other thoughts that came to me.
It’s been quite a while since I posted here. That’s not for lack of desire, but rather lack of time. Somewhere between the evening activities, the new apartment, and the lovely (and not so lovely) summer weather, I log about 1 hour per month on the computer outside of work.
A few of my activities in the last eight months:
The future hopefully holds much more biking in store: stay tuned.
There is an entire site devoted to imagined extensions of the Boston T. Although I don’t (yet!) have a complete grasp of Boston neighborhoods and outlying towns, I could still tell that the highly ambitious routes imagined were really just intellectual fancy. This contributor sums up the issues nicely.
The last few months have been uneventful in personal biking news. I did learn some of the finer points in chain maintenance and the non-transmission components of the bike. I now have riser bars and a mountain bike brake. I learned about the “fourth hand” tool for tightening brake cables. Critical to this process was Open Bicycle, easily the best bike shop I’ve ever been to. Go out of your way to visit (although not in the next week or two; they’re moving).
The most eventful thing for me took place Monday evening. I was rapidly pedaling over the Longfellow Bridge on a very bumpy ride home, and all of a sudden my rear wheel completely locked up and I skidded to a stop. On closer inspection, the chain had jumped off: it was locked between the rear cog and hub. After some struggling, I managed to dislodge it; two links (and inch’s worth) were crushed and twisted. I rode home irrespectively; it was very bumpy every time the broken links went over the cog.
I tried throwing on a spare, narrow-width chain I had lying around. No dice- the cog was for wide chains only. I didn’t have enough slack in the old chain to just remove the bad links. Furthermore, you shouldn’t break a chain any old place; my chain had a three-piece master link, which is composed of two plates and a clip which locks them together. This is the only place one should break a chain (when I practiced, I alternately used a flathead screwdriver or a needlenose pliers to widen apart the two arms of the clip), and the clip is reusable.
Since my favorite Open bike is closed for a few weeks, I went to my second favorite: Broadway Bicycle School. (I give little to no business to other, unnamed Cambridge-area bike shops, as they are obnoxious and terrible for many reasons.) They sold me a new chain, which was laterally stiffer, and therefore better suited for a fixed gear.
I went home and used my super-cheap chain tool to cut the chain to length (once you reduce the chain to the proper length, you can use the master link to close it). The tool failed miserably. It got jammed at the start of the job, and the pin that drives out the link simply mushroomed to the point of utter uselessness. I threw away the tool, and over the last two days, found myself in Broadway bikes asking them to take off successively more lengths (using a quality chain tool) until it was done correctly. They were very helpful in the initial explanation, and also didn’t mind the few seconds it took to break the chain for me.
This evening I got the chain on, and discovered a number of things. First, the back tire, which I hadn’t examined, was more than bald in one place; this heavy-duty tire had worn through its many layers in the skid (from 20 mph to zero in about 6 seconds). That’ll have to go. Second, the wheel was very wobbly, and always landed in the same spot when I let it run freely.
This inspired me to use all my drive-chain knowledge. I oiled the (brand new chain). I adjusted the chain tension. I made sure the bolts and washers were tightened down on the rear axle (they weren’t! A few weeks ago, I had them split in half because they were loose and had too much force placed on them). I adjusted the chainring bolts to get an even chain tension (that helped – my chainring actually has gotten straighter over time; perhaps I’m just getting better at this!). The result: everything runs pretty smoothly, although I’m still concerned the rear hub or bottom bracket are damaged; at low rpms, there is still a wobble, although the chain runs quieter and there is less wobble at high speeds.
So, tension your chain sufficiently and save yourself at least $60 in new parts, possibly a lot more.
I wish I had a camera so I could show the various damage. Then again, I’d just as soon forget.
Back to the cycle.
This is stupidly obvious: if you want to do a dual monitor setup with the NVidia GeForce 8500GT, all you have to do is use a VGA input for one screen and a DVI input for the other. I tried using a DVI splitter to put both on DVI, but that’s not how it works! It’s analog + digital. Simple.
As an aside, why can’t the Nvidia linux driver do Twinview for my two graphics card (Nvidia 6500 and 8500GT)? Windows can!
On Sunday I did the century bike ride. The basic route was as follows:
I had been really anxious about the ride, since, as faithful readers will know, I had only done 65 miles prior. Furthermore, I had anxiety about my bike, since my choices were between the much lighter fixed gear I have been riding exclusively for months, or the much heavier 10-speed. My decision was clinched when I said, “the fixed gear hurts when I start and stop a lot and on hills.” Chris said, “You’re going to feel a heavy bike on hills and when you have to start a lot.” So, I did it fixed. I had to draft Chris a bunch, particularly along the water when we were going up hills with a headwind. However, my biggest problems from the training, fatigue and knee pain, did not come to pass; I could rest during while drafting, took more breaks, ate a ton at each stop, and drank much more water (actually sports drink) than usual.
Quite fun: two days hence, the only memories I have of it are good ones. Next year in Jerusalem!
I went up to Boston last weekend and did another training ride, this one on Labor Day (see my previous post on my New York ride). My perspective on geography there, at least in the southern part of the city, is that you can get a pretty good ride in without thinking too hard about the route just by picking a direction and turning around when you get to one of the circumferential interstates. Last time, I used I-95 as my boundary; this time, it was I-495. The route was very simple, which is good, because I didn’t make a cue sheet nor bring a map.
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