The Inaugural Massachusetts Ride

I now can finally begin to answer the question "how is the riding in MA?" My first impressions - not too bad! I headed out on my road bike for my first ride in two months at the gentlewomanly hour of 8:45 am. That was due to spending 45 minutes looking for my cycling shoes which I had neglected to notice the night before, had not yet been unpacked! After finally finding them and choosing a route from our Eastern Mass biking map, I headed out. The map suggested I choose any roads outlined in green so I picked a bit of an oblong green circle that created a route from our house to a few other towns and back again and off I went. 

The first thing that struck me was that it was quiet.....shhhhhh.....no cars, no people. It seems folks in MA do enjoy a good sleep in on a Sunday morning. In Hawaii, most folks are eating lunch by 9 am (well, not really, but sort of), so there is really no such thing as having the morning to yourself. So, for the first 30 minutes I think I only got passed by about 5 cars. Pretty nice!!!! My ride was a combination of minor highways and back country roads. The entire ride was heavily treed and I rode through marshlands and forest, past farms, old houses and general stores and ice cream stands. I wasn't bored for a moment. I saw lots of other cyclists so I knew I had picked a good route. Every time I rode through a roundabout (so much fun, kinda reminded me of crit riding!) I looked at all the possible roads to head down but I stuck to my route, afraid of getting lost. A bridge was out at one point so I had to modify but I had brought my map along so it wasn't too much of a problem. 

The riding here reminded me of a cross between riding in the East Sooke area of Vancouver Island (very green and heavily treed but not nearly as hilly and without the possibility of running into a bear!) and Europe (seriously, you should see the stone walls and old buildings around here!), except that the roads are much wider. I returned home tired and satisfied. Boy am I out of shape but I am psyched to get out there and explore. The great thing about cycling is that you go slow enough that you see things you miss in a car. I made mental notes of several trail heads I spotted along my ride and will be back with my fat tires to explore!