Great Blue Hill

One of the toughest rides in my repertoire of local roads is the one-mile climb to the top of Great Blue Hill.

Great Blue Hill is the highest summit in the Blue Hills Reservation, lying just a couple miles south of the Boston city limits.  At 635 feet, Great Blue is no giant, but it's big enough to make it the highest point on the entire Eastern Seaboard within 10 miles of the shore, not counting Maine.  I know, that's a lot of qualifiers --but when you're inching your way up its steep slopes, it feels like something mighty special indeed.

Great Blue is well known among area cyclists as a gem of a climb, with gradients that send your cycling computer into nice little hysterics.  Mine was recording +20% grades, which I think is a bit exaggerated.  The general consensus gives it a 9-10% average grade, with some maximums between 16-19% -- more than enough to get your legs burning, especially as the trees becoming increasingly windswept near the granite-encrusted summit.

The "Summit Road" that runs from its base right up to the top is closed to all cars, except those traveling on official business to the historic and still-active weather station at the summit.

Get on the Hill nice and early before the other cyclists and runners arrive, and it's a wonderfully atmospheric climb, as if some kind of black magic is secretly being forged deep in the forest...

Along the way to the summit you pass an old ski lift...

...and soon afterwards you're on the top of Great Blue Hill.

 

Then it's time to head back down for a thrilling descent.

A Busy Weekend!

This was a good weekend of cycling!

I've been concentrating many of my recent rides on the Neponset River Trail, which cuts a path along the boundary between Boston and Quincy, and then between Boston and Milton further upstream.  It's not as well-known as the much longer Minuteman Commuter Bikeway further to the west, but the Neponset River area has unique charms all its own, such as the 1940's-era streetcars that rumble by the path (still in everyday use by the MBTA)...

...historical and whimsical murals...

...and the former Baker Chocolate Factory at the Lower Mills area of Dorchester and Milton:



I then continued along the new bike lanes in Milton:

On Saturday, in addition to riding all of the above, I did a loop around the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library on Boston's very scenic Columbia Point:

I've also been experimenting more with acrylics while watching the Ardennes classic races on TV.  So I just finished a painting of the riders crossing the river Meuse in the finishing town of Huy, during the Fleche Wallonne race in Belgium:

And ... I finally joined a cycling club!  I'm now a member of the Charles River Wheelmen.  It's one of the largest clubs in the Boston area, with multiple rides every week, century rides, a newsletter, and more.  I'll be honest, the only reason I hadn't joined the club earlier was because of its name.  Of course there are both women and men in the organization, so "wheelmen" feels so old-fashioned (although it's still a fairly common name among long-running cycling clubs).  But once I discovered all the great things the club organizes -- and I saw that both women and men are in leadership positions (its newsletter is called "wheelpeople") -- I then happily joined up.  I guess old names die hard, like YMCA, where the only letter that's still relevant is the "A".  Anyway, I'm looking forward to taking part in some of their rides, and maybe making some new cycling friends in the process.

So, a good weekend!

Paris-Roubaix in Acrylics

Watching the magical Paris-Roubaix bicycle race on TV inspired me to give acrylic paints a try:

I quickly discovered that acrylics allow you to lay the paint on really thick, which felt perfect for depicting Paris-Roubaix.

For me, the beauty of Paris-Roubaix is how the simplicity of the landscape contrasts with the gritty mayhem of the race.  Take the bikes and crowds out of the picture, and all you have left are cobblestones, land, and sky.  But add the race back in, and it becomes a piping hot stew of dust, noise, angry roads, rattling wheels, and screaming bright colors.  It's as if the sky mirrors all that's happening down below, absorbing the clouds of dust and carrying the vivid colors of the race upwards.

Creating Spring Colors

And then it was spring!

"That sure doesn't look like spring," you may say, "look at all those bare trees!"  I took this photo in Housatonic -- an old mill town in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts.  I was out there on business and brought my bike along with me for a brisk afternoon ride.

How about this photo then?

That's a dam along the Housatonic River, the town's namesake.  I rode along the river for a number of miles as I made my way back to my car in Lenox, Mass.  Still not very spring-like, you say?

Here's another one, again from Housatonic:

O.K, now I'm having fun!  But only a little, because there's something about a bicycle that changes the whole way we look at spring.

Early spring in New England does have a black-and-white quality to it.  It's a kind of quiet interlude between the dark days of winter and the burst color that is yet to come.  But we cyclists love it.  We love it on an impossible-to-explain elemental level, as if the very first bicycle ever created was forged in some dark furnace deep in the hills on a cold April morning, and we're just now reconnecting with our beginnings.

Maybe it has something to do with the simple aesthetics of it all, the image of a bicycle -- a streak of bright color -- set against a monochrome background.  Or maybe it's the idea of the epic ride, the thing all serious cyclists strive for.  Cycling through a grey landscape, I feel like I'm adding my own color to those trees with every pedal stroke.

The pros have the early-spring bug too.  Just think about the great March/April races like the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, winding their way through old WWI battlefields.  Those races would loose their soul if they were held in summer.  You need that film of grey hanging over it all, reminding us that a bike race is a beautiful, peaceful thing in itself.

Even when those racers ride on cobblestone through green fields, it still has a wonderfully bleak feel to it.  Cleaning my apartment the other day, I came across an unfinished watercolor I painted of those cobbles:

Pretty lonely, right?  But we cyclists would like nothing better than to ride that road and make the unfinished painting a masterpiece.

So getting back to Housatonic...

Across the street from the local post office...

... the townspeople have put up a mural:

It's green and cheery, and it reflects the creative spirit that is so strong in the Berkshires.  Very cool!  But on that particular afternoon, I was just as happy to enjoy the pleasant shades of grey.

The Cycle of the Seasons

The shadows are getting longer these days.


Boats vacate their slips, as cold air makes for brisk morning rides...



...and winter spirits quietly begin inhabiting the newly empty spaces.

Bike Lanes of Harvard Square

I love bike lanes! It goes beyond the merely practical. Yes, they make riding safer and easier -- that's reason enough to love them right there. But bike lanes also have a subtle, quiet grace about them.

Look at these photos I took of the bike lanes in Harvard Square...







It's as if Cambridge is saying: we make a little room for everyone.

Seven Cycles & Ciclismo Classico

This past Tuesday night I was invited to a reception hosted by two great Massachusetts bicycle-related companies: Seven Cycles & Ciclismo Classico. The event took place at the Seven Cycles headquarters in Watertown, Mass.

It was a dark and chilly night...


But inside all was warm and pleasant.


Ciclismo Classico is a bicycle vacation company based in Arlington, Mass. I first received their catalog in the mail a year or so ago and spent many happy hours on the subway browsing through it and dreaming about their trips. Their tours cover a range of experience levels, from the "easy" Venice con Gusto tour to the "expert" Majestic Dolomites. Each trip is led by a guide and consists of a limited number of participants. Here's the 2012 catalog that I picked up at the reception:





Really beautiful, don't you think? Log onto Ciclismo Classico's website, request that a catalog be sent to you, and have a look. I enjoyed chatting with a cyclist at the reception who went on their Norway tour. Actually, I seem to come across Ciclismo Classico "alums" all the time. On my very first event ride in Connecticut, a woman in our group wore a Ciclismo Classico jersey. I remember her saying how tired she was after riding our 22 miles through western Connecticut, which seemed odd because she had just told us all about her much-longer Ciclismo Classico ride through Italy. She must have sensed our quizzical looks though, because she soon added: "but we stopped for great food and wine in Italy, so it felt easy!"

Seven Cycles makes custom bicycles, building their frames right there at their Watertown headquarters. I'm afraid I didn't take many photos, but here are two shots I snapped of their bikes on the showroom floor:



The top frame is titanium and the bottom frame is steel. Bicycle racing fans: do you know why the steel bike is painted pink? It's a custom "Giro d'Italia" themed bike! Very cool.

Seven's frame are true works of art. Look at the gracefully curved seat- and chain-stays. And the unpainted titanium. Beautiful.

Here's the Seven catalog that I picked up on the way out (the 2012 bikes are being announced this Saturday):





We were also given a tour of Seven's small factory, which was truly inspiring. Come to think of it, maybe "workshop" is a better word. Even with its high-tech computer generated schematics, spic-and-span cleanliness, and precise machinery, Seven's old-school artistry is what impressed me most. There is no assembly line -- each craftsperson works on multiple processes in the creation of a frame, sometimes building an entire frame from start to finish. Pride in one's work, the magic of seeing disparate elements come together into a cohesive whole, and the mysteries inherent in crafting metals ... they all really come alive in this remarkable shop. In fact, there's even an anvil sitting in a corner! The artists at Seven are carrying the great traditions of New England framebuilding into the 21st Century, and that's wonderful.

So what a great evening! Extraordinary travel and exquisite bicycles ... all inspired by one thing: the quest for the magical ride.