Wednesday, 2 November 2016, Needham, Dover, & Beyond
Ride Leaders: Susan Sabin & Tom Allen
27 or 41 miles from Cutler Park, Needham, MA
Riders - 27 mi (12): Susan, Ann Northup, Chuck McWilliams, Dale Ferguson, David Kobes, David Wean, Don Mannes, Ilkka Suvanto, James Hsia, Jim Cant, Maurice King, and Stuart Kaufman.
Riders - 41 mi (16): Tom, Annemarie Altman, Bob Apsler, Ellen Gugel, Everett Briggs, Fred Newton, Gene Ho, Kathy Horvath, Ray Komow, Roy Westerberg, Rudge McKenney, Selig Saltzman, Stan Kay, Tim Wilson, Veronica Vedensky, and Wing Chow.
Present at lunch (9): Andrea Leopold, Barbara Jacobs, Brett Serkez, Helen Greitzer, Judi Burten, Larry Kornetsky, Margie Lee, Marie Keutmann, and Tony Lee.
This was a glorious day for a bike ride. After scrambling for parking space (Cutler Park parking was nearly full when I arrived at 9:30 am), we started just a bit late. We stopped at a porta potty at about mile 6 while we waited for the sweep. He and two others took a while to appear - it seems they were sweeping some woman who was out riding on her own - talk about full service sweeping!
Lunch outdoors in Dover was a delight, except for the persistent bees (one of which got inserted in Dale’s mouth as he drank his water bottle) - ouch!! The leader had to wrangle the troops outta there, sadly, before the next wave of riders who then benefited from the empty seats.
As promised, the ride was at WW speed: 13.4 mph according to my gps, and the group stayed pretty much together. Thanks to Stuart for sweeping. And, by the way, I cannot take credit for the weather, the roads, or the regular CRW route which I had simply downloaded.
Report by Susan Sabin.
The long ride set out, first crossing over Rte 128 at the site of new on-ramps on Kendrick Street, then on towards Dover via South Street. We paused briefly at the divergence of the long and short rides, in case anyone wanted to switch (no one did). Shortly after, one of our riders experienced a pneumatic failure that Everett (our sweep) dealt with.
There were some ups and downs, but nothing this group is not used to. One hill slowed the leader, such that several riders forged ahead and distributed themselves along the route as forward deployed arrows until I managed to catch up. It was all done in a very orderly fashion,
At the lunch stop in Dover center we met Brett, Andrea, and Helen, along with several other familiar faces out on different rides. Susan's group had departed before we arrived.
I received many compliments on "my" route design. Of course I deflected those to Susan and add my own on a most scenic ride.
Thanks to Everett for serving as sweep and to Ellen for schlepping the uneaten half of my sandwich back to the parking area.
Report by Tom Allen.
The third ride
Leader: Larry Kornetsky (because he had gps), Participants: Tony Lee, Margie
If you’re a mountain biker in the greater Boston area, you’ve probably heard of Cutler Park in Needham. But many of us have never been there so this was an opportunity to explore. We started out when the road riders were leaving and headed onto a rooty trail behind the parking lot. After turning onto a double track we ascended up and down a few hills on single track, at some points quite close to Rte. 128. Eventually we found solitude in the woods and rode over a wooden causeway (boardwalk), followed the blue heron trail, diverting along the way for “playgrounds” with built up mounds, and past some teenage hideaways, emerging to city streets and an Entering Boston sign. Thanks to the gps we were able to reconnect with the blue heron trail, riding through Millennium Park, behind office buildings and through parking lots to emerge back where we started. Thanks to Larry for his expertise with Ride with gps, we thoroughly explored and enjoyed Cutler Park. It was fun to get together with the long road cyclists for lunch in Dover and to see Brett and Andrea.
Report by Margie Lee
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