Wellesley High School to Farm Pond - July 3, 2024

RIDE REPORT

Wednesday, 3 July 2024, Wellesley High School to Farm Pond

Ride Leader:  Gene Ho

31.4 miles, 10:00 am start from Wellesley, MA

Riders (25):  Gene, Barry Nelson, Charley Lax, Christine Corr, Ellen Gugel, Francie Sparks, Frank Aronson, Frank Hubbard, Gary Williams, Gerry Sheetoo, Janusz Wicher, Kim Wach, Linda Nelson, Marc Baskin, Melissa Norton Renee Rees, Robin Frain, Ron Marland, Sandy Gotlib, Susan Sabin, and first-timers Andrew White, Ginny Walsh, Jeff Blue, Melissa Quirk, and Richard Levine.

It was a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, where the women are strong, the men good . . . . .  Wait a minute, senior moment.

Let's start again.  It was a quiet week in Wellesley, where the women are strong, the children good looking, and all the men are about average.  With school over for the summer, the high school parking lot was available for the start of our ride.  Despite the light use of the town's athletic fields, the town made the porta-jons available for our use, much to our relief.  With the logistical details out of the way, we headed along the town’s mixed-use path.  Warned to be wary of elderly retirees who can't hear, tending to young children who can't listen, we thankfully encountered neither.

Finally blessed with the warm dry weather we had been craving, we set our destinations to complement our early summer conditions - Tangerini's Farm and Farm Pond.  With the conclusion of last summer's road construction, which bedeviled route planning the whole riding season, we received our well-deserved payback with smooth pavement and easy progress.  Between the good weather and the holiday week, it really was a quiet week in Wellesley, as well as all the rest of the towns en route. 

 

Our first stop at the halfway point, Tangerini's Farm is an actual farm, or at least looks it.  But, with the corn only knee-high on the 3rd of July, the greens and grains still seeds in the ground, and any citrus only a coincidence with the owner's name, the cash crop of the day was ice cream which was available in abundance.  Having completed the planting and with harvest too far away to think about, the Norwegian batchelor farmers are off on vacay with the rest of the town’s residents, leaving only the good-looking children to mind the farm.  They dutifully and successfully separated us and our money in exchange for ice cream.  The B-school types call that complementary market planning or some such, and they're teaching 'em young on the farm.

 

Next stop - Farm Pond.  I expected some takers with several enthusiastic swimmers in the group, but not even a toe-dip.  They say don't swim after a big lunch and we must have taken heed.

 

Final stop, actually just a pause - the Wellesley College Center for Women.  Funny, I thought the whole college was for women.  On the advice of my Norwegian batchelor lawyer friends, I will say no more.  The Center's driveway does offer access to one of Wellesley's architectural wonders - the Waban Arches, a roman style aqueduct.  Since it traverses a wetland, it's not often seen except by golfers chasing errant balls from the nearby golf course and, back in the day, by rock climbers looking for challenging climbs, and, currently, by local graffiti artists looking for an outlet.  It's totally covered with it.  When the DCR took over an abandoned railroad bridge, which had become a graffiti magnet, and turned it into a tastefully maintained walkway over the Charles River, the grafitti had to go elsewhere.  Now I know where it went.

Report by Gene Ho