This morning I woke up at 6:30, and wasn’t on the road for an hour and a half. I didn’t really have my head in the game for some reason, so I forgot some important stuff: Two of my water bottles were still on my Trek, my Road ID bracelet, and a bunch of hard-boiled eggs for snacks.
I biked past the local breweries in my town, which I’d recently visited by bike for a fun weekend afternoon, but this time I rode past them onto NH-102. This was a really familiar route, because for a few years that was a large part of my way to work when I biked into Nashua. Instead of taking Main and Amherst Streets, however, I went down East Hollis to the Nashua River Rail Trail.
The Nashua River Rail trail is a nice paved route for bikes and pedestrians. I’ve been down it before, and it’s always been a pretty pleasant ride, separate from cars. I sort of let my mind go on auto-pilot for a bit as I went down the trail. I had a snack of banana and cashews again in Pepperell Massachusetts, where there is a nice park area where I assume the old train station must have been.
When I got going again, mind sort of on auto-pilot because of the familiarity of the route, I missed my turnoff off of the rail trail. It didn’t really matter, though: I just took the next road instead. I started to really question Google Maps whenever it had me turn onto back roads instead of staying on a numbered route - it always seemed like it was trying to avoid some fraction of a mile by sending me up a big hill instead.
One example of this was in Phillipston, MA, where a homeowner saw me stop by a hill, and offered me some water. He was a very nice man, also a cyclist - I believe he said his name was Kim. He also gave me a Gatorade energy chew thing. The path was mostly along Route 2A for the western part of Massachusetts. For a very long distance, the pavement seemed like it had been grated down to a corduroy pattern but not yet paved. It was a really tough surface to be climbing on for a long time - and there was a considerable amount of climbing.
Around the town of Orange I met another man - “The Irrepressible David Hall,” as he liked to announce himself. An older fellow who says he rides his bike because his eyesight isn’t good enough to drive. He spoke to me at length about the road ahead and ultimately gave me directions that matched what Google Maps had stored for me in my handlebar bag, but he gave me some good insight on the hills ahead at least - it was nice to have warning. He spoke in depth about a semi-religious sort of listening to purpose. He said he had callings to go out somewhere, and ultimately always finding someone who needed help. He told me a story about one such occasion, where he felt compelled to go down the road, and found a family trying to load a long board in a small car sideways, sticking out the windows, who would have had problems had he not been there to intervene. Strange man, but very nice.
The worst part of the ride was right at the end in Wendell - Wendell Depot Road shows in Strava as a category 3 climb, and doing that with touring gear is a real pain. I stopped many times to catch my breath I let my heart-rate settle. Used one of the chews that Kim gave me, which seemed to help. It was fun rolling down though - if you don’t hit 40 going down that hill, it’s because you’re riding the brakes. It would be fun to try on a road bike. I thought I was riding into town too late for Rena’s graduation, but it turns out it was later than I’d been told and I still had time to clean up and attend. I was rushing a bit, though, and in my haste I slipped in the shower and hit my elbow on the way down. I noticed during the evening that my elbow was still sore, and also my thumb and forefinger seem a bit numb for some reason.