Excerpt:
My husband and I have recently rediscovered the joys of old-fashioned, two-wheeled, human-propelled biking. Both of us learned to ride clunky one-speed Schwinns over a half-century ago. We eventually moved on to the newer ten-speeds in our teens and abandoned them for decades.
This summer we smartly invested in newfangled 21st century machines. These bikes, called hybrids, have lots of complicated gears, comfortable seats, sturdy tires, safe handbrakes and front-end shock absorbers. They are relatively inexpensive and are truly enjoyable.
I wrote recently about the wonderful off-road rail trails in New England that we’ve discovered on our weekend jaunts. Our biking excursions have grown in length; some of our now-favorite rail trails are 25 miles round trip. So we energetically took a leap on September 26th and joined over 4000 other bicyclists at one of Boston’s favorite events, Hub on Wheels.
You have until the morning of the ride to choose between three different loops – ten, thirty or fifty miles.
We chose what you might call the Mama Bear route. Not too short, not too long – just right. Delightfully, my eldest daughter, a triathlete who had recommended the biking event to us, shaved the additional twenty miles off her normal ride to join us.
No matter what town or city we were from, we were all Bostonians that day. All along our ride, volunteers and bystanders stood in all these local enclaves cheering us on and pointing us in the right direction. Several times I was met by a smiling face at the top of a hill assuring me that I was halfway there or that I only had ten more miles to go. It was one of the most delightful three-hour tours of Boston I will ever experience.
