Our First Two Days on the Bikes!

Cambridge Team - Arlington

It seems like forever ago, but it has only been two days since the teams set out from Woolman Hill in Deerfield to help stop climate change across Massachusetts. After saying our goodbyes to the Western Mass team, we stayed with the Cape Cod team on our way to spend the night together at Barre Congregational Church, which happened to be a nice 47 miles from our launching point over many, many interesting and exciting hills. After a smooth and flat first stretch, we were all feeling confident in our biking abilities, feeling the cool air off of the passing brooks, smiling at the partly sunny, but not overly oppressing sky, above...and then we entered the wonderful world of bike maintenance. It seemed like everything possible that could go wrong did, short of someone crashing. The trailer hitches broke off sending our trailers flying across the road, Lesley’s brakes were stuck in the on position continuously, Sally’s rear wheel was as crooked as could be, Mark had a flat, or two…you get the picture. By the end of the day we were all expert bike repairmen/women.

Anyways, we eventually stopped to eat a packed lunch of Nutella and potato chips sandwiches (or at least I did) by the side of the road in Montague. We decided at this point that we were behind on our initial estimated arrival time of early evening into Barre, so we broke up into two teams, one faster that would arrive at the church first and prepare dinner so we could all be ready to eat as soon as the other team arrived. I navigated in the slower group as the other team disappeared over the hills. Town after town disappeared behind us as we passed many farms, roadside farm stands, rivers, and forests. On the back roads of New England, there are no chain fast food restaurants and billboards, just local country stores, lots of cool looking barns, churches with big white steeples, and trees. Sure beats the big interstate. But we were losing more time and going slower and slower each time we stopped at the top of another hill to catch our breath and drink some water, or because someone’s tire went flat. Each hill was harder than the last, and we kept thinking, will there ever be a nice long downhill after the top?

The sun was beginning to disappear around 9pm as we were traveling around the Quabbin reservoir, and not only were we getting tired of endless hills, we were very hungry and had only a granola bar and a box of Tic-Tacs to nourish ourselves and only one of the 9 of us in our group had a light on their bike. Suddenly our nice leisurely ride across western Massachusetts was turning into a real problem of how we were going to make it safely to Barre while we still had 8 miles to go. Exhausted, hardly visible by cars, and malnourished (the 1.9 calories in each tic-tac didn’t quite fuel us on as much as we’d hoped), we were forced to stop in the middle of nowhere in Petersham at 10pm and figure out a different solution. After debating over whether or not we should camp out on the side of the road and call it a night or dial the operator and find the nearest pizza place to deliver a pizza to us on the side of the road and then ask the pizza man to drive us to our destination, we called Jay with the other group already at the church in Barre and waited for him to find a solution. After a half hour, Lester, our new friend from the Barre church, along with Jay pulled up in a car to save the day, bearing gifts of chips, fruit, and granola bars, along with bike lights for several of us. Never had a meal of potato chips tasted so good! With our new strength and bike lights, we finally stumbled into Barre weary and drained at 11:30pm to enjoy a dinner of eggs and pancakes and then collapse into our sleeping bags, only to wake up at 8am and hit the road again in the morning for another long day of riding.

The morning arrived too soon, we said goodbye to our Cape Cod friends and hit the road, but we weren’t even across the street when the trailer and Emily’s bike broke, which delayed us nearly an hour. We figured out that biking the whole way to Lexington, where we were staying for the night, would be ride of 50 miles, and if there were as many hills and we went the same speed as yesterday, we wouldn’t make it until very late again (if at all). We decided instead to bike 22 miles to Fitchburg and take the “T” into Concord, then bike the final 7 miles to Lexington. After many more hills, bike problems (including Mark running over a dog, but luckily no one was hurt and the dog owner welded the trailer hitch for us), and worrying that we wouldn’t make it in time for the train, we hit a long downhill and cruised the last four miles into Fitchburg with high spirits. We lugged all our bikes onto the train and for some reason it was not leaving yet. In our train car, a man ran into the car telling us he was so thankful the train had stopped or he’d have missed it, only to have the police jump on in the other end and throw handcuffs on the man! After a few minutes, he was released after they realized he was not the suspect they were looking for and the train finally left the station. Strange happenings in Fitchburg.

We arrived in Concord and had a nice flat ride into Lexington to meet up for a nice vegan dinner with Adam, a member of Mass Powershift and bike repairman, but not before Kyle’s trailer hitch got stuck in his spokes and broke the tire. After a nice dinner and deep discussion on how the world and culture needs to change in order to stop climate change, we headed over to the church, across from the Lexington battle green, to spend the night, still without having showered!

So far we have had met a bunch of kind and interesting people on the road, from people letting us in their home to fill up our water bottles, to a man who was creating biodiesel fuel in his garage, to a lady who served us fresh and delicious lemonade and showed us a better route to go, but we are excited to soon settle down and work with the Cambridge Energy Alliance. We miss you other groups and are excited to hear your stories and successes as well! More exciting things to come!

-Keane