Shoreline limited

Last Friday, I took a shoreline trip on my bike, heading to Nut Island in Quincy, then back north along the coast. It was 47 miles when I mapped it out, but what with detours and wrong turns I ended up riding 52.2 miles, which is the first time I've ever broken 50 miles in a single day. (That's the view from Nut Island, above. Long way from home!) My lifetime mileage (that is, since I acquired my GPS in May) passed 1000 miles during the trip, too, so it was a double milestone. Woot. Here's a map.

The first half of the ride was harrowing — I rode through Dorchester and Roxbury, which are not the happiest places in Boston, and then found the Neponset Bridge rising ahead of me. Ordinarily (and according to Google), the bridge has a separate bike lane, but the bridge is undergoing construction, and has narrowed to a single narrow, busy lane in each direction, edged in construction cones and concrete barriers. It curves, too, so there was no way to see how far it extended. But it was the only way to get across the Neponset River, without going six miles out of my way, so I put my head down and took the lane, leading a parade of angry cars for the three-quarters of a mile it took to find a turnoff. Then I did it all over again to get back.

Nut Island was nice enough, but probably not worth the anxiety of getting there — just a green little nub of land with a long fishing pier and lovely views of the harbor islands. Hough's Neck, which it sits at the tip of, was quintessential New England, chock-full of marshes and crowded houses and speed bumps (I counted nine on one block). I sat on the pier and ate my energy snax and watched a team of Greeks with visible buttcracks land a two-foot bluefish; while it lay gasping on the concrete two Japanese kids rode up on bikes, and they watched it expire with awe on their faces. "That must hurt." They wore ladybug helmets with bobbling antennae.

The ride became purely pleasant just before UMass. I rode past the JFK Library, designed by I.M. Pei, all glass and soaring concrete, with Kennedy's little sailboat the Victura parked outside. Then I followed the Harborwalk to the causeway around Pleasure Bay to Castle Island. Castle Island is home to Fort Independence, the star-shaped fort you see when you fly into Logan, and it's much bigger from the ground — bluff stone walls tower over the green and all the people picnicking there. Then I rode through crumbling dockyards to Boston Harbor, where I watched harbor seals bobbing at the Aquarium, and finally followed the Charles back home.

I enjoyed poking into all the little marshland parks and beaches along my route. One I stumbled across only because I took a wrong turn: Moswetust Hummock, a nondescript wooded area surrounded by egretted marshes. Moswetust Hummock was the seat of Chief Chickatawbut, sachem of the local tribes in 1621, and Myles Standish and Squanto came from Plymouth to treat with him there. "Moswetuset" means "arrowhead-shaped hill," and the local Indian tribe took their name from it. What other well-known name ultimately derives from this hummock I leave as an exercise for the reader.

I took some photos. ( This way to the great egress! )

More photos available in my cycling set on Flickr.

Labor of love

For Labor Day, I convinced adfamiliares to stop working for a few hours and visit Concord with me. We walked the Dike Trail at Great Meadows, and I'd barely set my foot on it when I heard a major rustling in the dry reeds beside me. There at my feet was a fat black northern water snake, a good three feet long! This was easily the largest snake I'd ever seen in the wild, outside of Malaysia.

After that, we spotted great blue herons (seen above, hunting), egrets, a handful of leopard frogs, bunches of painted turtles, a red-tailed hawk, a second water snake, and a Dan Wells. Yes! We hadn't seen him since graduating Swarthmore, but there he was, on a wildlife expedition with his parents. He seems to be well — eco-teaching at the University of Vermont, and designing nature apps for the iPhone on the side. We had a very nice talk on our way back to the cars.

( Cut for photos! )

K. and I then stopped at the Old North Bridge, and visited the free open house at the Old Manse (home to both Hawthorne and Emerson) to see the mad stuffed owl, the squared piano, and the migraine-painted kitchen walls. Concord is full of Ye Olde Houses, which entice K. more than Ye Olde Snakes & Frogges, and she expressed an intention to return in a more historical state of mind.

The day before, I'd spent the afternoon at the HMNH, paying closer attention to tags (which hold a wealth of historical information) than I usually do. I found beetles that had been mounted in the 19th century rubbing tarsi with beetles from 2009, and in the Great Mammal Hall searched for the specimen with the lowest (and therefore earliest?) catalog number. The lowest I found was MCZ #92, which I believe was a beaver. Some North American mammal, anyway.

A few final photos

To finish up, here are a couple of pictures from my Fells hike-n-bike with kdsorceress a few weeks ago. ( A few fungi! )