Bicycling New England, the
Erie Canal, & around Lake Ontario 2005
Revere (Boston) MA to Woonsocket RI

June 26, 2005
Distance 49.4 Miles

We went to bed very late last night after we got all of our "work" completed and got up early today so that we would start riding before it got too hot. Well, we ended up riding during the hottest portion of the day even though we started riding at 8:00 AM. We left the motel and headed southwest through the streets of Boston and its suburbs. We traveled to Cambridge MA and rode out bicycles on the streets in the middle of the MIT campus. There buildings are very different.

We crossed the Charles River on Massachusetts Avenue and ended up traveling past the building where the Boston Pops performs. This is where we had enjoyed the prefect concert two nights ago.

After crossing over a subway line we found a bicycle path that paralleled the subway line for 4 or 5 miles and kept us off of the city streets. The only problem was that we only able to travel at 9 or 10 miles per hour on this bicycle path. Therefore it took forever to cover the distance on the bicycle path. After leaving the bicycle path we continued on city streets until we began to find back country roads. We traveled on roads with very little traffic and lots of beautiful woods but we never saw a farm because houses were along the roads just as if we were in a town except that the lots were very large. We also found sewer lines in every road we traveled on. As we approached the little town of Medfield, George and Jane yelled at us to stop because they had a flat rear tire. We stopped and they began the process of fixing the flat.

The first attempt was to patch the hole after removing two very small pieces of glass from the tire. They could not find the leak in the inner tube so they went to attempt two which was to replace the leaking inner tube. In the meantime, our bicycle fell over and broke one of Mary Kay's rear view mirrors. After the inner tube was replaced, George heard air escaping and before they got on the bicycle, the rear tire was again flat. The third attempt was to again replace the inner tube after checking the rim tape to make sure that it would not cut the new tire and this one was successful.

We all felt glad when we got into the motel, it was a long hot day. After an hour break, time to shower, rinse out clothes etc. We walked next door to a good restaurant, then back to the motel to decide tomorrow's route. We will now call it a night.