Riding along the South Shore

Argh, I went and changed my blog design and now it's messed up. Ah well.

Yesterday Laura and I biked along the South Shore. Despite getting a little lost and dealing with a group of immature guys in a gas-guzzler shooting by us on a roundabout and idiotically yelling at us to "get on the sidewalk," we had a pleasant ride. Admittedly, I did fall once and got a bad case of the "jelly-legs" during the second half of the ride, but it was worth it to experience the majesty of the South Shore. It has everything you would expect of a New England coast: lighthouses, harbors, modest beaches, parking restrictions, mansions, sailboats, and best of all, general flatness. We stopped at North Scituate Beach for a lovely 1.5 hours to eat Power Bars, nap on our backpacks, and swim in our bike clothes. We passed through many small towns, our most favorite being Scituate. I'd like to go back sometime and check out the quaint shops and restaurants.

Here are some ways the ride simulated RAGBRAI:
1) small town pass-throughs
2) small rolling hills (although many of Iowa's hills are bigger)
3) getting water from random places, including a jug at a gas station out of which the mechanics had been drinking
4) stopping for an hour to swim in afore-mentioned bike clothes
5) stuffing our faces
6) pain in the back, neck, shoulders, legs...heck, everywhere.

Ways it did NOT simulate RAGBRAI:
1) no cyclists pushing up the hills with me; instead, lots of cars were rushing unsympathetically past
2) nobody to greet us in the towns
3) no beer
4) no Mr. Pork Chop
5) the Atlantic Ocean was available to us
6) the mansions
7) we rode home on the T

OK, there are a LOT of ways this ride wasn't like RAGBRAI. For one, we had not yet made our RAGBRAI mix. Now it is done, but it is not public and I won't reveal it until then. It is probably the awesomest RAGBRAI mix ever.

In case you are curious, here is the route we took yesterday. It totaled 46.12 miles, but to me and my out-of-shapeness it felt like 70!