~~~
Day’?s Verse:
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’?s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.
Ephesians 1:7-8
~~~

More talk about bikes! Ian and I took this Friday off, rented him a bike of the correct size (his current bike is circa 8th grade), and escaped to the Cape. As soon as we crossed over the Bourne Bridge, we pulled into some side streets and found the start of our first bike trail, the Cape Cod Canal trail.

Ian made an incredibly detailed map that covers most of what we did. For the short attention spans, I can summarize our weekend:
Friday – dark blue and light blue lines.
Saturday – 3/4 of the purple line.
Sunday – the remaining 1/4 of the purple line.
We skipped the yellow, orange, and red lines.

View Larger Map

So we rode on the dark blue line first, for a total of about 13 miles. The drive down started off overcast, then switched to incredibly heavy rain, and tapered to dryness again by the time we got off the Bourne Bridge. The temperature hovered around a balmy 70deg;, so we rode in delighted comfort. We saw sea-birds perched on every light and a fisherman who caught a fish as long as my arm.

Then we drove up to Provicetown, where we established ourselves at the Beaconlight guesthouse, oogled over the nice room and one of the proprietors’? amazingly well-shaved legs (his partner was in the kitchen making scones, which turned out deliciously), and then went out again to ride on the light blue trail. With the cloud cover, night came on rather quickly, and we found ourselves lost on an increasingly dark trail. We reassured ourselves that it was a loop, so as long as we kept riding, we couldn’?t truly be lost. We kept riding, slowly, because lots of leaves had fallen and with the wetness from the rain and curvy nature of the trail, we worried about slipping on a turn as much as we worried about making it back. Finally we came out at a parking lot, which let us find Route 6A, and eventually led us safely to the warmth of our room. Despite those worries, we enjoyed seeing the sand dunes and their native flora. That brought us up to a total of 21.03 miles so far for the trip.

The next morning, we enjoyed freshly-baked scones, fresh fruit, and various other continental breakfast-type foods courtesy of our guesthouse. Then, after a suitable digestion period, we donned our stylish biking clothes and set out. Actually, we first spent a harrowing ten minutes extricating the car from its parking spot in the minuscule parking lot. This extrication involved Ian in the car and me outside, motioning with my hands to show that we still had three inches between our car and the one next to it. Then two other helpful ladies came by and provided eyes in places I couldn’?t see simultaneously, so we made it out OK. Then we went off to South Wellfleet, where we hopped onto the purple line for 15 miles.

We ended up riding a total of 30.6 miles on the Cape Cod Rail Trail that day, 15 miles out and, amazingly!, 15 miles back. This trail left me in awe: It is perfectly paved. It has mile markers that also tell what city you’?re in (the one for Wellfleet is almost unreadable since it is spelled out vertically:
W
E
L
L
F
L
E
E
T.
The Ls, Fs, and Es all somehow blend together). It has half-mile markers painted onto the roads (they say .5 MILE, and look like SMILE if you ride by quickly). It has tidy road-crossings with bright signs. Over 75% of the time, drivers saw us coming up to the crossing and stopped for us! A fair smattering of other cyclists also enjoyed the trail, but it never felt crowded. And, best of all, I carried no bag. I loved it. Ian suffered some, but he was stoic, and afterwards said he enjoyed himself as well.

Most of the way back to the car, we came across a girl who had a flat tire. We stopped and I got to provide some expert help. Actually, I just ended up putting air in the tire — of course I had my pump! — because we couldn’?t find the leak. The rider and her mother both blamed it on the fact it was a rental bike. Rental bikes have super-secret hidden leaks? Anyway, I hope they made it the five miles back to Orleans. I felt pretty happy after being able to help them. When we finished, we had ridden 51.6 miles total that weekend.

The rest of the day we spent relaxing; I took a bath, Ian rested on the bed, and later we went out to see Provicetown in daylight. Actually, we left about sunset, which gave us a nice view of the gorgeous pink sky and pink-tinted ocean. Alas, however, the crepe place I wanted to eat that night was closed. We ended up with pizza in our room accompanied by a lousy game of cribbage (I lost). We slept very well that evening, and woke up to the smell of more scones. I love the smell of baking when I’?m not doing it — no dishes.

Sunday we packed up and left, but stopped in South Dennis to ride the seven miles that remained on the Came Cod Rail Trail. We wanted to be able to say we had ridden the whole thing. The sky finally cleared up, the sun came out, and we had the most gorgeous day yet to enjoy. We rode that last seven miles — I loved the bike roundabout; we rode around it a few times just for fun — and when we finished had racked up a grand total of 65 miles ridden over the weekend. We drove home, tired but very happy. We both agreed to try for more bike-riding vacations in the future, provided there were bike trails facilitating it. Good times.

KF quality

6 thoughts on “Weekend of Wheels

  1. Also, in case anyone was wondering, there isn’t actually a yellow line on the map. There is a green line at Eastham, and we did skip that.

Leave a Reply to Marty Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.