Day before my moms Birthday! So Last night I got a call that the family is having a small BBQ in honor of the familiar matriarch, and that I should take the train out to be there around four or five. “Train?”, thought I, “Why would I take a train when I have all this free time, and haven’t had a long bike trip in a while?” So I woke up in the morning ready to take on the world; I got all my gear together (rain gear, bike fixin’ tools, human fixin’ tools ← AKA first aid kit) and a full Camelback with an orange in case I got hungry. Add into that my climbing shoes, cause who knows what I’d find, and I was ready. I started up the GPS to track the whole trip, and headed out my front door. Since I was getting a later start that I hoped for, I took the direct route instead of stopping by Hammond pond, and went straight down South Huntington to 109. Turns out what seems fairly flat when your driving can be quite the opposite when your biking, and I found out that 109 is not really flat, but is a bit more like a damned roller coaster, what with the up and down and hills and valleys and everything. But bike it I did, all 25 miles (yeah, I know its not a huge amount. Shush you.), and I got to Medway around 3:30. I stopped in at a boulder along side 109 maybe a mile from home to try some quick bouldering, and that was a very interesting rock. It had three main sides, and each one was a different type of rock: one was really smooth rock, almost like sandstone; one side was pure quartz crystal, with lots of cool pinches and footholds; and the last side was all rotten granite, cool crimps and lots of “crap, the holds gone!” situations. Overall a very cool boulder, but it turns out that the people who live near it don’t take kindly to climbers, and I got a very stern, “Hey man, no climbing allowed, its private property!” from a high school kid hanging out at the top right after I topped out. So down I climbed back down, took off my climbing shoes and threw my boots back on, and pedaled the rest of the way home to an amazing kabob dinner and birthday cake for my Mom. We chilled for a bit afterwards, and then when 8:30 rolled around we headed to the train station to get me home, since I wanted to catch a showing of Wolverine, and didn’t really like the idea of biking in the dark. But I made the mistake of heading to the bathroom before we left, and we missed the train by a solid few seconds, just seeing the last car pull away from the station as we got there. So after a bit of debate, we drove part of the way back into Boston and I biked the rest of the way in, going straight to the theater to meet up with everyone who was seeing it with us. An AMAZING movie followed, after which we all walked back, and the I crashed like a politically-incorrect idea in the senate. Good day, and I hope to do that bike ride more than a few times more, hopefully bettering the time by a significant amount next time. Two and a half hours to go 25 miles? Pshaw….