May 26 - Riding with MIT Cycling Team

Saturday the MIT cycling team and the Alumni Association arranged for me to do a ride. I need to give a special note of thanks to Kristen Naegle and Katha Washburn for setting up a great event. I hope the other riders had as good a time on the ride as I did. I rode on nearly deserted roads through Boston and over the Longfellow Bridge to Cambridge. I have been in that area east of the campus many times since I graduated in 1972 and it seems to change so fast that I never recognize anything. I found Ames St and was able to ride past East Campus where I lived for four years and then onto Memorial Drive. As I went by the Great Court I saw a group of Japanese tourists taking photographs and asked them to take some of me. When I told them what I had done they all wanted pictures with me. I then went to 77 Mass Ave and repeated the same process. There must have been three tour busses of Japanese tourists in front of MIT. I later learned that there are even tours that go through the Infinite Corridor and that it can be hard to get to classes on time if you find yourself behind one of these tours. MIT was never on anyone’s agenda as a tourist destination when I went there. I guess tech has become trendy, at least with the Japanese.

Kristen, president of the cycling club, and Katha, who works for the Alumni Association, arrived a few minutes later. We took some more pictures. Over the next 15 minutes about 15 riders arrived, mostly graduate students, as undergraduates had to be out of the dorms by today. We did a pleasant ride out to Lexington Green; it was billed as a social ride, which means you can talk as you ride. There were a number of nice roads with reasonable amounts of traffic. I was pleasantly surprised. They even found a hill. Let me say this about the hill, it might have been visible on the route profiles for the I days rode in Illinois where the terrain was as flat as a pancake, but on most other days I would not have taken any particular note of this hill. We returned by a different route and I was reminded of one of the many pleasures of cycling – you get to see places even in your own backyard that you would never have seen were it not for cycling.

I decided to ride back via the Esplanade. So I crossed the Harvard Bridge, paying appropriate homage to the number of Smoots I traveled, then I turned onto the Esplanade. I soon discovered that there was a large concert at the Hatch Shell and needless to say I had to walk the bike. I thought that everyone who hadn’t left Boston the night before must be on the Esplanade. When I finally got back to the Charter House where Karen and I are staying, I discovered that there were even more people at Quincy Market. Where do they all come from? Having ridden across rural areas of the US for 4 weeks I might not have seen this many people in total over that time. I will just have to adjust.

After a few days off the bike it is time to access the ride. Am I glad I did it? YES! Would I do it again? Yes. How do I feel? No aches or pains and while I will fly back to Berkeley, I feel like I could ride back if I had the time. It was a great adventure. I wish I had been able to ride every mile of the ride, but I didn’t. I described a method for grading my ride a few weeks ago. With the rain, my fatigue, and the bike mishap in Missouri, I figure I rode 89% of the total distance. Based on the assumption that an A grade requires 90% or better, I have to give myself a B+ for the ride. On the MIT 5.0 grading scale, I guess I get a 3.9, which as I try to recall is about what my GPA was at MIT. As time goes by some things seem to stay the same.

I will be staying on the East Coast for the next two weeks seeing friends and family in Boston, New Jersey and Philadelphia before attending my 35^th reunion. I plan to be back in Berkeley on June 10^th. I will see my friends in Berkeley then.