I had a great deal of fun with some of friends and others from my bicycle club, the Charles River Wheelmen. We rode together to Provincetown last week. We left from a spot near the docks in Plymouth. After the ride we took the ferry back. It was a blast. I had always wanted to do this ride. All of my friends have told me about how much fun this ride would be. It also really broke up the monotony of a dull summer with few sunspots. Do not forget that field day is rapidly approaching us.

Provincetown was very interesting. I never had visited the town in the past. I was looking for mermaids, but I did not find any. I did a jump in the water to celebrate finishing the ride to Provincetown. I needed to do something! The ride was great and we went over some nice terrain. Some of the rollers at the end were really not tough.

I had a great sprint down Rt 6 into town. It was amazing to see all of the people and traffic in Provincetown after hardly seeing any traffic on Route 6 or some of the roads on the way to the Cape. It took us a while to manage through the throngs of people in downtown Provincetown. Eventually, I reached the parking lot by ferries and the beach at approximately 12:30.

My friends and I left the parking lot in Plymouth just a little bit shy of 7 AM. So, I think that we did a pretty good pace. We are all talking about the club’s next century, which is the Climb to the Clouds.

In the picture above is my buddy, Dana. We all switched over to street clothes after the SAG van arrived with our bags. Who knew that you could check luggage on a club ride? This was a first for me. I forgot my fedora. I wish that I brought it as we arrived in Provincetown as the sun was reaching the peak in the sky. It really started to warm up, which is another reason why starting at 7 AM is much better. We finished the ride prior to it getting really hot out there.

We made a bunch of new friends on the ride. Here are Joel and Gordon. Part of the club ride experience is making new friends. Everyone has a common interest in reviewing bicycles and discussing past and future rides. Plus, on big club rides you get to see a lot of different bikes that you might not see while riding in your neighborhood. There were a bunch of tandems on the ride. I want to do a tandem ride, but first I need to find someone that would consider riding a tandem with me for six hours.

Here is a picture of one of the tandem teams. They show up at lot of of the club rides. There were several tandems in operation during the day. On the P2P it is really easy to take the tandems back as they simply rolled them on the boat. I do not know how easy it would be to roll them on an airplane, if you just made a cross-country trek.

Some of the Crack ‘O Dawn group showed up for the ride. They really push a fast pace line. I am a little nervous with the impact of negative perceptions that they make towards motor vehicles with some of the rolling past stop signs that they conducted. However, they roll pretty fast. I think that the fast group did the ride at a 21 mph pace. I swear that some of them were talking about riding back from Provincetown to Plymouth.

Would you be tempted to do an 180 mile trip during one day on your bicycle? I am not quite sure. However, the terrain is pretty foregiving, so perhaps you would chose this ride over some of other ones.

There was a lot to see in Provincetown. Next time, I need some suggestions on good places to eat Portuguese food. Plus, suggestions on places on not to venture near. The last picture is a shot of some of the people having a great time on the ferry ride across the harbour. The sea was very calm. I rode up front and soaked in the sun and the fresh air.

N1EY