Cape Cod Rail Trail- Take Two
Cape Cod Rail Trail- Take Two
Today's trip was an "easy" (tell my butt that.) 36 mile trek in the opposite direction from yesterday, on the Cape Cod Rail Trail. We headed south on the trail from Underpass Road, going from mile marker 8.5 to 3.5, going through the bike rotary in Harwich, and opting to take the Old Colony Rail Trail to Chatham, rather than finish out the CCRT, and then, at the end of that, we explored the town of Chatham a bit.
If yesterday's bike trip was more about nature, this one was more about opulence and summer luxury. Sure, we still rode through some wooded areas, but here we found public lake beaches with lots of visitors wasting the 75 degree day away, private beaches not inhabited by anyone, but giving away hints of what kind of extravagances they see. We passed an airport with private jets, a brand new retrofitted airstream, houses of old money, new, over-the-top construction, old graveyards, a library with an entire geneology department! A street art-fair, where one could buy as many paintings of
lighthouses and driftwood as their wallets could handle. Stores with names like "The Puritan" and "Kennedy's" abounded. Even the Ben Franklin shed its familiar logo for a fancy, more upscale facade.
The Old Colony Rail Trail seemed a little more advanced than the CCRT. A lot more hills- sustained hills. Fewer, more discreet mile markers- every 1/4 mile and hard to spot, unlike the mocking 1/10th of a mile markers on CCRT.
I mentioned awhile back, that going to see Jerusalem on Broadway brought me back to my late teens. Today I was brought back to a much earlier time, when bikes were transportation and leisure to me. There was a portion of the CCRT that reminded me of the campground my family used to go to when I was a kid. More importantly, I remembered some subtle nuances of biking that were lost to me for almost 20 years. I forgot the feeling of leaning left or right, of going down a hill and turning at the same time. I forgot what it was like to have a conversation with someone, almost side by side, on a bike. What it feels like going through patches of shade and sun and back again all within the span of a few seconds. Today brought me back there.
We stopped at a little place in Chatham called Sweet Tomatoes and had some pizza. I've always been a NY/Northern NJ pizza snob, but as long as you're not trying to make that style pizza, I can suspend that. Got a cheese slice and a spinach feta slice. The best thing about this pizzawas the sauce. It had giant chunks of really good tomatoes in it. The crust was thin and grilled tasting, the cheese adequate.
I swear my partner has a doughnut locating GPS embedded in his skin. We ended up just a few hundred feet up the road at the Chatham Bakery where the best doughnuts of the trip were consumed. We got a nice rest there, too. When we got back on our bikes, my right brake line was messed up and I only had front brakes.
The nice thing about Cape Cod is that there's a bike store EVERYWHERE. Even nicer, the closest one to us, about 1/2 a mile away, was Chatham Cycle, owned by the same place that we rented our bikes from, so they fixed it and off we went. We drove into the downtown of Chatham which wasn't really our cup of tea, walked around a few to stretch our legs, and began the long journey back. There was one hill that I was particularly dreading, but it ended up being a lot easier than I thought. As it was getting later in the afternoon, the wildlife started coming out. Squirrels (after seeing the bikekill one yesterday, I actually yelled "Aaaah, a squirrel!!!") and chipmunks, large shiny ravens, water birds, and a particularly suicidal bunny that wanted to run head-on into my bike but at the end opted not to. At one point I had a sparrow flying parallel to me which was kind of cool. In the end, we rested at the rotary in Harwich, rode the last couple of miles through Brewster, and lo and behold, we were at El Guapo's Taqueria just in time for dinner, and some liquid relaxation. After food in our bellies, and beer in our livers, we rode the final 3 miles through town in the setting sun, and called it a day.
How to Do it:
Same as yesterday, we just went in the other direction. At the Harwich Rotary, which you can't miss, follow signs for Old Colony Rail Trail.
Today's trip was an "easy" (tell my butt that.) 36 mile trek in the opposite direction from yesterday, on the Cape Cod Rail Trail. We headed south on the trail from Underpass Road, going from mile marker 8.5 to 3.5, going through the bike rotary in Harwich, and opting to take the Old Colony Rail Trail to Chatham, rather than finish out the CCRT, and then, at the end of that, we explored the town of Chatham a bit.
If yesterday's bike trip was more about nature, this one was more about opulence and summer luxury. Sure, we still rode through some wooded areas, but here we found public lake beaches with lots of visitors wasting the 75 degree day away, private beaches not inhabited by anyone, but giving away hints of what kind of extravagances they see. We passed an airport with private jets, a brand new retrofitted airstream, houses of old money, new, over-the-top construction, old graveyards, a library with an entire geneology department! A street art-fair, where one could buy as many paintings of
lighthouses and driftwood as their wallets could handle. Stores with names like "The Puritan" and "Kennedy's" abounded. Even the Ben Franklin shed its familiar logo for a fancy, more upscale facade.
The Old Colony Rail Trail seemed a little more advanced than the CCRT. A lot more hills- sustained hills. Fewer, more discreet mile markers- every 1/4 mile and hard to spot, unlike the mocking 1/10th of a mile markers on CCRT.
I mentioned awhile back, that going to see Jerusalem on Broadway brought me back to my late teens. Today I was brought back to a much earlier time, when bikes were transportation and leisure to me. There was a portion of the CCRT that reminded me of the campground my family used to go to when I was a kid. More importantly, I remembered some subtle nuances of biking that were lost to me for almost 20 years. I forgot the feeling of leaning left or right, of going down a hill and turning at the same time. I forgot what it was like to have a conversation with someone, almost side by side, on a bike. What it feels like going through patches of shade and sun and back again all within the span of a few seconds. Today brought me back there.
We stopped at a little place in Chatham called Sweet Tomatoes and had some pizza. I've always been a NY/Northern NJ pizza snob, but as long as you're not trying to make that style pizza, I can suspend that. Got a cheese slice and a spinach feta slice. The best thing about this pizzawas the sauce. It had giant chunks of really good tomatoes in it. The crust was thin and grilled tasting, the cheese adequate.
I swear my partner has a doughnut locating GPS embedded in his skin. We ended up just a few hundred feet up the road at the Chatham Bakery where the best doughnuts of the trip were consumed. We got a nice rest there, too. When we got back on our bikes, my right brake line was messed up and I only had front brakes.
The nice thing about Cape Cod is that there's a bike store EVERYWHERE. Even nicer, the closest one to us, about 1/2 a mile away, was Chatham Cycle, owned by the same place that we rented our bikes from, so they fixed it and off we went. We drove into the downtown of Chatham which wasn't really our cup of tea, walked around a few to stretch our legs, and began the long journey back. There was one hill that I was particularly dreading, but it ended up being a lot easier than I thought. As it was getting later in the afternoon, the wildlife started coming out. Squirrels (after seeing the bikekill one yesterday, I actually yelled "Aaaah, a squirrel!!!") and chipmunks, large shiny ravens, water birds, and a particularly suicidal bunny that wanted to run head-on into my bike but at the end opted not to. At one point I had a sparrow flying parallel to me which was kind of cool. In the end, we rested at the rotary in Harwich, rode the last couple of miles through Brewster, and lo and behold, we were at El Guapo's Taqueria just in time for dinner, and some liquid relaxation. After food in our bellies, and beer in our livers, we rode the final 3 miles through town in the setting sun, and called it a day.
How to Do it:
Same as yesterday, we just went in the other direction. At the Harwich Rotary, which you can't miss, follow signs for Old Colony Rail Trail.