Today I biked a lot along highways in central Massachusetts, and I hated almost every second of it. Still, I had an experience I haven't yet had - biking without a trail.

In New York, I always had wide shoulders, and a marked bike path for me to follow. Part of that was biking in farmland, but part of it was the fact that New York really put in an effort to make cross-state biking a possibility in their state. In Massachusetts, there are no official cross-state bike routes, and I had to squeeze on the side of the road. Not fun, but there really isn't much else to write about that.

The second big thing that I did today was pushing my limits. I decided to merge two days into one, and bike 150km. Every day that I went past 100km, I always felt like I could do more, but I would end the day early for the sake of blogging, sleeping, or just because that was what I set out to do that day. Part of the problem is running out of sunlight.

I am not an efficient rider. For every hour spent biking, I spend about an hour resting, eating, filling water, searching for directions, or fiddling with the bike. On good days, I can cut that back to only half an hour. This means that biking from sunrise to sunset (about 15 hours) would mean that I only bike about 7 hours. At an average speed of 20km/h (this varies a lot depending on terrian), this is only 140km.

So how did I bike 150km today? I didn't rest, and my bike was very co-operative. I spent 8 hours and 45 minutes riding today, and a total of 12 hours and 20 minutes from door to door. That's about as efficient as I've ever been. To be hoest, it kind of made me feel physically ill, exerting myself so much, but I really wanted to test myself today.

I hope no one will be angry at me for my deceit, but I was never actually going to Boston in the first place, but rather a town connected to, and indistinguishable from Boston. That's why on the map you won't see the red line going all the way to the ocean.

I started my day in the scenic town of Amherst. Amherst is a college town, and it's got some very very nice bike trails which I was ecstatically riding for the morning:

I saw this funny sign:

I passed by some nice streams, and took two pictures. I couldn't decide which one I liked more, so here's both:

The trail I took ran along an old railway bed which was destroyed in the 30s. Currently, there are plans in polace to turn the whole railway bed into a statewide bike/hiking trail, but so far, only some parts are bikeable. The rest I had to suffer through highway as described above. Still the old railway bed made for some calm and quiet ride through the woods.

One advantage of biking along a railway bed is that the slope is mild. I saw on Google maps that I had a 200m climb at some point in the day, but as the time for the climb approached, I didn't see it. At some point I got lost in the greenery of the trail, and forgot about the hill. Only after checking the maps again, I had noticed that the climb was almost over! It turned out that the slope was so low that I didn't even notice going up! Truly a heavenly ride.

Along the trail, there was a tunnel which reminded me a lot of the one from Spirited Away:

On the other side, there was a world of magical cliffs with small streams running along the sides of the trail being fed by springs from the rocks themselves! This really was something to behold!

I didn't take many breaks today, but I did take a relatively long one in this grove to eat an apple and some trail mix.

The whole trail was littered with these little chipmunks running around all over the place! Like the businessmen in downtown, these guys ran into the road, and then would dodge their way to the other side between the spokes of my wheels. In fact, since it's just the end of spring, a lot of them were very young, probably born just a few weeks ago. I tried my best to take a picture of some baby chipmunks, but they all scurried away too quickly! Here's the only good picture I have (it's an adult in this one):

The trail passed through the I95. Look at how tall these bridges are!

At some point I crossed a railroad track too fast, and the bumps were severe enough to toss my phone out of its pouch and onto the pavement. I got this phone a week ago, and now the back looks like:

The highway was not very pretty, but it did pass over and beside many lakes. A lot of the places in this area are very old, and date back to early colonial times. Actually, this was one of the fun things I noticed along the entire route - that founding dates of towns kept getting earlier and earlier. Anyway, here's a highway built on what was probably once a railroad. I think that the railway bed is very old, since the bridge is so short, and back then length of bridges was a big concern:

As I got closer and closer to the metropolitan area of Boston, I started noticing more and more traffic in the opposite direction. Rush hour! So many cars, congested intersections, and angry drivers, I almost missed this bit of suburban geography:

Eventually, I saw a familiar sign - the Boston T! This is a bus stop for the public transit system of Boston! A sign that I was getting near my destination.

The Charles River! And the bridge that I would pass by every day last summer! The memories!

Already in Boston, I took a picture of my 150km achievement:

Aaaand finally, after almost 9 hours of riding, after applying sunscreen 6 times today, and drinking a lot of water, I made it to my destination - Ethan's apartment, where I'm staying one night before I can move in to the Tufts dorms, where the VRDI is hosting me.

Here's a picture of me at the end of the day

All that white stuff on my clothes and bags is sunscreen. Yuck!

Anyway, I spent the rest of the evening doing laundry, writing this blog, and being proud of myself. My eyes are barely open, so excuse my typos and formatting. I bid you good night. Stay tuned for the epilogue that I'll post tomorrow. I'll have a whole day to work on it, so it's gonna be a pretty big and exhaustive post.

Oh yeah, and thanks Ethan for letting me stay over :)