ABC Ride: Wednesday, April 30 at 10:30 a.m. from Davis Field, Sudbury
Joel Arbeitman
The next Ashland Bike Club ride will be held this Wednesday, April 30 at 10:30 a.m. The ride will start at Davis Field (aka 195 North Rd - Route 117) in Sudbury.
GPS Address: 195 North Rd, Sudbury, Ma
Route Name: ABC – Bruce Freeman and Verrill Farm III (get the right version!)
Ride Rating:
Distance: Easy (19.4)
Elevation: Easy
(30)
Total Gain: 581 feet
Steepest: 5.8%
Wednesday’s Weather
In one word: perfecto!!! Temps during the ride are expected to be right around 70 degrees with tons of sunshine and a steady breeze. We definitely are into sunscreen season. It might not be hot out there but the UV rays are very strong this time of year. Be sure to protect yourself!!
Wednesday’s Ride
Wednesday’s
new route with familiar roads is one of the flattest routes we
offer partly because
most of the ride will be on the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail. The on-road part of the
ride contains a few
moderate hills but, overall, this is a very flat ride.
SPECIAL
NOTE
This ride has two options:
1. Bike path, roads, lunch - either come with the club for lunch at Verrill Farm, which includes about 12 miles on the Bruce Freeman Trail and the rest on the roads or …
2. Bike path only - instead of leaving the trail at the 11.7-mile mark, skip lunch and just remain on the trail back to the starting point. Round-trip on the bike path is just about 16 miles.
Rather than splitting the group again once we reach Verrill Farm, we would prefer that everyone going to Verrill either have lunch or wait for those who are. The last time we went to Verrill, we ended up with an absurdly small group of riders on the return trip. Let’s not do that again.
Here's a link to a map of Wednesday’s route: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/50529223
You
can print our “official cue sheet” for the ride by clicking the
link above,
then click “More”, then click “Print Map and Cue PDF”, and
finally click “Print
Official”.
Off the Route
Our
“Off the Route”
feature includes various topics we hope you’ll find
interesting and useful. Please
let us know what you think.
Ashland
Bike Club Radio
I often like to search for highly
talented musicians who do covers of well-known songs.
Here they do a popular Fleetwood Mac song. See if you like their version …
Josh Turner, Elle Cordova, Toni Lindgren and Friends – The Chain
The Science Behind
Riding
a Bicycle
Most of us just ride and
probably spend almost no time thinking about the underlying
science about why
the whole thing works. We
pedal; the
bike goes. Simple …
But for the science geeks in the crowd, the following article explains the bicycling miracle in a bit more detail.
Check it out: https://pezcyclingnews.com/newswire/the-science-behind-riding-a-bicycle/
The Secretary of
Transportation is Out to Lunch
What’s with this guy?
Counting the number of bike riders, especially bike commuters in urban settings, provides a very misleading statistic. Most of these so-called bike lanes are not adequately NETWORKED and most are little more than a painted stripe on the road that often ends in the middle of nowhere.
The number one reason most Americans give for not riding a bike is SAFETY. If you build “separated bike lanes”, i.e. bike lanes with physical barriers to separate bike riders from cars, there will be far more bike riders. Off-road, multi-use paths are another investment seeing millions of bike riders use them every year.
The Netherlands, other European countries, and now Paris, have undergone a major shift away from the automobile. It’s not easy to make the cultural transition but try we must.
The Secretary of Transportation does not understand how important this is.
Read the article: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2025/04/25/sean-duffy-yes-hes-the-us-dot-secretary-is-dead-wrong-about-bike-lanes
To recap, this Wednesday’s ride will meet at Davis Field in Sudbury at 10:30 a.m.
Be sure to check your email on Wednesday after 9:00 a.m. to make sure we didn’t postpone or cancel the ride and … don’t forget those helmets!
See you soon.
Joel