3/30 Saturday Ride

It looks like we should have a pretty nice morning this Saturday to start the season, but to give the clouds a chance to burn off and for the temps to inch up just a bit, We will plan on leaving the Back Bay Bikes shop at 9:00 am. 

Rather than navigate the construction for the first ride of the season, we will start out with the Prout's Neck loop (Route Map). Expect a pretty casual ride this week so we can all start to get our legs underneath us.

It's always a good idea to be thinking about safety, so please review the group riding guidelines and don't forget to bring emergency contact information. 

As always, please drop me an email if you have any questions. See you Saturday.

Spring?

There's close to a foot of fresh snow on the ground, but the first day of spring is the line in the sand for me. Winter be damned, it's time to start planning the biking season. 

Unfortunately, this Saturday doesn't look like the best week to start the ride up again. While the temps might inch up just over 40, the wind looks to be pretty brisk and there promises to be some ice on the shoulders for most of the morning. 

So, we'll keep our fingers crossed and plan on an Easter weekend start this year, with the first official ride heading out next Saturday, March 30. For now we'll leave the time up in the air, so check back by Thursday next week for a start time.

With the start of the season comes the opportunity to implement a few changes to the ride. Some will be forced—such as the detour around the back cove construction—but we're also toying with a few voluntary ones. One high tech change that we are planning to play around with this year is that I will be providing a link via twitter that will allow live access to our routes. The thinking is that this live look at our location will help: (1) riders who get lost and want to rejoin the group; (2) riders who want to meet up in the middle of the ride; (3) significant others who want a way to gauge when the ride will be over; and (4) stalkers who want to know where I am every Saturday morning. Once we get some kinks worked out, we'll post more information on how to view the live feed for the ride route.

We're open to other suggestion you may have, so please, if you have things that you would like to change, or even if there were things from last year that you really liked and want to make sure we continue, please drop me an email.

Finally, we've got a poll over on the right column. Please let us know what your threshold is for riding in the cold.

See you next weekend.