As our last hurrah before the bar, a friend and I took the day to go to Cape Cod. But not for a day at the beach - for a bike trip. A respectable, significant mileage bike trip (all told about 40 miles). I haven't done one of those in years, I don't think. Definitely not since my bike and I were both in Boston together. In fact, this marked the first time I've ever really ridden around New England at all.
Fortunately the Cape is a pretty nice place to ride, and today was a gorgeous summer day to do this: temp in the low 80s, low humidity, calm winds, nary a cloud... To get there we took the high-speed catamaran ferry. Well, after the initial snafu of missing the 8:30am ferry because it apparently was the 8:00 ferry... But then we went over to the other line at caught the 9:00am one. An hour and a half later, we were there, in Provincetown (on the northern tip of the Cape). Then we hopped the bikes and rode down to Wellfleet, about 15 miles away, along the way discovering that cape Cod isn't quite as flat as you might expect... There we ate lunch (where I discovered that M&M pancakes weren't quite all I remembered...), and then we biked the 15 miles back north.
I really, really, really wanted to swim as part of this excursion, but we didn't have enough time to find and bike to an ocean-front beach. So instead we went to one of the bay side beaches. The bay is an interesting swimming experience because it is very shallow for a very long way out. But that was ok with me. I only had 15 minutes anyway, so I floated around a bit. It was fantastically refreshing. Getting out I told my friend it was the best 15 minutes of my life... (Oddly enough, he didn't believe me...). Then it was back to town for a quick ice cream followed by boarding the 4:00pm ferry back. On board the ferry people were very nice and happy to explain all about how the boat worked, different landmarks we saw coming back into port, etc. And it was a lovely day on the water.
Back in Boston came the only annoying part of the trip: navigating Boston on a bike. As the new construction gets finished the bike situation gets better, but it's still a hodgepodge of all sorts of maze-like streets and menacing automobiles. We eventually ended up by Storrow Drive, which was bustling with people coming to see the rehearsal for the July 4th Boston Pops concert.
Soon, however, we came home. Where I am now stiff, greasy, sunburned, and bruised - but satisfied.
The end.