Bay Center to Gray's Ice Cream - Narragansett Bay Bike Ride No. 2
OK, so it hasn't taken very long for a "pattern" to develop: identify reliably-rewarding destinations along the coast of Narragansett Bay and come up with a way to get to them SAFELY without four wheels. But wait, there's more! Just this week my-Colorado-brother-of-the-saddle brings to my attention this spectacular revelation: our good friends at Google are now offering up a Beta map- direction improvement; directions for the car-less, a WALKABLE option! Don't look now, but this entire thing about coming up with interesting routes in the neighborhood of Narragansett Bay is suddenly beginning to get kind of interesting...
The weather outside my window remains pretty gnarly on this Martin Luther King Day. Wind chill has been causing an extremely serious glaze of ice to form on everything. It has also made it very easy to remain focused on route maps, cue sheets and the like. More specifically: thinking about bicycle routes in January and planning ahead for those ridiculously HOT days in August may be the very best therapy to get through the next few months of winter.
The next "run" I'm cooking up is an August no-brainer. It involves some amount of the East Bay Bike Path and acknowledges, in the very best way, a world-class ice cream dispensary located at historic Tiverton Four Corners: Gray's Ice Cream (www.graysicecream.com). As it turns out, their original location, 16 East Road , Tiverton, RI 02878 (401-624-4500) was just the beginning. Their product, locally prepared hand-packed ice cream, and their overall approach to folks seeking to wolf it down, was successful enough to spin off a second location: Gray's on The Dock in Bristol, 259 Thames Street, Bristol, RI 02809.
So here's the basic drill on this one:
Part FIRST - Start at Save the Bay's Bay Center, make your way to Gray's on the Dock by way of the Easy Bay Bike Path in Barrington (plus-or-minus 20 miles, or three hours, taking in the sights); pause long enough to scarf some of their butter pecan;
Part SECOND - Book back north to Slades Ferry in Fall River and down the eastern shore of Mount Hope Bay to Tiverton Four Corners (plus-or-minus 24 more miles and another three hours) to visit the original Gray's Ice Cream "mother ship," for a major hit of moose tracks;
Part THIRD - Now this is where it gets potentially interesting... What exactly is the deal with bicycles and the Mount Hope Bridge? Is there a pedestrian lane? If so, back-track toward Bristol (more butter pecan?), walking the bike up and over that bad-boy and heading back to Providence (wrapping up another 45 miles and the better part of a "century." Forced to remove non-bike-friendly-bridges from this "equation," you are still pushing close to a "century's" hundred mile total, but without the pleasure of views of Narragansett Bay to keep you company...
Hey, I'm just saying: I've done stranger things for decent ice cream and the camaraderie of my two-wheeled friends!
So please do stay tuned on this one... If there's any way to pull it off without breaking laws regarding bikes and bridges, it could turn out to be a total gas! Between now and August's aforementioned ridiculously HOT weather I intend to put in some serious Google-map-time. The purpose is to see whether it's possible and/or even something I or anyone else might even be interested in.
What the heck: I've clocked a few centuries and it's not out of the realm of possibility. Specifically, you might want to consider "ramping up" to the experience. There's a pretty amazing ten-week training regime that I've evolved over time and actually seems to work which could eventually find its way into the mix... But that's for then. The speculating is for now! The ultimate purpose of this space remains coming up with SAFE routes that get bicyclists down near to the beauty that is Narragansett Bay. Even if some of us need to introduce moose tracks into the equation for, err, motivation.
The weather outside my window remains pretty gnarly on this Martin Luther King Day. Wind chill has been causing an extremely serious glaze of ice to form on everything. It has also made it very easy to remain focused on route maps, cue sheets and the like. More specifically: thinking about bicycle routes in January and planning ahead for those ridiculously HOT days in August may be the very best therapy to get through the next few months of winter.
The next "run" I'm cooking up is an August no-brainer. It involves some amount of the East Bay Bike Path and acknowledges, in the very best way, a world-class ice cream dispensary located at historic Tiverton Four Corners: Gray's Ice Cream (www.graysicecream.com). As it turns out, their original location, 16 East Road , Tiverton, RI 02878 (401-624-4500) was just the beginning. Their product, locally prepared hand-packed ice cream, and their overall approach to folks seeking to wolf it down, was successful enough to spin off a second location: Gray's on The Dock in Bristol, 259 Thames Street, Bristol, RI 02809.
So here's the basic drill on this one:
Part FIRST - Start at Save the Bay's Bay Center, make your way to Gray's on the Dock by way of the Easy Bay Bike Path in Barrington (plus-or-minus 20 miles, or three hours, taking in the sights); pause long enough to scarf some of their butter pecan;
Part SECOND - Book back north to Slades Ferry in Fall River and down the eastern shore of Mount Hope Bay to Tiverton Four Corners (plus-or-minus 24 more miles and another three hours) to visit the original Gray's Ice Cream "mother ship," for a major hit of moose tracks;
Part THIRD - Now this is where it gets potentially interesting... What exactly is the deal with bicycles and the Mount Hope Bridge? Is there a pedestrian lane? If so, back-track toward Bristol (more butter pecan?), walking the bike up and over that bad-boy and heading back to Providence (wrapping up another 45 miles and the better part of a "century." Forced to remove non-bike-friendly-bridges from this "equation," you are still pushing close to a "century's" hundred mile total, but without the pleasure of views of Narragansett Bay to keep you company...
Hey, I'm just saying: I've done stranger things for decent ice cream and the camaraderie of my two-wheeled friends!
So please do stay tuned on this one... If there's any way to pull it off without breaking laws regarding bikes and bridges, it could turn out to be a total gas! Between now and August's aforementioned ridiculously HOT weather I intend to put in some serious Google-map-time. The purpose is to see whether it's possible and/or even something I or anyone else might even be interested in.
What the heck: I've clocked a few centuries and it's not out of the realm of possibility. Specifically, you might want to consider "ramping up" to the experience. There's a pretty amazing ten-week training regime that I've evolved over time and actually seems to work which could eventually find its way into the mix... But that's for then. The speculating is for now! The ultimate purpose of this space remains coming up with SAFE routes that get bicyclists down near to the beauty that is Narragansett Bay. Even if some of us need to introduce moose tracks into the equation for, err, motivation.
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