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It was a beautiful day. I got an e-mail last night from Victor wondering if I wanted to do a lobster run to Cape Ann. As it turned out, I was able to get out of work, so “yes” was the answer to that.

We took the 8:30 train to Beverly Depot. I almost missed the train because everything near the Hatch Shell was all blocked off. All the bike paths were blocked, and even after going cross-country, it was still blocked as the Pops were arriving for a morning practice. Got through it and got to North Station with about 4 minutes to spare.

The rest of the day was spectacular. Victor is a faster rider than I am, which is good. It helps me to get faster, but I think I slowed him down a bit. He wanted to head back to Boston early, but I don’t like making that sort of trip without a good, long ride coming out of it. We got to Rockport around 11:30 and he wanted to go for lobster, but there really wasn’t time as the train back left at noon. So we got ice cream instead. Richardson’s sugarless black raspberry was mine and it was quite good although there was some ice in the center. That means careless storage.

I decided to continue on but decided also to get something more substatial to eat, so I went back downtown and did get the lobster (sorry Victor but there really wasn’t time). It was delish! $12 from Rays or Roy’s or Ron’s or something. It’s just a shack along the wharf in Rockport. Ah! Roy Moore, Google tells me. So as I was sitting on the bench gnawing away, I saw a woman with a most distinctive chewing gum mastication pattern. Sure enough, it was Lisa from Appleton.

After that, I headed back to Gloucester, but I think I got on the wrong Route 127. I was trying to follow some pavement markings (”Dan Henry’s”) but they were weaving up and down and in and out and some were even marked out, so I eventually ended up in a “Private - do not enter” driveway. I circled back and found some markings that led me to a pedestrian bridge and when I crossed over I think I was on the inland 127 and not the one the follows the coast. But, now that I look at the map, I’ve changed my mind. I was definitely on the coastal route. I got twisted up somewhere around Hodgkins Cove. The route was following all those twisty turnys around the cove.

Anyway, back to Gloucester and I decided to get the 3:00 train back from Ipswich, so I headed out Route 133 through Essex to Ipswich. Route 133 isn’t a very nice road for most of the way, but it does have a wide, clean shoulder, so it works. Got to Ipswich about an hour before the train was due, so I decided to head to the next stop at Hamilton/Wenham. Got there with about 1/2 hour to spare.

Train home in a non air conditioned car (are they ever going to fix those?). Altogether about 65 miles and now I’ve done a full circuit of Cape Ann.

The end.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 3rd, 2006 at 9:29 pm and is filed under Rides. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.