| Summary | Provincetown by Bike in a Day |
| Owner | Matthew Gilbertson |
| Creation Date | 2009-08-04 20:46:27 UTC-0400 |
| Description | Matthew and Eric Gilbertson
7/18/09 5:30am to 3:30pm 133 miles We started from Cambridge just at sunrise and cruised down what looked like the shortest route on the map. With the help of the GPS on the handlebars, we took roads that seemed to go in the right direction and eventually found ourself in Plymouth by 9am. After stopping to admire the big Plymouth Rock we headed down toward the Sagamore bridge over the Cape Cod Canal. An awesome tailwind soon picked up along the Cape and we were pushed eastward at a comfortable 15-17mph. The only big casuality was the spoke on Matthew's back wheel. The spoke popped going over a pothole and we thought it would be a simple matter to replace it. After all, we each had two spare spokes that had traveled patiently on our bikes for over 4,000 miles and were ready to jump into action. Unfortunately it broke on the cassette-side of the hub, and we forgot the cassette tool necessary to remove it. No problem, we just screwed in the new spoke, bent each end into a U-shape, and tightened it up (check out the pic). The wheel still runs true even today. With a strong southwest wind at our backs, we didn't even have any wind rushing by us to cool us down. The July sun blared down under a shadless, cloudless sky and we felt like we were biking through Death Valley. Come on, where is the seabreeze when you need it? We got a little more shade when we finally turned onto the Cape Cod Rail Trail. We got our first good look at the ocean about three miles out of Provincetown. It's funny to think, we had just biked for 130 miles, and all the time were within about three miles of the ocean, and never really saw much ocean until now. The beachfront was reserved for fancy beachhomes instead. We flew into P-Town in good time around 3:30pm. Now it was time to touch our toe in the water. We hiked out to Race Point, the westernmost tip on the Cape. It was amazing to see the endless beach stretching off into the distance without a single person sight. This was a beautiful Saturday in July, and there weren't even any people around! While trying a little body surfing, Matthew glanced up and saw two big black heads sticking out of the water about 50 feet away. Whew, luckily they were seals and not Great Whites. This is shark country around here. We checked into a nice campsite and got a really reasonable last-minute rate. You can check it out for youself here: N42 02.442 W70 12.449. We left the tent in Cambridge to save weight, but it ended up costing us a good night's sleep. The voracious mosquitoes and above 70 temps, combined with a lack of bug spray kept us awake all night. At 5:00 am we couldn't take it anymore, and dragged our tired bodies out onto the beach for nature's best mosquito repellent: wind. We slept under the warm morning sun for a couple hours and headed to the terminus of giant spiral that is Cape Cod: Long Point. Now it was official. We had made it to the very end of the Cape, and to go any farther would require swimming. We now had to hit the "high point" on Cape Cod. We headed over to the National Seashore and climbed some awesome sand dunes to the summit of Mount Ararat. Elevation: 58 ft +/- 20 feet, +/- 0.5 miles, since the dunes shift. Once again we had the whole place to ourselves. We jumped on the 3:30 ferry and were back by 5:30pm in Boston. |