After the Ride - follow up

After the Sunday 43 mile ride Ben and I relaxed by painting the ceiling in Pappa and Nana's bedroom. . . and then some electric experiments.

The Big Ride - 43 Miles

Today Ben and I rode our biggest ride this year so far... from East Providence, Rhode Island to Mattapoisett, Massachusetts.  A distance of 43 miles. And then we painted a bedroom when we got back - always a fun day. Thanks Uncle Bobby for the ride home. Here is the ride map.. with a few gaps and omissions... I keep forgetting to turn the cyclometer on. We left at 8:00 and got to our destination at 1:00 not too bad for an old guy and a little kid.

A short ride

Tonight we did a short ride as darkness closed in on us. We were riding on the roads tonight instead of the bike path so we made it an early night. Ben is really looking forward to his first long ride this Sunday.

East Bay Bike Path with Ice Cream

Tonight we got a bit of a late start and darkness overtook us at the end of the ride. Thank goodness we ended up at the Ice Cream stand. The days are certainly getting shorter. This may be the last week of the evening rides. We rode eight miles this evening fro the Dari Bee in East Providence down to the Barrington YMCA and back. We are trying to get in as many miles as we can because we are planning a bigger ride on Sunday. East Providence, Rhode Island to Mattapoisett, Massachusetts.  Let's hope for good weather.

Delaware and the Grapes

A look at the great grape stomping of 2010 - a vintage year for Benny, Momma, Nana and Grace.

Monday night on the EBBP again

Tonight as we started our ride we met Krista walking her dog Kona along the East Bay Bike Path.  Krista is the lady that sold Ben his Trek at East Providence Cycle. The evenings are getting shorter as the sun had set by the time we returned to our start point. I don't think we will have many more of these evening rides in the daylight.  It may be time we start shopping for really good lights, or wind trainers.

MIddletown Ride

Ben is off visiting friends in Delaware so Pappa is riding alone today. I went to the Newport Boat Show with friends and had a good time and then off for a ride in Middletown from the High School down to the St. Columba Memorial Chapel (Panorama I shot of the chapel here)  then down to third beach - over to Second beach and back up Paradise Avenue (all up hill, slight but long) and back to the high school. Apparently my GPS on my iPhone didn't kick in until I was well into the ride so it has my first mile at 5 mph and has me starting far from where I actually started. Check it out here.  I did an accurate measure on Google Earth and the route is really just over 9 miles as I had suspected.

East Providence Cycle

The sign I painted in 1972ish

I know we mention East Providence Cycle a lot in this blog.  Now seems a good time to throw out a couple of stories. The sign in the picture above was painted by Pappa in 1972 or 1973 and I traded it for some bike parts (if memory serves me correctly I got racks and bags) That was the period of time when my love for cycling had just begun. I had a small sign painting business going in Rehoboth, Mass and did signs for several bike shops. I went on to work as a sales person and mechanic at Somerset Bicycle, A.J Spokes and Rainbow Bicycles while building my house and going to college. Today we no longer live in Rehoboth but right here in beautiful East Providence, just about a half mile from East Providence Cycle so it is a very convenient shop. It is also a very good shop and the people who work there are friendly, cheerful and always helpful.  It gets five stars from Ben and Pappa.

A message from Ben

Trek Ember Tail light Review and evening Ride

Our Thursday evening ride before the weather takes a turn. It was a short ride this evening as thunder, lightning, rain and high winds were predicted. They were right about the weather - but it all moved in after our ride. Also in this installment, Ben reviews the Trek Ember tail light that we got at our local bike shop, East Providence Cycle.

Wood Stacking Day

No exciting bike rides today. . . we spent our evening stacking wood. We had a very generous cord of oak delivered today. Ben was a huge help stacking and hauling wood. The truck couldn't dump in our back yard so the wood was dumped at the end of the drive and we moved the pile to the back to be stacked in it's proper place. This short vid shows what a great help Ben was. And a special thanks to Nana too!!! After stacking the wood Ben and I went shopping for a new video camera to make this a better blog - we are still shopping.

EBBP - Tuesday Evening

Another great ride along the East Bay Bike Path in East Providence Rhode Island. Another trip down to the Dari Bee to have Ice Cream. Ben loves the soft serve twist in a cup... Pappa had a taste but is dieting so didn't get a cup of his own. Hopefully dieting and riding are a good mix. This was a shorter ride this evening than yesterday but when we got back to the car Ben decided to ride the hill a few more times making four round trips up and down the hill.  We are hoping to make a longer journey this fall down to Mattapoisett to visit Uncle Bobby. We have a route all planned out through Rehoboth, Dighton Freetown and so on with no major roads or traffic involved. Our average speed this evening was 13.5 mph.  Getting better.

Monday Sunset Ride

What a beautiful ride on the East Bay Bike Path along the bay with the sun setting in the west. Even though we had the wind in our face on the ride down to the ice cream stand the ride was still perfect.  With the days getting shorter it seems as though our rides are getting shorter too. Today we rode just under seven miles and the average speed was confused on my iPhone cyclometer app as I kept forgetting to turn it off when we stopped. We really were flying on the way back with the wind at our backs - 16 - 18 mph! Ben's feet were flying!

Then we played on the hill - this is about the only hill on the length of this 14 mile path.



The ride map and stats are here - but I am beginning to doubt the accuracy of my iphone app.
BTW - The Dairy Bee on Bullocks Point Avenue in East Providence is a really good ice cream stand.... our favorite and nicely placed next to the bike path.

To the end of the East Bay Bike Path

Today we rode a short ride from Warren, our normal turn around point, to the end of the East Bay Bike Path in Bristol a little over 4 miles down the road. Although is was a short ride it was a good one as we were joined for a few minutes by our friend Christopher.  Chris was doing his weekend sprint from Barrington to the Mount Hope Bridge and back.  Chris commutes most days about 25 miles each way on his Kestral.

Blackstone River Bikeway - Part 2

Well we got this edited.  The problem is that I am shooting the video with an iPhone and my editing software just isn't too fond of working with iPhone footage.  Hence the wait. But we had a great ride and all is good.  Hope you enjoy this video even if the edit is rough and it runs a bit long.

Blackstone River Bikeway Part 1

Ben and Pappa road the length of the Blackstone River Bikeway today - from Valley Falls to the end in Woonsocket. We tacked on a bit at the end of the ride to fill out a full twenty miles. We had a beautiful ride and passed a lot of other people enjoying the bike path... what a beautiful place. We like this course because it is really FLAT and we discovered that just past the end in Woonsocket there is a Dunkin Donuts!! Thanks mystery rider for the good information which we will share here.

If you are careful crossing the roads you too can have a delicious cholocate glazed donut.  See the map below.

Also check out our route with this link.  As you can see by the header this is part 1 - Part 2 will be the video which Pappa is still editing and hopes to have it posted very soon. It is an epic video which is almost eight minutes long with lots of good views of the path and the river.

East Bay Bike Path short ride

Tonight we did a short 4.5 mile ride on the East Bay Bike Path to  keep our legs limber for tomorrow mornings ride along the Blackstone Bikeway.

Ben's New Light

Ben got a new tail light and wanted to do a full review but the darned camera (iPhone) operator messed things up, but here is a quick look.  Ben will do a  full review at a later date.

East Providence Ride - Thursday Evening

It's Thursday Evening and Ben and I took a 6 mile ride around the neighborhood and even stopped by and visited Nana. It sure is getting dark earlier and earlier. This wasn't a particularly fast ride this evening - just getting the legs in shape. My butt is getting tougher and maybe one day I will actually loose the weight I would like to and be in decent shape.  Ben and I are planning to ride every evening we can and this Saturday we have a longer ride planned - 15 miles+ on the Blackstone Bike Path. This evening's ride map is here.

Pappa's Wednesday evening ride

Well this evening I went riding without Ben as he went out to dinner with his family and his other Grandpa and Grandma. It was WINDY - which helped early on but it seems as though it is always in your face coming back... that's just the way it goes.  I am finding out just how out of shape I am YIKES.  Well I rode 6.88 miles and averages 11.4 miles and hour - which is really an average because my last two and a half miles were SLOW, about 8 mph! But it all helps put me back in shape and burns some calories.  Here is the link to tonight's ride map.

Why we ride

Found this and had to share.. enjoy. Pappa

The First Post

This is our first post to the Adventures of Ben and Pappa.  We rode out in Rehoboth, Mass, a short ride of six miles. We had several hills which was good for us and we were able to break the speed limit... we did 27 mph in a 25 mph zone. Yoohoo!!! Here is a link to a map of our ride - unfortunately I forgot to turn on my iPhone cyclometer so there is a 1 mile gap in the route - click here