Dot Bike

The Dorchester Beach Festival is happening on Saturday August 16th from 11-4.

This will be a fun and interesting event for all ages and interests.

DotBike is leading a ride to the festival.  This is a short (4.5 or 3 mile options) and relaxed ride appropriate for children and families.  Most of the ride will be along ‘The Harbor Trail’ on bike paths and low traffic roads.

For the longer ride you can meet us at the southern end of the Neponset Greenway Trail near the intersection of River and Central St. in Milton for a 10:30 departure.  Limited on street parking is available.

For the shorter ride meet us at 10:45 a.m. in Pope John Paul Park near the Hallet St. entrance next to the parking lot.

Here is a map with our ride route highlighted in Green with meet up locations indicated as well as alternate routes to bike to the festival if you are unable to join us on our main ride.

View Larger Map

While you’re enjoying the festival we will have FREE valet bike parking. We will also do some simple bike checks and tune ups and have some fun giveaways.

We will be providing bike escorts from and to Pope John Paul park in case you can’t make it until later or to show you how to get back to where you started. We’ll have someone leaving from Pope John Paul Park to escort riders to the festival at 11:30, 12:30, 1:30 and 2:30 and check at our table to get the times that we are heading back to the Park from the festival.

Hope to see you down at the beach.
And once your ready to go home and aren’t sure if you remember the way back don’t worry. If you can’t arrive at the festival until later we will

Mayor Thomas M. Menino cordially invites you to
The Healthy Main Streets
Where’s Charlie Family Fun Celebration
on Saturday, August 2nd at 10:00 a.m.
at Town Field, 1565 Dorchester Avenue in Dorchester

Come celebrate Healthy Main Streets’
Where’s Charlie initiative! There will be fun fitness giveaways and a free drawing for great prizes including a 2009 model Specialized Globe Carmel 1 bike from Back Bay Bicycles!

Over the month of July, Healthy Main Streets encouraged residents of all ages and ability levels to explore various Boston Main Streets districts in search of Charlie. More than 50 Charlies were hidden in Main Streets businesses in 7 participating districts. Those who found Charlie won a fun summer fitness prize-pack including a MBTA pass and a pair of sneakers! Congratulations to those who participated!

Come celebrate with your friends and neighbors who participated and you’ll walk away with some exciting summer fitness prizes as well!

The Washington/Talbot Safe Neighborhoods Initiative is having a block party at Frankin Field on Wednesday September 10th and DotBike has been invited.  This is the day of our monthly commute home and so we’ll end our ride at the Party.

Our commute home will take a different route traveling down the Southwest Corridor and end up at Franklin Field.

And if you happen to be in the neighborhood come on by.  We’ll be doing bike safety checks and leading short rides along Talbot Ave.  This should be lots of fun.

State Representative Marie St.-Fleur will be holding 2 community nights in August.

The first event on August 12th from 6-7:30 p.m. will take place in front of the school and in the parking lot of the St. Peter’s Teen Center at 294 Bowdoin St.  DotBike will have bike safety checks and some giveaways.

The second community night happens on August 13th from 6-7:30 p.m. and will take place at Project Hope at 550 Dudley St.  DotBike will be there with information and some giveaways.

Both events are free with complimentary food.

Benefit rides of 18 and 7 miles in Canton to benefit the Liat Chiana foundation on Sunday August 24th.  Rides start at 10:00 a.m. with registration opening at 9:00 a.m.

See the Riding Chai site for details.

Just got to work after the first Boston Bike Friday event put on by the City of Boston Bikes program.  The Dorchester convoy made a strong impression with about 30 riders riding along Dot. Ave and into the Boston city center via Washington St.   This time we had an escort of 6 or 7 Boston Bike Patrol officers who were absolutely great.  They controlled traffic, corked bad intersections and made the ride safe for all.  We had a few people who had never before dared to ride up the Avenue or in the city in general make the trip and they appeared to enjoy themselves.  We made it from Peabody Square to City Hall Plaza in about 35 minutes.  At the plaza were tasty treats and booths from Mass Bike, Ski Market (they sell bikes too), Wheelworks, GoGreenStreets, Hub on Wheels, Zipcar and 100.7 WZLX.

Thanks to the city for having events like these and come join us for the next one Friday August 22nd, same time, same place.

This past weekend Debbie was out of town and after the fun Farmer’s market ride (see previous post) I was looking for a Sunday activity.  I saw that the CRW was holding it’s annual Climb to the Clouds rides.  These are a series of routes from 47 to 100 miles that go through towns west of Rte 495.  The Climb to the Clouds part is that the 60 and 100 mile route climb Mt. Wachusetts although all the routes have plenty of hills.  I wasn’t quite up for a full century that included that much climbing so I chose to do the 60 mile option.

The day was warm and humid but not as bad as Saturday.  The registration and water stops were well personed and ran smoothly.  The roads had generally very low traffic and at least for me I didn’t see much of the pack misbehavior that had plagued the event for the past couple of years.  Hopefully this wasn’t just because I was one of the first to roll out of the short ride starting point at right around 8:00 am.

Well I made it over the mountain and finished in a little over 4 hours.

Here is a map of the route and if you feel so inclined there is no need to wait til next year as there are plenty of farm and convenience stores along the route to refuel and refill so head on out.

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Join DotBikers and Blue Hill Cycling Club members in watching the epic stage 17 of the Tour de France Wednesday evening at the Ashmont Grill.  This stage has three beyond category climbs, over 15000 feet of climbing and a mountain top finish at the legendary Alpe d’Huez. Check out the profile.

We are gathering around 7:30 p.m. in the bar area at the high top tables for the VS. prime time coverage that starts at 8:00 p.m. Get there early for a good seat. And even if you’re not following the tour come on down for a fun evening with great food and drink.

On a sunny and hot Saturday a dozen riders met at the Dot2Dot cafe the starting point for the DotBike ride to local Farmer’s markets.  After fueling up with some tasty food and drink we rolled out at a little after 10.  We headed north up Dot. Ave. to hit our first market of the day at Fields corner.  The farmer at this market has been doing a market here for 36 years.  His farm is based in Southborough and he usually has lots of great veggies.  The only thing is you need to get there early.  He opens at 8 but his regulars show up at 7:30 to get the first pick.  Several riders managed to find something they wanted though.

We then headed off to Mattapan Square for the Mattapan Farmer’s market.  The main farmer at this market has programs in which he hooks up with area teens looking for work and has them helping him out.  There was also some ice cold lemonade available which really hit the spot.

From Mattapan we headed over to Roslindale where they have a market set up in the square.  A large selection of veggies was available including green house tomatos.

And although not on the preannounced route we decided to head over to the JP market which opens at noon.  It had a nice selection and lots of customers.

We then got back to our starting point by heading through Franklin Park.

Here is our route in case you want to head out some Saturday.

View Larger Map

But don’t forget there are several other area market’s that happen during the week too. Codman Square, Bowdoin-Geneva and Milton markets all take place on Thursday evenings. Feel free to add a comment on others you know about and I’ll add them here.

This was such a fun ride that we will likely do it again in August or September.  Thanks to Melissa for organizing and pulling off a successful event.

Just a quick plug for another effort by the City in making Boston more bike friendly.

The Bicycling page on the City of Boston web site contains a lot more useful content that it had previously.

It list upcoming city bicycling events and also has links to pages on information about safe riding, commuting, MBTA regulations for bike transport (although the bit about folding bikes needing to be in a bag is not accurate) and traffic laws as they pertain to bicyclists.

While the design elements could use some work (for the entire city site in my opinion) the information is there and it’s a good place to go for updates and information.