Friday Group Ride #188

When the trail you’re riding ends in the ocean, literally in the ocean, you have done something right, especially if that trail also ribbons left along a cliff that hugs the shoreline. Clumps of goldenrod and sea grass hem you in. An increasingly rare Monarch butterfly dances across your path.

It was the happy accident of GPS route planning, a dudes’ weekend away, and the haphazard designation of “roads” on local maps that brought me here.

Block Island is part of a coastal archipelago. It sits 13 miles off the south coast of Rhode Island, and almost the same distance from Montauk Point on Long Island. 40% of it is conservation land. One main road rings the interior, linking houses to the sole, small town, New Shoreham, and, as it turns out, a small spider’s web of jeep track and sandy trails reaches even further, out to the perimeter and into the ocean.

The dudes I was there with all surf and fish. I am the only cyclist, so I was fortunate to escape for much of a Saturday to explore on my own. I had been to the island once before, but contented myself then with a soft spin of the main loop, pretty but unremarkable. This time, resolved to see more of what was there, I plotted a route on a crude map, only to have the ten minutes invested there deliver me to one of the most beautiful twisting, winding solo rides I’ve done in a long time.

Honestly, it’s hard to weigh the awesomeness of a ride like this. How does it compare to D2R2, for example? Was it more beautiful? No, just different. Did I have more fun? No, but it was a solo ride. It was more about me and less about connecting with friends. Honestly, there were a few times on this ride, where I caught myself laughing out loud at how good the route was, or because a pair of pheasants scurried across the way.

What is clear is that I am undeservedly lucky to get to ride when and where I do. I will bemoan how busy I am, how much time I spend sitting in ice rinks watching youth hockey, how most of my substantive riding begins in the pre-dawn, but that is all just the bullshit ranting of a guy with no clue he’s won life’s lottery.

When I got back to the house, perched there on the edge of the salt marsh, to shower and begin cramming my face with food, I had a peace of mind and a strong sense of having learned a great secret, the feelings we’re all hunting out there on the road and/or trail. Then I took a nap. Yeah. It was like that.

This week’s Group Ride asks the question, what has been your most awesome ride this year? And what made it that way? Was it the location? The company? Or some alchemical combination thereof? Maybe you had some sort of great form and won a race? Or maybe, like me, you discovered a beautiful place that you might have known was there, but still couldn’t believe once you’d arrived.