Sunday, July 26, 2009

This evening, I took a walk down Serenity Lane. You might remember that this is the "road" between Boyd Rd. and Cheney Woods Rd. that I asked each of you about after seeing it on a tourist map a couple of years ago.

The gate at the Boyd Rd. end, which had been closed last summer, has been open for at least a few months. I parked at the Finson Farm (the CSA that I'm a member of), a short ways up the road. The gate at what is now Country Time Kennels (and I believe used to be Marlee Animal Shelter) was ominously closed.

Serenity Lane is straight as an arrow for a while and quickly picks up a tall chain-link fence that marks off Pike's property. You can't see anything industrial through the trees. Maybe 3/10 of a mile in, there's a small cemetery on the right. It appeared to be a Jepson family burial ground, and someone had been added as recently as 2001. Apparently the Jepsons have been in Wells for almost 300 years--anyone know any of the current generation?

As an aside, ghost hunting back here would have been about 5x as scary as doing it back on 9B. For the psychology project where we had Emily (among others) dress up as ghosts and recorded people's reactions to seeing them, we could have used this graveyard and then had somebody close the gate, "trapping" us. And we could have had somebody over at the kennel/shelter getting the dogs riled up and barking like crazy. That was a missed opportunity.

At this point, the road was a good dirt road with some gravel sporadically spread on top. You could tell that typical passenger cars could and had been down it. Things were pretty quiet for a while, with only a few "Blasting zone--keep out" signs disturbing the peace. The one gate in the fence not only was locked, but had large boulders on the other side that precluded any vehicle larger than a scooter from getting out. An old stone wall ran down the other side of the road for a while before petering out.

Maybe 3/4 of a mile in, the fence and the road took a left turn--not quite 90 degrees, but apparently we had reached the back of the Pike property, when a red sedan was suddenly headed my way. It looked like there were 3 people inside but I avoided eye contact and breathed a sigh of relief when the driver didn't stop.

It looked like the sedan had pulled out into the road, and indeed a side road that looked less-traveled soon popped up on the right. Somebody had duck-taped an empty bag of Quik-rete to a tree and, a short ways down the "driveway", had clumsily attached a "Keep Out" sign to a too-thin branch. I still kept out. Soon, the fence changed from chain link to wire. The road became rougher, muddier, and more grown in and as the dusk set in, it got incredibly buggy.

Soon, I came to what I assumed was an old gravel pit. It was now a small pond with a steep rock face rising on one end and assorted boulders on another. Either they had been strategically arranged or mankind got very lucky as the boulders form a rough semicircle. As you approach, the boulders are covered in graffiti (the "Guitar Hero" writing and drawing of a guitar player is presumably fairly recent, and who knows about the picture of a cat and the scrawled "MEOW".) There was a fire pit and a bunch of trash. I thought that it was similar to, but not the same as, a spot I came to a couple of summers ago. I believe that one was on one of the trails between Cheney Woods Rd. and the Newhall Road extension, but my memory could be scrambled.

Here's a map of the area:



You can see on the map that the marked road ends at some weird purple stuff. Similar purple stuff just off of Route 9B between the Turnpike and Loop Rd. is labeled as "Sand and gravel pit". By the way, I got the map from http://www.digital-topo-maps.com/, and its get-a-map technology is great--once you have a topo map, you can zoom in and out and drag it just like a regular Google Map.

On another side of the pond was a large, very rusted piece of equipment. It looked sort of like a crane with a thin, circular piece of metal on one end that looked like it would have had run some kind of belt or pulley.

I wish I had thought to check what the fence did around this spot...is the piece of equipment now outside of the Pike boundaries? Or is this where you could"break in"?

The road turned into an ATV trail here, albeit one with quite a few recent tracks. I followed it for a while, bypassing a number of muddy patches, before the mother of all mud patches turned me around. I was surprised to not have reached Cheney Woods Rd, but looking at the map now, I shouldn't have been. One narrower but discernible trail had left to the right--looking at the attached map, it was probably headed for the Allen Rd. extension.

Having now been gone for quite a while, I was starting to get a little creeped out and didn't dawdle on the return trip. I was my garden work clothes (long-sleeved shirt and lined wind pants) and the air was not cooling off so I was sweating buckets. I won my race with the sun back to the car, but, surprisingly, the creepiness continued into the drive home.

I hadn't stopped sweating yet and soon had sweat running into my eyes, which stung to the point of me being barely able to keep them open. This was on the part of Thurrell Road where the road makes a few sharp turns and the asphalt is badly eroded. I kept it together for what felt like eternity before finally getting to a good spot to pull off the road.

It was getting foggy, and a short while after starting up again, I came around a turn and thought I had lost it. I was driving straight into the woods! No, it was just a branch that had fallen across the road. Fortunately, it was suspended high enough in the air that I could drive under with just leaves grazing the top of the Honda.

The really weird part (at least to me) was that 1) The branch hadn't been there when I drove through there about 8 hours before and 2) Had the branch been there 2/3 hours before, when I was driving to the farm, I wouldn't have seen it as I decided to take the "front way" of Route 4 for the first and only time in my life. It was as if those Jepson ghosts knew I was coming and conspired to make the experience as creepy as possible.

Next up is to wait until things dry out a bit and then try trails off of Cheney Woods Rd. until I find the other end of this one.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Sunday 3/15

Weather: Sunny, 50s
Music: OSI - Free

Sunday was warm and sunny from the start, but I was going nowhere fast. Finally, shortly after 1:00, I emerged from the blue room, threw open all of the shades, and stumbled out the front door.

Irregular melting has left monorails in some spots and muddy patches in others. I head out with the classic long-sleeve/short-sleeve t-shirt combo, but returned to grab the green fleece. After feeling cold so often of late, I welcome the opportunity to be a little too warm. I pace past the mailboxes, up Alder, and left onto Willow. It's remarkable how high a baby hill, nearly imperceptible in a car, can feel when you're on foot.

There's no doubt about this weather, so quite a few people are out and about, a few even carrying sports equipment. I spend most of the 0.75ish-mile Willow Street slowly gaining on a pair of woman in typical sweatshirts and tights, just frumpy enough to avoid the obvious yuppie pigeonhole. As I get close, I debated my options. Stay quiet and risk surprise or breath unnaturally loudly? Keep up the pace and nearly run them down or walk awkwardly slowly to stay back? I wonder about gender roles, sexual predators, and how scariness and skinniness interact before taking the first convenient opportunity to pass on the left.

Here's the route:



When you think about it, the Old Mill/Agamenticus Estates region has an awful lot of people living in a small area. It's no surprise that there are small crowds at the new "The Barn" teen center on the corner of Willow and Agamenticus and at the convenience store/"game center" across the street. After a few safe steps on the wide shoulders of Agamenticus Rd., I bear right past the Dead End sign onto an unmarked dirt road--Crooker Lane under the blackout above.

The road runs along the edge of a cemetery for a while, and then next to a field. For a brief stretch, there are clearings on both the left and right. Maybe a quarter mile in, I start to bear down on a lone house, and with a number of vehicles parked out front, it earns a "vaguely threatening." I swing right into a gully, ascend the tiny headwall, hop a chain-link fence, and walk back in the direction I came.

Soon, I'm confronted by a scattered front of recently-placed gravestones--the far end of the cemetery. Even though I'm headed for cremation, it's nice to see that there's some room for expansion. I turn down a central artery of sorts, past headstones dating back into the 19th century, a couple of mini-Washington Monuments, and even a tiny crypt. I think about what I'd do if somebody called me an intruder and decide that the dead probably like getting to observe a passing pedestrian from time to time.

Back on Willow, I'm plenty warm even after removing the fleece. And I'm real glad that it's all but Spring.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

A chance to complain

Weather: Dark, mostly clear, 30s
Music: Frank Zappa - The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life

Sometimes, you try to look like a nice guy and you get stuck driving around uncharted Boston at night. Still, with any luck, you're at least not a complete jerk and you set off lightheartedly. It helps that there's no inner turmoil about whether or not a nice guy gets to pick the music.

Alicia tested my "I'm just going to drive and let you tell me where to go!" pronouncements right off the bat, sending us back through Davis Square to get to Elm St. right away instead of snaking through one-ways to avoid the square. I commented, but probably shouldn't have since it looks like that is the Google Maps-recommended route. A good demonstration of the principle of "get to the fast road as quickly as possible."

Anyway, we <3 Beacon Street and Alicia had been this way before, so we took off on this odd-looking route that, in retrospect, can't be that much slower than going through Harvard Square and the heart of Cambridge. It didn't take long for me to become completely disoriented. There's something about driving in cities that completely scrambles my sense of direction. Since I talk enough smack about how good that sense usually is, I'm insecure about this and want to tell you three possible reasons why.

1) I psych myself out about driving in cities, which leads to focusing on the moment and the next move above all else instead of devoting some mental energy to keeping track of which way we're going.

2) The bright lights and activity of a city are just too much for a Mainer like me.

3) I always think city grids are laid out NS/EW, but they almost never are, so me and the map are usually way out of sync.

Anyway, we ended up a couple of blocks south of Western Ave, but recovered nicely to take the second bridge and swing onto Soldiers Field Road. Brian Urlacher was nowhere to be found...


View Larger Map







Soon, there were a lot of signs overhead. The designers had fit in a regular grade-level intersection right next to a full interstate interchange, necessitating two turns to the right in quick succession. Alicia saw the a sign saying to turn right for Cambridge Street--unfortunately, the first right was for the Mass Pike. This seems to happen to me an awful lot--most notably at that Pine Hill Road /Route 9 left-turn bonanza in Berwick, ME that I told everybody and their townie dads about. I don't have the energy for another bulleted list of explanations--next time.

It seemed more likely that there would be a quick exit going eastbound than westbound, so east we went through a toll and on to the Copley Place exit. Well, Back Bay is sort of familiar. Alicia got off the phone with Regina, our destination. "She's clueless, huh?" No, not really, but the sense of entitlement was persisting.

Things were mostly uneventful from there--I "remembered" (guessed) to head North to Comm Ave and we took Reg's good advice to take Beacon St. to Washington. The only incident was white-knuckling for a minute at a red light while preparing to go straight from a left-turn only lane, but in the end I didn't even have to go over 3,000 RPM. You can go pretty fast in a city when the street is empty and the lights are going your way.

Dropped Alicia off at the corner of Washington and Commonwealth. Saw the sights of Newton and made it back to the Pike, 128, and on home. Pretty good ride, all told. Let's see if it sticks.

What's better, static image maps or dynamic insertions?