Tim’s Hubway Adventure

MEDFORD, SOMERVILLE, CAMBRIDGE, BOSTON

and back again

Hubway bike sharing

Tim’s bicycle has a broken axle. He bought it when he was 23, when he was living in New Brunswick, New Jersey back in the spring of 2000. The bicycle before that was purchased the previous summer, in Delaware. It traveled with him–first to Richmond, Virginia, where he stayed for one month in late summer ’99, then to New Brunswick, where he stayed a bit longer, for basically the whole ’99-2000 school year. Somewhere in there, Tim left that bicycle under a tree in the side yard of the blue split-level colonial where he lived with five other twenty-somethings. The bike got stolen. He replaced it with a black Jamis, which he has ridden ever since — until the day he crossed the railroad tracks near Kendall Square in Cambridge and busted the axle.

Though Tim is a freelance editor today, he used to be a math teacher, and before that he worked raising money for environmental causes. After graduating from college, Tim took a job as canvas director for the Fund for Public Interest Research. He would travel from town to town setting up canvas offices and deploying teams of college students to knock on doors, raising money for things like Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and Human Rights Campaign. He worked for the Massachusetts bottle bill his first summer (a new version of which just failed…again). He had a big win the year his bike was stolen: he helped protect about 90 million acres of national forests from the logging industry.

Tim is tall and thin with light, wavy brown hair, big blue eyes, and a smile that digs deep into both cheeks. Though he looked younger than most of the college students on his team, for as long as he was in town he was an effective manager, running things with an air of good humored sincerity.

His work involved a lot of hustle and bustle, but he also spent a lot of time alone. When the kids were canvasing, Tim would canvas too, walking miles all alone, knocking on doors, sometimes getting donations, sometimes not. On these jobs, there was plenty of time to think — he would, for example, theorize the correlation between the outward appearance of a house, the likelihood of donation, and if they gave, how much. He once told me about how on his rare nights off in West Hartford, he’d stop at a nearby used bookstore, buy a paperback and read the whole thing in a night. This reminded me of the time he fell asleep under a tree near Spy Pond (Arlington, MA) while reading Kafka’s short stories. A solitary but contented man.

On our second date, in the spring of 2005, I saw him crumple his water bottle up into a little ball and stick it in his pocket to recycle at home. I thought that was so weird, I fell in love a little. I soon learned, Tim does not just throw things away. His bike is a prime example. A couple of years ago, when we brought our bikes in for their annual April checkup, Tim and the bike guy shared a little moment, laughing at how long the old Jamis had been hanging on. A few years before that, Tim noticed with chagrin that someone had stolen his bike seat and replaced it with a lesser model. This seat tips up and down and is generally a pain in the ass. I have suggested that he go buy himself a proper seat at least once a year for the last eight years. “Eh…it’s fine,” he says. “Now it’s rusted in place!”

But, this past August, the axle broke. The Jamis is currently unrideable. Fortunately, Hubway exists, and it is right in line with Tim’s sensibilities. It’s a bike-sharing program with bike stations all over the greater Boston area. There are annual and monthly memberships, or you can get a 24 or 72 hour pass — you swipe your credit card at the Hubway kiosk and you can ride as many times as you want within the time-frame you select. You just can’t go over 30 minutes a ride.

The day before I wrote Smoot Bridge, I got the urge to ride my bike over there. I used to ride across the bridge every day, but it had been years and I wanted to recapture the feeling. For a tense moment, we thought I would have to do this alone…the Jamis’s axle is broken, after all. But then we remembered Hubway. Tim decided to do the 24 hour pass. If he could switch bikes in under 30 minutes, he could get away with paying only $6. Challenge accepted.

We walked from our house to the Tufts Hubway station and grabbed the first bike. Being the first one, this transaction took the longest. We rode from Tufts, down to Mass Ave, and through Harvard Square. We heard the noontime bells ringing, and Tim realized he only had 7 minutes to return his first bicycle. I was totally oblivious to this. He charged up Mount Auburn and Mass Ave, on the lookout for any sign of Hubway. He found a station at the Central Square Post Office, with only a couple minutes to spare.

He had a little trouble with this one, because the original 30 minutes wasn’t up yet. For a second, he thought he’d misread the website and he’d be stuck bikeless in Central Square. Once the 30th minute arrived, he tried again and was immediately given his next bike. He figures either the time was an issue, or the kiosk needs a couple of minutes to recognize that the bike is back. (here’s a word from Hubway about what happened.)

We kept riding down Mass Ave, across the Smoot Bridge, where I stopped to take some pictures for the blog. Tim didn’t say anything, but he knew the pictures were going to make it difficult to get to another Hubway station in time. He thought he could make it once we got going across the bridge, but, as he rode out to the patch of Esplanade across from the Lagoon, he realized that I had disappeared.

In fact, I had stopped as soon as I got down to the Esplanade from the bridge. The sailboats were looking perfect and I wanted a picture. I tried to call after him, but he was way out of earshot. Once we met back up, everything was swell until, on the foot bridge at Mass General, Tim realized he had 2 minutes to find a Hubway station. I was in mid-sentence when he realized this. “Time’s almost up! Gotta go! Gotta go!”

Tim’s Hubway Adventure was truly excellent. He may try it again some time, but he wishes we had a station closer to our house. We both feel lucky to live somewhere with a service like this, but we both love our own bikes. I asked him what he wanted to to do about his, fully expecting that at long last he would agree to replace it with a new bike. I don’t know what I was thinking. The Jamis isn’t going anywhere.

–Rebecca Thorndike-Breeze

Hubway Adventure Route!

Tim on a bike path in Wales, holding bikes that look exactly like ours…yet which are not.

My Meow Mile

SOMERVILLE, MA

The Meow Mile: October 12, 2014, 10:30 am
Between Davis Square and Union Square

Some fifty of us clustered around the starting line, where the Minuteman Bike Path intersects Willow Ave. If you drove by that day, you probably noticed the crowd; then you probably noticed the abundance of runners wearing fluffy cat ears. I didn’t have a pair; it never even occurred to me to get one. But, of course, once I saw them I was tremendously jealous of the ear people. In cat ears or not, we were all gathered to “run, walk, and pounce” a 5K in support of the Charles River Alley Cats and the Gifford Cat Shelter. The organizers were all in high spirits at the turnout, despite falling short of their fundraising goal. Fortunately, there’s an app for that. You can raise money with every step you take, so with luck, smartphones, and a lot of stepping, the goal will be within reach. (You can search and select any shelter you want to support, including both Gifford Shelter and Charles River Alleycats — it’s really easy.)

The cat ears are all the more necessary because there is an Official High-Five/Fist-Bump for the Meow Mile. It is performed as follows:

Face each other. High-Five (as normal.)

Immediately, Fist-Bump and then Lick Your Fist (or pretend to.)

Finish by Rubbing Licked Fist against Forehead in One Circular Motion.

You see now how the cat ears really make the whole thing. But we can imagine we have cat ears, can’t we? Yes we can. from pixabay.com

My partner Tim and I like to do local 5K walk/runs because they serve as a sort of “exercise event” in our lives — something we can go out and do together on a weekend morning that lets us interact with the town. We like things like this because they make us feel like we live here, and are not in fact a nation of 2. But we were really looking forward to the Meow Mile because the Gifford Cat Shelter introduced us to Iris and Lateegra. One and Two Years Old, respectively, both Iris and Lateegra were found at feeding stations that both the Gifford Shelter and the Charles River Alleycats maintain. Both organizations watch over feeding stations and — quite heroically, I think — round up stray and feral cats, determine which have been socialized (and are thus “adoptable”), which are feral, neuter/spay all of them, and then either relocate the adoptable cats to a no-kill shelter or return the feral cats to their colonies. You can find out more about how feral cat colonies work and the positive effects of catch-neuter/spay-return at the Charles River Alleycat website. Feral cats are pretty fascinating.

Before setting out, Tim had studied the map. He showed me, told me the turns. I half listened, assuming there would be signs or volunteers along the route to tell me which way to go. I glanced at the map, got the general shape. Then the race began.

I’m working up to running races, and so for this one I embraced the option to “walk/run.” Tim ran — he’s pretty seasoned, and he was the first one out. He never wins, but he likes to best himself. It was a gorgeous day; one of those cloudless blue days, just crisp enough to make you glad it’s October. I sniffed the autumn air and let the faster people pass me by. Along the way, I saw some places I’d forgotten that I loved since moving from Somerville to Medford: Hub Comics at Bow St. and Walnut, where I bought my first Moomin; and Highland Kitchen, where we celebrated my dissertation defense.

I knew that Tim would be finished in half the time it took me; when I was in the home stretch, I broke into a run. The walkers were clustering together and moving too slow for me (If I’m walking, I want to walk really fast.) I darted across the finish line and Fist Bump-Face Washed with Tim. He complemented me on my time; indeed, his was half as long. “You’re not gonna believe this,” he said, with a sheepish look on his face. “Oh my god, you won, didn’t you?” He nodded. As usually happens, faster runners pulled ahead of him. But apparently none of them had paid attention to the map.

Iris and the magic oven mitt.

Lateegra, inhabiting the writing room window.

Meow Mile Map

 

–Rebecca Thorndike-Breeze