The Bike Rider's Guide to the Solar System (Model in Maine)
Friday, as promised, I biked the Maine Solar System Model, from Pluto at the Visitor Information Center in Houlton, around the Sun at the Northern Maine Museum of Science at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, and back out to Pluto again; an 80 mile roundtrip. Given that the scaled speed of light is seven miles per hour, I was in hyperspace while on the bike, breaking the comet metaphor.
The gas giants are striking and hard to miss, while the inner planets, being so small, are not easy to see, but not hard to find, since they are all within a mile and a half of the Sun and their locations are well described in the guide (Earth: mostly harmless). Pluto and Charon are inside the Visitor Center, in the corridor between the restrooms and the information area.
I was pleased that this turned out to be a good ride. U.S. Route 1 rolls over the gradual hills of Aroostook County - always going up or down, never severely, though enough that there are climbing lanes on many of the uphill sides - with the crests from about one to three miles apart, and with an insignificant elevation gain from Houlton to Presque Isle. Since this is farm country, open views of the surrounding fields and hills abound. The rode is generally very good with full-lane, well paved shoulders for the southern 25 miles, except where there are climbing lanes, and three foot paved shoulders elsewhere, allowing plenty of clearance between bicyclist and traffic, which while light has a large fraction of trucks roaring by at a good clip in the 55 mph speed limit that prevails for all but the middle of a few towns.
At present, there is road construction, covering about a mile just north of the center of Mars Hill. You might wish that you had your mountain bike for this nasty section as the whole thing is wet, and dirt except for one part that is one lane and covered with fist size crushed rock, where I felt as though I was in the Paris-Roubaix, but with loose, sharp pavé. If not for the fact that this comes between Saturn and Uranus - a long way from Mars, in spite of the town's name - this might be considered the asteroid belt that's missing from the model.
Labels: recreation
The comet ride, biking the solar system
When I was quite young, my mother took my sister and me to the Children's Museum in Boston, which used to be in a big, old house on the Jamaicaway. In one of the cramped rooms, in a glass case, was a model of the solar system, which at first I found exciting, but then disappointing when a guide explained that the model was not to scale, as it would be problematic to show any interesting features and fit the thing in the museum.
For years, as I've noticed while bicycling through Rye, New Hampshire, scaled distances of the planets from the Sun have been marked on Wallis Road starting from in front of the Junior High School and extending towards the beach. The little boy in me who yearned for a better model has silently appreciated Ms. Adams, the teacher behind that nice creation.
Now, some folks in Maine have created a model of the solar system that finally fulfills the dream of that young model aficionado, with a scale of one mile to an Astronomical Unit and stretching from the Northern Maine Museum of Science at the University of Maine at Presque Isle along U.S. Route 1 to Houlton with scale models of the planets and major moons mounted on stands along the way.
I won't be able to attend the unveiling on June 14th, but plan to make a comet-like 80 mile roundtrip bike ride from Houlton around the Sun in Presque Isle and back out past Pluto again, one day in the following week.
I have to thank Slashdot for this one.
Labels: recreation
100k Bike Ride
Today I got in a 100 km bike ride, my second of the season, the first being a week ago. That gets me up to 825 miles for the season, with eight weeks to go to the Pan-Mass Challenge. I'm usually motivated to ride on Friday if I haven't gotten much mileage in the early part of the week. The weather was about as good as it's been this spring; sunny, in the upper 70s, dew point 52, though a little on the windy side. It always makes me feel good to be able to ride 100k. It's not so long that it wipes me out, but long enough to be a good day's exercise.
Labels: recreation
D-Day
June 6th has always meant something special to my family. To begin with, my parents were married on June 6th, two years before D-Day, on the day that my father was commissioned in the Army Air Force. Then there was D-Day, when my father-in-law stormed one of those famous beaches in France. After the war, my father's father died on June 6th. In my mind this always seems more like Memorial Day than the last Monday in May.
Labels: family
