I wish I could teleport out of Massachusetts

I would like this state a lot more if they could just go ahead and label ALL of their streets.

Saturday, 20 September: It was a lovely morning to ride along the coast. That is also what literally hundreds of other cyclists thought. Most of them were going the opposite direction as me, so I think it was some sort of organized ride. I wasn't really sure of the protocol for this sort of thing. Usually I wave and greet all cyclists I pass, but there were just way too many of them, so I did a lot of smiling and nodding.

I somehow made it into Massachusetts without seeing a welcome sign. I don't know if I just missed it, or if they didn't bother to put one up. I'm going with the second option, since only about two-thirds of their streets are marked. Obviously they are bad at signs.

Since I wanted to ride down the coast, and was being indecisive about my route and destination today, I ended up taking the long way. The very long way, since I got lost a lot. I would be riding along on a road that I didn't think had any turns, and there would be an intersection where nothing was marked, and I would go the way that seemed right, and then discover I had turned onto the wrong road. I would stop, turn on my Garmin, wait for it to boot up and find satellites, and then refigure my route. Sigh.

There is a Canadianesque scarcity of good shoulders in many parts of this state. Usually I can deal with narrow shoulders, but the people who built the roads in Massachusetts used a mathematical equation that made the width of the shoulder inversely proportional to how twisty, hilly, shady, and overgrown with vegetation that portion of roadway is. I spent most of my afternoon watching my rearview mirror, waiting for impending doom. A few times I almost hoped I would get hit so I wouldn't have to ride here anymore, but the drivers were actually surprisingly courteous. Massachusetts' score stands at drivers: 1, infrastructure: -14.

There is pretty much only one place to camp many miles outside of Boston. I didn't want to ride through Boston, but I wasn't sure I wanted to take that big of a detour. I considered a route that skirted Boston a bit, and had no camping, but then I got a mental image of riding through suburbs all day and staying at an Econolodge, which didn't appeal, so I headed for the campground. I'm still not sure I made the right choice. My route took me through a really seedy city, where I got lost some more, but was afraid to stop and check my Garmin or talk to anyone. I just kept riding until I got out of town, then refigured my route.

All of the navigation problems put me behind schedule, and I knew I would never make it to the campground before dark. I kept wasting precious daylight asking people for help, but no one knew anything or offered to help. A police officer in a small town hemmed and hawed and asked questions about my trip until it got a bit darker, and ended up directing me to an empty fairground about two miles away. He seemed unconcerned about me riding after dark, and my statement "I'm afraid to ride after dark, and am starting to panic a bit," had no effect. A block or two later, I ducked in to a fire station to plead my case. Those guys didn't want to scrape me off the road, so they were more helpful. The lieutenant ended up driving me to "station 3," their training facility, a couple of miles out of town, where he let me inside to use the bathroom before I set up my tent behind the building. There was a shower in the bathroom, but I didn't push my luck. I was kind of anxious to get to bed anyway, and with the cooler weather, I'm less gunky at the end of the day.

So many heavy sighs...