cycling

Sheehan's all 5th grade FIRST Lego League (FLL) team competed in the Quincy Qualifier Tournament on December 5th. Team members are Ben Adjami, Jack Jordanides, Anusha Manglik, Ryan Marten, Brett Middleton, Ben Ouellette, Nathan O'Hara and Jack Papetti.

Sheehan FIRST Lego League team holds Research Quality Award and Golden Ticket to the FLL State Championships. (Front: Ben Ouellette, Ben Adjami, Ryan Marten, Anusha Manglik Back: Jack Jordanides, Brett Middleton, Nathan O'Hara, Jack Papetti)

The Sheehan team won the award for best Research Quality for their project. The project they chose was to better link Westwood's two town centers for bikers. Research included a trip to the Lexington Minuteman Trail and an interview with Mr. Fallon, the engineer who designed the trail; a visit with Ryan Chin, an MIT PhD student in the Smart Cities group; two meetings with the Westwood Committee on Pedestrian and Bike Safety and some bike rides and hikes through the ways between our town centers.

Team members present their research to the Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Committee.

The team also competed in a series of robotics matches, was interviewed on their technical approach to solving robotics challenges and was judged on their teamwork.

Placing sixth, the Sheehan team qualified to compete in the FIRST Lego League State Championships held at Worcester Polytechnic Institute on December 19. FIRST tournaments celebrate engineering, ingenuity and problem solving. Come cheer on the Sheehan team at this inspiring and fun event.

For additional information on FIRST, check out this WGBH documentary or visit the FIRST website.

This Friday is the first Bike Friday of the year. Convoys of police-led bike commuters will leave from various points around the Boston Metro area and converge on Government Center around 8:15am to grab a free cup of coffee and some bagels, meet other bike commuters, then get to work by 9.

Last year, I rode over to Buckmaster Pond where Fox25 was doing their ZipTrip to Westwood, but no one joined me until I met up with a couple of guys from Dedham on my way to the official start of the convery at the Roche Bros in West Roxbury.

Anyone want to ride this year? The convoy leaves West Roxbury at 7, so I plan to leave here at around 6:30 and will take Washington Street through Dedham, up Court St to Ames, then right on Bridge Street into West Roxbury. Join me at the corner of Gay and Washington, in front of Hogan Tire, at 6:30am. I'll stop in front of the Dedham UU First Church around 6:40. If I don't show within 5 minutes, don't wait for me...but hopefully, we can put together a little mini-convoy

Bike Fridays are also Walk/Ride Days, a region-wide celebration of green transportation on the last Friday of every month! So, wear something green for the ride that day, check in at the Green Streets booth, and be rewarded by retailers across the region. http://www.gogreenstreets.org/

I posted this on myDedham since it happened in Dedham, but it is ironically relevant to our efforts to create a Pedestrian and Bike Friendly Westwood. This morning, on my way to work in Boston, I crashed into a car in Dedham Square. I am OK...I even managed to catch the train in to work. But more food for thought as we all should heed the advice to "be careful out there!"

Friday was a great day to bike commute. Leaving home a litter later than usual, I found the traffic was not bad. I took along a camera and shot the following photos, (making me even later for work).To see my route, follow this link to a map.

Tip: for anyone who is working on Monday, Columbus Day, I know the traffic is almost nonexistant--another great day to ride a bike in to Boston.

Who needs a car to shop in Westwood? Thanks to perfect weather and my wife taking our other two kids to a birthday party, I was able to try something I've thought about for awhile. I took my son to Powisset Farm, then Roche Bros., to pick up our weekly produce and do a little grocery shopping--on my bike.

I have a mountain bike with a bike seat and a Burley solo trailer. Normally, the trailer would be hauling our youngest child, but a trailer can also be used to haul groceries. Also, given the winding, blind-curve nature of the road to the farm, I felt a little more comfortable with only groceries in that trailer and my son right behind me on the bike.

This weekend, I noticed again how much foot traffic passes in front of my house on Gay Street. Nearly every time I looked out the window, I saw people walking up the hill toward the Hanlon School, pushing strollers, riding bikes with their kids and kids riding bikes with their friends. As I went for a run, I ran into more people. It all all reinforces my impression that we already live in a fairly walkable town and, given some basic improvements in safety and convenience, we could encourage more walking and all the advantages that come from that:

• it promotes good health by giving residents the opportunity for simple exercise,
• it reduces traffic and saves gas by making it possible to avoid car trips for short errands,
• it increases public safety by putting more "eyes on the street," and
• it increases the opportunities for building community as we see our neighbors and have more opportunities for informal conversations.

Walkable communities are more liveable communities and lead to whole, happy, healthy lives for the people who live in them. In the rest of this article, I will describe my personal vision for a Walkable Westwood (please comment!) and link to a number of resources--local, regional, and national that I think can help us kick off a project to make walkability one of the things people cite as a reason they love to live here.

The Fox News crew was greeted by a few residents in the early dawn hours, but alas, no one joined me for the bike ride to Boston on Bike Friday.

I did however pick up a couple of riders in Dedham who then met up with
a group of a dozen or so in West Roxbury.

By the time we reached City Hall, we had probably 20 or more riders in our group, accompanied by several Boston police officers on bikes. At City Hall Plaza, we found well over 100 cyclists coming in from all parts of the Boston metro area. A free cup of coffee, a bagel and on to work by around 8:30.

This Friday is Bike Friday. Cyclists from all over the Boston metro area will be riding in to the city with police escorts and meeting up at Boston City Hall for a rally and free breakfast before work. The nearest starting point from Westwood leaves from the West Roxbury Roche Brothers parking lot at 7:00am this Friday, August 22 (see the map on the Boston city website).

The West Roxbury starting point is a little over 7 miles from Buckmaster Pond--basically a straight shot down 109 and Spring St that would probably take about 1/2 hour to 45 minutes to ride. The official "convoy" from that point is another 8.2 miles for a total of 15-16 miles.

If anyone is interested in forming a "Westwood Convoy," we could meet at Buckmaster Pond at 6am--and maybe even get on Fox25's Zip Trip. Send me an email using the Email the editor link on this site if you are interested and serious.

Last Thursday's Hometown Weekly had an article on page 7 by Abby Davidson about biking to work that inspired me to share my experiences in the hope others may take up the challenge. Last year, I rode my bike about 1250 miles around 50 days of the year from my home in Westwood to my office near South Station. I wish I could do it more often; the only thing that gets in the way for me now is the heat of the summer and lack of a shower at my new office location. But there are many steps you can take to get started small and work up to more activity...

Saturday was a great summer day and an opportunity to put bike, trailer, and child seat to good use. Westwood roads are not the ideal bikepaths for such a setup, but I found a way without too many scary moments. The most difficult part of the trip was walking through the sea of SUVs and minivans in the Bubbling Brook parking lot and standing in line with an impatient toddler behind a couple of soccer teams!

I have a Burley Solo bike trailer and a child seat on the back of my mountain bike. The solo trailer holds one child; the other rides in the seat behind me. I find this more comfortable because it takes up less room on the road than a double trailer--and the kids did not "play well" sharing the trailer.

My biggest concern is, of course, the cars on the road. Gay Street has a number of blind spots and nobody knows what the speed limit is (in fact, it changes 3 or 4 times) but generally, the road is wide enough that I did not feel anyone was running me off the road. Pond and Oak are much better, but Brook, although it has very little traffic, has a few blind curves. I came back on High Street which is scary at the Bubbling Brook end of town, but the shoulder becomes so wide that it leaves plenty of room for a bike and trailer...when people are not parked on the shoulder.

I know there are probably people who think such an activity is dangerous. I'm a very experienced cyclist--I commute to Boston whenever I can and I've thought a lot about how to keep the kids safe. But I think we should enjoy what our town has to offer. It is definitely easier to load the kids into the minivan and drive ten minutes for ice cream--and we will do that more often than the bike caravan. But on a beautiful summer day, a 10-mile or so ride through the town is great exercise and great fun for the whole family!