Another day, another state - Bike across RI (and back)

 Bike across RI and back

I started in Seekonk at 445am, it was humid and 60 degrees and still a bit dark as I headed down route 44.  I thought it’d be a good idea to get out there before traffic picked up.  I got onto the East Bay Path in East Providence and rode it into India point park in Providence.  Then it was about 5 miles of roads to get to the paved Washington Secondary Trail which ran 19 miles through Cranston, Warwick, and Coventry.  The western part of Warwick and the paved stretch in Coventry were very scenic and the surface was smooth (Cranston had a lot of frost heaves).  The final 5+ miles (locally known as the Trestle Trail) was very rough.  Dirt bikes have torn it up and where it wasn’t torn up it was either soft sand (slow going) or railroad ballast (sharp rocks that were jarring).  That made for a rough hour-plus of riding.  There are plans to improve that section in the future.  I went because I wanted to reach the border and hadn’t planned on using roads.  The trip back was pretty good, although I added on a few extra miles when I got re-routed to the Old Bridge Path when I missed the East Bay path.  I covered the 64.4 miles in 4:35 for an average of 14.0 mph.  My goal is usually right at 15 mph but I lost a lot on the rough 10 miles and had some signal issues in the city that had me going down a few side streets while “recalculating”.