Site Map
Massachusetts has some very nice roads for cycling. Unfortunately, Massachusetts also has roads in the worst condition I’ve seen anywhere except in third world countries.
Cycling these roads in the spring has a lot in common with white water canoeing. You have to pick your line very carefully, else tragedy strikes. Of course white water enthusiasts don’t have the added challenge of avoiding craters while at the same time not being run over by a two ton SUV as you swerve to avoid the latest hazard.
They do occasionally attempt to do repair work. Every once in a great while, a road is resurfaced (usually just after ride arrows have been put down), and life is sweet, but mostly, they just come out and dump some asphalt on the most egregious craters, forming, in the words of Pamela Blalock, “potlumps,” basically, a little hill whose highest point from the surface of the road roughly equals the depth of the hole they were trying to patch.
Then there’s the “Hollywood Squares” approach. To fix a few hairline cracks, the excavate a four foot wide section and fill it in with lumpy asphalt sunk about an inch below the rest of the pavement. Another slalom course.
Then for some reason they decide to “repair” the hairline cracks in the road by dribbling hot asphalt everywhere within a two foot radius of the crack. So now the road is much lumpier than ever. The effect is sort of like the “magic fingers” of a bed in cheap hotel, except not as pleasant.
These ersatz repairs if anything worsen the situation for bike riders. They should just save up their pennies and do a real repair.
I know from experience that this is a Massachusetts phenomenon. When you go to bordering states, you immediately notice the difference. When I was helping arrow the Spring Century, at one point it occurred to me that there was something different about the roads I was on. The difference was that they were a continuous surface of flat asphalt, and I quickly deduced the reason for this was that I was now in New Hampshire. I had occasion to spend a couple of weekends in Connecticut, with similar experience. Actually, I had a direct comparison there as well, since one ride I did took me into Massachusetts, where, you guessed it, the road conditions deteriorated.
To be fair, they have done proper repairs on many of my favorite roads over the years (North Road in Carlisle is a good example). But then other roads that they redid not too long ago have already developed canyon size craters.
Apropos of this, here’s an email exchange that took place a while ago:
The Word of the Day for August 3 is: macadam \muh-KAD-um\ noun: a roadway or pavement of small closely packed broken stone
Not to be confused with
masscadam \mahs-KAD-um\ noun: a roadway or pavement in Massachusetts of large loosely packed chunks of broken macadam interspersed with holes of crater proportions, sand, twigs, and dead animals.
Example sentence:
“After riding several hundred miles on the early spring masscadam, my frame developed hairline cracks, and both wheels had to be replaced.”
Please send corrections, additions, comments and praise to