A Ride to the Ocean on the Grom &c

Today's post will be shorter on the history content than the last several posts have been.

This morning I took a little road trip on the Grom to the ocean at Weekapaug, then rode over to Dave's Coffee to meet my friend James for a cup of java and to catch up. I plan to do more of this sort of thing on the days Inara is vacationing with her mom.

Ride today was 75.3 miles round trip. Odometer crossed 500 miles on the ride home -- time to change the oil for the first time. 

I am really loving the Grom. It is geared well so despite only being a 125. It's peppy and easily gets up to the average non-interstate speed limits of the roads around here. It does slow down on some of the steeper hills, but not to the point where I'm going significantly below the speed limit. Downhill it easily gets up into the 60s. The seat does start to burn your butt after an hour or so, and today's ride is about as far as I think I'd want to go on it unless there is a significant break during the riding day. But even though its only a minibike the bench seat allows you to sit in a very comfortable riding position. And its so easy to ride! You can really throw it into corners, lot better than my Ironhead Sportster did. It would be nice to take off on the highway sometimes, but because its only 125 cc, it isn't legal and also it would be a good way to get cleaned off the road by someone going 85 looking at their cellphone. But there are worse things than only being able to ride your motorcycle on windy back roads...

First stop, the beach in Weekapaug. 

Credit: Google Satellite image, Weekapaug  RI

I ignored the signs along Sand Trail that said "private beach," as the Rhode Island Constitution clearly states that myself and the rest of public may "enjoy and freely exercise all the rights of fishery, and the privileges of the shore… [for] the gathering of seaweed, leaving the shore to swim in the sea and passage along the shore." Weekapaug is one of Rhode Island's beaches where a quasi public "fire district" was established to restrict public access to the beach. Worst case scenario, some busybody would have come along and asked me where I live and then demanded I leave. Though no one did, someone probably would have eventually, had I set up a towel and chair and looked like I intended to spend the day... 

At some future time I do plan to draft a blog post about the state of coastal access in Rhode Island. It has been a bone of contention between the hoi polloi and upper crust here in little Rhody for some time now. Click twice on the arrow to watch a short video I took today of the beach:

It was good to spend some time just being still with the ocean this morning.

Spiritually recharged by the salt air and the Atlantic, next I hopped on the Grom and rode over to Dave's Coffee on Old Post Road to meet my friend James.

Photo credit: New England Parisienne

The Galapagos / Dave's Coffee building is very interesting architecturally. Galapagos is housed in a gambrel-roofed addition coming off the the rear of a saltbox, the first floor of which is Dave's Coffee. My guess is that the original structure was a one or two room one-story structure built after King Phillip's War in the late 1600s or early 1700s onto which a second floor and a lean-to were added to create the saltbox. Then, later in the 1700s or early 1800s the gambrel roof addition was built onto the back. The nearby Wilcox Tavern is dated to 1730; and an educated guess suggests this structure was likely contemporaneous. The photo of Galapagos and Dave's Coffee (above) is actually one I found from the Internet; I left my phone in my motorcycle jacket pocket for the duration of my visit to put my full attention to conversation with my friend, relaxing, and drinking coffee. Next time I'm there though I plan to take some photos that better show the architectural details. I also want to see if there is any information inside about the history of the structure; for some reason it does not seem to be included in the RIHPHC's June 1981 report Historic and Architectural Resources of Charlestown, Rhode Island. It is definitely a very cool old building, maybe even one of the oldest in the town.

Now that I'm back from my ride I have some chores to do inside and out. I want to go through my clothes and reorganize them for summer, and I also want to re-set up my music composition and work-out area in my bedroom. I also need to go through my daughter's room and sort through her clothes, as a lot of them probably do not fit her anymore, and also tidy up a bit in there. I told her I was planning to while she was in upstate NY visiting her cousins for the July 4th holiday, and she was fine with that. I also need to hang a couple of shelves in there for her that I have been meaning to get to since we moved in nearly two years ago...

I also need to start cleaning. priming and painting fence panels outside in preparation to put up the rest of the perimeter privacy fence in my back yard. Once that's done I can put in the raised beds along the section of fence next to my garden. I plan to hang some wire fence from the fence panels and plant climbing crops like cucumbers, beans and peas. Its too late this year for the cukes (unless I find some already started and well along in a garden center somewhere) but the legumes, I'll be able to plant a fall crop if I get my fence up in time.

Finally, I need to reorganize my office. Boxes of papers and books from work and other places have been piling up in there as well as a couple of stacks of boxes that were never unpacked when I moved here two years ago. All the boxes need to get get gone through, and any books put onto shelves and the papers sorted either for filing or recycling. I also need to find my research folder on Lost Mill Towns of South County, which is in here somewhere in one of these boxes, where I put it when I sold and moved out of my house two years ago... I need to follow up on some developments connected with the presentation on mill preservation I am doing for HistoryCamp Boston in 5 weeks. There are business cards in that folder of people I should call and get the updated scoop on their mill redevelopments, since it has been two years. I need to just take one box each day and entirely go through it until its empty and everything in it is where it should go. The journey of a thousand steps, as they say...

I also need to work on the next few units for the RI History course, as I want to be all done with that before the end of July. Then I can take August to prep for the upcoming school year. 

So for the next few days my posts are going to be less "new" original content and more postings of writing I've done over the last few years for other purposes, so I can get some things done around here. As I mentioned in a recent post, writing history is time consuming, and I do have some decent writing already in the pipeline I can put on here and keep up with my intention to post every day.