Teary-eyed and windblown, cyclists faced a tough bike ride on October 4, but it was for a cause important to everyone living along Southcoastal Massachusetts.
This year’s 9th Annual Buzzards Bay Watershed Ride to raise money to protect and restore Buzzards Bay was a breezy one, but 120 cyclists pedaled on anyway across the Buzzards Bay area stretching from Westport to Falmouth.
The event raised about $90,000 to support the Buzzards Bay Coalition, the area’s largest nonprofit organization dedicated to education, conservation, research, and advocacy work for the protection of the water and lands surrounding Buzzards Bay.
Eighty riders gathered at the startling line at Horseneck Beach in Westport for the 75-mile ride that took cyclists through the bucolic scenery of rural Westport, Padanaram Village in Dartmouth, the working waterfront of New Bedford, down the Fairhaven bike path and into the scenic ways of Mattapoisett before stopping at Eastover Farm in Rochester for a lunch break.
There at the farm in Rochester was the starting line for the 35-mile ride where another 40 cyclists joined in for the second half of the ride through the cranberry bogs of Wareham, across the Bourne Bridge, and over to the Falmouth Shining Sea Bikeway to Quissett Harbor in Falmouth.
“The first two-thirds of the ride were rough until we got over the Bourne Bridge,” said Gary Johnson of Mattapoisett. “There were 25 mile-per-hour winds coming from the northeast and that was the direction we were headed.”
Johnson, the former president of the Mattapoisett Land Trust, has participated in the BBC’s Watershed Ride since its second year. The first year he assisted along the route in his pickup truck. Johnson also participated in this summer’s Southcoast Summer Bike Challenge, logging in just about 2,200 cycling miles which, he said, made this year’s 75 miles of the Watershed Ride a whole lot easier than in past years, even with the wind.
The ride attracted bicyclists from 70 communities in eight states and Washington, D.C. The top fundraiser was John Mendelesohn of Falmouth, raising $3,622. The top fundraising team “The Buzzards” raised $6,000.
People were in great spirits, said Alicia Pimental of the Buzzards Bay Coalition, and there to meet them was hot food, drinks, prizes, complimentary massages, and live music.
The Buzzards Bay Watershed Ride is one of the most significant annual outdoor events hosted by the Buzzards Bay Coalition. The next Watershed Ride will be October 2, 2016.
For more information about the BBC, the Watershed Ride, and other upcoming events, visit www.savebuzzardsbay.org.
By Jean Perry
