Things That Go Bump in the Night

By George Cumming

  

     Trinity Church stands in Copley Square opposite the Boston Public Library. It is an imposing building and its interior is especially intimidating to someone who grew up in Catholic Dorchester five decades ago. The church is quiet on a Saturday night, but the square is jumping with young women in very short skirts on the prowl for adventure and love. The streets are busy with cars full of party people and loud music. It's midnight and I'm standing there with 250 other people -- and their bikes.

     Among the 250 bicycles (just a few tandems for two) is one strange but adventuresome dude on a Razor scooter, and we are all sprawled on the concrete waiting to start “Boston by Bike at Night.” It's a strange but alluring idea to someone who wants to try something different. The Back Bay Midnight Pedalers annually sponsor the long ride through Boston, Cambridge and Brookline, during which riders visit various architectural sites and listen to lectures about buildings and neighborhoods. Most of all, we get to ride our bicycles all over the city in the middle of the night. For an old bald guy, this sounds like major fun.

     It's a strange crowd. There are the serious bike geeks. They’re people who have all kinds of strange gadgets and lights hanging off their bodies and their bikes. Imagine MIT engineers on two wheels. There's the serious bike courier crew. They're big into hardware that is permanently attached to their bodies and faces. Tattoos and strange Incan earlobe ornaments. Fixed-gear bikes are their specialty. There's a fair contingent of young-love couples on bikes who see only each other and dream of all kinds of coupling. There are a few family groups: parents with older kids, mother-daughter, father-son combos. They’re the people whose kids climb Mt. Kilimanjaro before their eighteenth birthday. My old man would never have met anyone like them. They would seem just silly to him, as they never spent time at Iwo Jima or been a kid in Dorchester during the Depression. Finally, there are the others -- people who just show up to give it all a whirl, including the three giggling Russian girls who seemed semi-stoned and semi-weird.

     Shortly after 12, we roll off into the night through the South End to Bay Village, where we learn when and why the houses were built. I get to see the site of the Cocoanut Grove fire and remember my mother, a nurse, who worked that terrible night. The streets are still awake and cars full of people honk and shout questions. Louisburg Square after midnight is strange when filled with hundreds of people on bikes. The Mass. General Hospital is a stop -- until the paranoid security police gets bothered by our presence and we leave early.

     Over the Longfellow to MIT and the Stata Building, which is stranger the closer you get to it. I get to hear about how NASA headquarters ended up in Houston rather than East Cambridge, where it was supposed to go. We move past Lechmere to North Point Park, a hidden jewel that scarcely anybody knows about. It has stunning views and a sprinkler system that starts up at 2 a.m. (and sprays everyone with a bike). Up over the Rutherford Avenue Bridge to Charlestown and on to City Square we bike for a very short lecture about the Big Dig -- until a graceless Boston cop ends the talk. We go up and around the Monument and then over to the Navy Yard, which I had never visited, and I wonder at the expensive playthings moored in rows where once real ships docked.

     We travel back to Boston and the Charles, biking along the river up to BU, and finally I find out that the sculpture in front of Marsh Chapel is in honor of Dr. King, who got his doctorate there. What follows is a strangely quiet tour of Brookline. It's not Newport, R.I., but there is more money and expensive realty than I ever imagined so close to home. By now it’s very, very quiet except for whirring wheels and gears. The guy on the Razor is still with us and deserves real credit for keeping up. I huff and puff up hills and this guy just keeps on going. 

     Other than crossing an absolutely deserted Route 9, Brookline is boring. We stop at the site of the future Olmstead museum, and being nighttime I notice a curious kind of firefly: as we stand around listening, a sizeable portion of our group flip on their phones and their faces light up. This happens at every stop. I like my computer but occasionally even I turn it off. What is there to say or text at 3 in the morning?

     We come down out of the Brookline hills and wind our way around Jamaica Pond. It is an amazing sight to see the taillights of 200+ bikers snaking around the pond. It’s a long, long glowworm and it’s great. We ride over the Arborway Aqueduct, which is an amazing experience for an old Dorchester kid. The Zoo looms close as the sun starts to rise. We ride down Columbia Road to the amazement of some early T bus riders. Then it’s along Carson Beach and on to Castle Island. We all stop there, and I sit reading the names of Donald McKay's clipper ships, wondering why the monument is in South Boston and not Eastie, where the famed shipbuilder lived and where the ships were actually built. The names -- Sovereign of the Seas, Flying Cloud, Glory of the Seas -- grip me in fascination.

     Unfortunately, I am dead tired and hungry, so I saddle up and ride over to Aquarium Station and home to get some much needed sleep and later brunch at the 303 Cafe. It has been a terrific night, not filled with ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties, but the bikes did definitely bump in the night. And yes, I'm probably going to do this again next year.