The power of the pedal

There was something footloose and appealing about the prospect of stepping on our pedals one Sunday morning and tracing an unbroken line to a seaswept stretch of coastline. It would be great. We were conducting a virtuous experiment. We were also, as it turned out, going about it slightly wrong.

Here’s the kind of thing you learn on a bike vacation: Parking is not going to be one of your problems. We started with a fuel stop at Flour, the bakery in Fort Point Channel, where parking is iffy on the best of days. With bikes: frictionless. We tied up to a fence and bought iced coffee and a pastry for the road.

Another lesson: Downtown Boston is an unlikely bike paradise on weekends. We glided through the office canyons of the financial district, surreal and empty. We headed to North Station, with the idea that we would use the commuter rail to vault us over the clotted inner suburbs and put us right on open country roads.

We bought tickets to Manchester, and the conductor ushered us to the last car on the platform. Never seen the MBTA’s bike car? Neither had I: bench seats down one side, and on the other a long row of low racks with belts to cinch our bikes in place. Out the windows, freeway underpasses blurred into the salt marshes of Revere, the back streets of Swampscott, the harbors outside Beverly. In our car, a half-dozen bikes wobbled gently. At Manchester the train cleared out and everyone else walked down the road toward Singing Beach. We pointed our bikes into Manchester’s town center and began looking for Route 127. Their trips were over. Ours was just beginning.

When you travel by car, what you care about is time: The “best way’’ usually means the fastest. On a bike, what you care about is pavement. You want a road with a shoulder, a calm road, a road with minimal risk that you’ll be flattened from behind by a utility truck. The road north out of Manchester was pure pleasure, rolling through forested suburban towns, and then burping us coastward into the little enclave of Magnolia.