Best Bike Rides Boston: Great Recreational Rides In The Metro Area (Best Bike Rides Series) Paperback – Illustrated, April 15, 2014

Well organized and detailed, with useful maps that let the reader visualize the path.

I live in Boston, bike around the city and its environs all the time, and love finding new bike routes and maps. I saw this book in my local REI and decided to pick it up. In retrospect, I don't think it was worth it.I found the directions in this book incredibly confusing. Navigation is notoriously painful in Boston, for good reason. The signage here really sucks; streets change names seemingly at random; the entire state is made of roundabouts ("rotaries" in Massachusetts-ese) and slight turns; and the cardinal directions are basically meaningless, especially within the city. Workable directions need to be terse, extraordinarily accurate, and clear. This book's directions, as written, got me lost. They also don't include important information about things like one-way streets or busy, dangerous intersections.The routes are also, frankly, not that awesome. An unfortunate number of them are basically out-and-back routes where you traverse the same roads both ways, which is kind of sad. Loops are a lot more fun!If you want some good bike routes for the Boston area and eastern Massachusetts, a much better option is the Pocket Rides series, which you can pick up for under $10 at almost any local bike shop. Those routes are great fun (mostly looping), they're printed on small laminated (waterproof!) cards, and have good directions that tell you exactly what you need to know, along with maps and terrain info.This book *might* be okay for a visitor to Boston who's interested in doing some light riding around the city and has enough juice in their phone to frequently consult Google Maps (which won't save you from the navigational miasma, but it helps). Still, for the price, you're a lot better off with something else. I'm giving it two stars because it's at least fairly comprehensive, with maps and some interesting tourist info. And some of the routes in it are okay. But $20 is too much to ask.

Last week my mother and I were doing our ritual "welcome the spring" picnic out by Walden Pond. We had just gotten on to our final round of custards when all of a sudden the unimaginable happened. I'm not sure if it was a coyote or a wolf or one of those hybrids that I heard about on PBS but it charged from out of nowhere. My mother, who is notorious for ending up covered in frozen custard drippings, must've looked like a human size Butter Brickle multi-bite size serving. It happened so fast, as life often does, that by the time we realized what was happening, it was already done. The coyote/wolf (?) had vanished and my mom was laying on what could have ended up being her red and white checkered death bed.Thankfully I had Shawn Musgrave's Best Bike Rides Boston guide at my side. Using the guide, I was able to pack up all of our tea sandwiches (the ones not soiled with blood), fold the blanket, put all of our belongings into the basket, fasten the basket onto my bike, haul my mother over my back in a fireman's carry and then bike to Mt. Auburn Hospital. The doctors there said she got there just in time. Had I been one minute later my mother might not have made it. I have a horrible sense of direction. Without Shawn's witfully written guide I fear the worst could have happened. Thank you Mr. Musgrave, my mother owes you her life.

I picked up this book on a lark. I didn't expect much out of it. I've never heard of Mr. Musgrave, so how good could he be?Then I read the first two paragraphs."Elsa fully expected to commit suicide that day. All of her affairs were in order. She would leave behind no debt. She'd even paid 6 months rent to make sure her landlord wouldn't go without. This was her plan. It was a good, strong, East German plan.Then she saw the Levis."I. Was. Hooked.The tangled web of intrigue and love and suspicion and heartbreak and death and soup that Shawn weaves is inspiring. Not since "Birds of New England" and "Zagats Restaurant Guide: Boston 1999" have I read something with this much passion and brilliance.I don't want to give away the ending, but I will say that I can no longer think about Communism and French Onion Soup in the same way.Bravo Mr. Musgrave, bravo. I am eagerly awaiting your followup.

I biked to work.Historically, I am a biker by function. If casually asked by a fellow citizen while briefly stopped at a red light, were I “biking for business or pleasure?”, my requisite response in all instances would be “work, and keep your eyes on the road motorist.”But now I can say, without sarcasm or life-wasting frivolity, that I occasionally bike purely for recreation. Thank you Mr. Musgrave for this enlightening introduction to the streets and paths of Boston so often ignored.While a sweeping majority of my time atop my two-wheeled locomotive vehicle is spent traveling to work, clinic, sustenance, domicile, an acquaintances residence, den of libation, mass transit exchange, or other, I now on rare occasion find myself traveling to a hillock simply for the purpose of enjoyment and contemplation. Such activities fill me with…joy? An experience I am unfamiliar with and afraid of in its newness, but excited by in its prospect. Mr. Musgrave has liberated me. Read this book and be so liberated yourself.I BIKE.I BIKE FOR FUN!

I did not read all the fake reviews and ratings in detail before I purchased this book. Unfortunately I just looked at the star rating. What a misleading rating this book has. Please remove the fake reviews.

Exactly what I was looking for to properly plan a bikiing trip around Boston :)