Easy ride

Brian Eppen called this morning and invited me on an easy two hour ride that would probably include some gravel. Perfect. After weeks of no riding, the more easy rides I can get this week the better. I was also at an advantage in that I was the only one of us six who was not in attendance of local fast man Doc's big birthday bash the night before. And when Nathan rolled up on a ss road bike with a gear ratio of 53:20 and some rather skinny looking 25cm tires I felt even better. The Eppen duo was on mountain bikes with cross tires and Jack, The Rock, and myself had cross bikes.

When it is a nice spring day in Iowa it often has to do with a crazy wind from the South. Today was no different. It was supposed to be worse in the afternoon, but by 10:30 the going was already quite tough, especially on the very loose gravel. At least it wasn't gusting.

After a couple hours of battling the wind I had a vague idea about where we were, but when we turned on to something less than a B-level I realized that I had absolutely no idea where we were. The road, though I don't think we can really call it that, went down rather abruptly. It had a mix of thick grass, heavy mud, and a few downed trees. Nathan bombed the descent on the ss and at this point I no longer felt that his skinny tires and gearing would aid in my keeping up.

We crossed a highway, went over a bridge that has not seen a car or truck for a few decades and hopped on some 4 wheeler trails. The trails were quite fun, they mostly consisted of twisty trails of dry dirt with lots of logs to hop over. I'll definitely go back. The only downside is there are plenty of thorny branches hanging over the trail. Generally not a problem, a few scratches on the arms and legs are pretty normal, but one branch stubbornly grabbed my jersey and when it jerked free all the force went right to my nose. There is nothing like a little bloody nose when you are two and half hours into a two hour ride and have not yet turned back towards town.

The second part of the 4 wheeler trails I was much less excited about. Despite the dry weather recently, they were soaked. Many puddles were ridable, but there was a lot of time spent scrambling through brush looking for downed trees to carry us over creeks. Nathan got sick of it and took his shoes and socks off and just walked across the knee deep muck. It did buy him some time

A few more miles of gravel and we made our way to Riverside, the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk. The ride back to I.C. was quick, but one small bottle of gatorade and a little granola bar are not enough for four hours of dirt. I have no idea how far we actually rode, but my guess would be somewhere in the sixties.

The afternoon will be spent recovering with Matt and Robin. The weather is perfect for day-drinking and we're taking full advantage while we play around with a new section for Matt's Site, it will be up and running on May 1st, so don't forget to check it out. And if you can't wait that long you can fill some of the time by watching the Amstel Gold Race tomorrow. There aren't any big cobbled climbs, but there are plenty of windmills and it is sponsored by a beer company.