Sunday, July 18, 2010

Windstorm survey ride. (Adventure #2)

I skipped my adventure last weekend. I have no excuse for it really. Sure I was tired, it was my only day off, I had run a 50k the weekend before, but the truth is I slept until three in the afternoon. So much for my planned bike ride.

This weekend, despite similar obstacles, I managed to get up and ride fifty miles of gravel with Paul. Now, you might be saying, "That's not much of an adventure. Dave G. does more than that several times a week," and you'd be right, but I have excuses...it was hot, the wind was in our faces, there were trees blocking the road, I for got sunscreen, I was on a Pugsley for goodness sake.

Actually we were planning to ride out to Seven Oaks and do a lap or two out there. Combined with the ride out and back that would have been a metric century and I've been wanting to do Seven Oaks on the Pug for a while now. Unfortunately we had a pretty nasty wind storm last night that took down a lot of branches and trees (rumored winds of 71 mph). So we figured that the trails probably weren't in good shape (Seven Oaks is pretty bad when it's wet) and opted for a shorter gravel cruise instead.

I have to keep things interesting though so I managed to re-learn a couple of lessons. 1) Things in frame bags get shaken a lot. First it was the pop-tarts that turned to pop tart powder. This time I was prepared and brought crushed Fritos, but the bag broke and I had crushed Fritos all over my stuff. 2) Wear sunscreen. I burnt my arms again and now they're swollen like after TI3. Well, not quite that bad, but still not good. I should have learned that lesson by now.

2 comments:

Travel Gravel said...

Hey Matt! I was riding R Avenue in Boone County today, and saw a single set of tracks in the gravel. You? Sounds like an ambitious plan for all of that adventure writing. Maybe I can hook up with you and Paul some day. He was going to ride with Mike Johnson today (my brother-in-law) but Mike ended up helping his mom pick up her lawn after the weather went through. Saw you at the demo derby but didn't get a chance to say HI. Those combines were a letdown, so slow! Later!

Matt Maxwell said...

We didn't ride on R yesterday. We crossed it on 170th and 160th though. I think that Mike was the guy we were going to meet up with.

I thought the combines were pretty good until the last two. I hear that last year was better. Skunk River had a whole crew there.