Summer's End Ride

Summer is coming to a beautiful end in Iowa. The cold, wet weather last week had me worried that the season for long wandering rides had slipped away. My worry turned out to be spectacularly misplaced, because this whole week has been in the mid 70s and sunny, the kind of days that make you wonder why so much of the summer was spent indoors in the air conditioning.

And of course, one of the best things to do with a beautiful summer's end day, when one is unemployed and has free time during the day, is to take a bike ride. I rode north on the Cedar Valley Nature Trail. I stopped briefly at the old depot museum in Center Point to refill my water bottle, and continued on the trail to Urbana.

For some reason that I have never figured out, the Center Point-Urbana section of the trail is always a slow ride for me. It's not the scenery. Is it the trail surface? The grade? Prevailing winds? Large insects that aggressively impart unwanted backwards momentum to cyclists? At any rate, I was happy to take a break at the trailside park in Urbana, refill my water bottle, and munch on the apple I had brought (honeycrisp, from Wilson's Orchard...mmm!).

Urbana was the "top" of the loop. It's also the place I left the trail for the road. I followed 32nd Ave (W26?) south out of town. A few miles from town, the road crosses the Cedar River. Piles of sand, mounds of brush, and tree trunks hint at the record flooding from earlier this summer, without being obvious. After a long climb (for Iowa) out of the river bottom, I passed 59th St., then turned toward Center Point on 59th St. Trail--which turned out to be unpaved. I passed 33rd Ave., briefly joined up with 33rd Ave. Drive (giving directions around there must be entertaining), and caught some sweet, sweet pavement on Lewis Access Road.

By this point, my legs were getting tired. I haven't ridden as many long rides as in past years, and I could feel a wall coming. I spun along comfortably into Center Point (yup, again) and stopped at a gas station for a source of well-balanced nutrients. Seriously, I even compared nutrition labels. The candidates? King-sized Snickers, in regular and almond. The almond won, for no particular reason. But like I said, I did compare the labels. I also discovered that Almond Snickers bars taste pretty good. In the interest of science, I will have to see how they taste when I am not craving a quick sugar boost.

The depot museum was only a few minutes from the gas station, so I swung by there for a water refill. That meant I was in the home stretch. Good thing, too, because my legs weren't too excited about the rest of the ride, especially on the crushed limestone trail. And because of union rules, that meant that other hard-working body parts (such as the ones that gently cushion most of me from seat-bounces) were allowed to complain.

With various lower-body parts complaining, the thirteen miles to Hiawatha were slower than the rest of the ride. I was able to ignore the complaining long enough to wonder why the trail was suddenly busy around Lafayette (four oncoming bikes, not together, fairly evenly spaced about a minute apart--very strange). Then the complaining started again. Honestly, toward the tail end (heh, heh) of some longer rides, I start contemplating hanging up the bike for a while. That doesn't last long. I've been back for an hour, and I'm already looking forward to riding again.

After some emergency negotiations between union and management ("Ouch! Less ouch, please!" "It's only another 20 minutes" "No, less ouch now!" "How about I throw in some pavement within five minutes?" "Deal!"), I got to the paved section of the trail, thankful for pavement and that thinking, memory, and perception are all non-union.

I had enough left in my legs to speed up to 20 along the straight, flat stretch just before home, and hold 20 until the turn. Just enough. And now it's lawn-mowing time!

Important stats:
55.74 miles in 3:32:33 (about 4 hours counting breaks). (*) (**)
1 roadkill raccoon
1 roadkill woodchuck
2 chipmunks I nearly ran over

* If the speed or distance seems low, my only bike is a mountain bike, with trail tires, one of which needs to be replaced. I'm dreaming of a nice road bike someday...
** Oh, if only I'd managed to cut off 0.19 miles and ride for another 60 seconds. Then I'd have 55.55 miles in 3:33:33. Such numeric joy, so close...