Saturday Ride Recap

Beautiful day for a ride! Left home about 7:40am and took my time, stopped to visit with a new acquaintance who was out for a walk, etc. I met up with Ride Vermillion on highway 19 about 14 miles into my ride. I was a little disappointed thinking we had a small turn out of LaneHogs for the ride but I was glad to hear that Biking Brady was just getting a later start and would catch up with us. And then out of my mirror I see a biker approaching, just assuming it was Biking Brady, but no it was Ed joining us. Yeah, I knew we would have 4 of us once Biking Brady caught up! And then a few miles up the road we are joined by Chad from Alcester, awesome, we're now up to 5 riders.

Just as we pulled into Centerville for our apple fritter stop at the local bakery Biking Brady closed in on us, now our group was complete!

Just 8 miles and we were in Viborg, I normally don't stop until I get to Irene, but today I NEEDED to stop as were riding into the wind. Not a really strong wind, but around 13-15mph. Which slows me down considerably.

We pushed 5 more miles into the wind before turning south to go to Irene. Again, I was happy to stop and take a rest before we climbed the hills south of Irene. And we met up with the Centerville riders stopped for refueling so it was fun to have some bike talk with their group of 3 riders (see picture). This group is also riding RAGBRAI, who knows if I'll ever see them though with the thousands of riders!

On to the hills, where I'm really slow. But this was home territory for me and I didn't want to slow the group down even more so I told them to go ahead and order a cheeseburger for me when they got to Volin and I would see them there. But being the nice guys they are, they wouldn't abandon me.

After a real meal in Volin we enjoyed some sweet tailwinds and beautiful scenery of the Bluff Road together before I split off and headed up Turkey Hill and made my way back to Wakonda. It seems to be uphill all the way! And it actually is mostly uphill. I just poked along and ended the ride with 71 miles. I was shooting for 75 miles today but was ready to get off the bike!

It was a great time and everyone was very patient with me being so slow. Thanks guys!

PS - By the way we need some more women on these rides - come on ladies!

Bike Helmet & Up Do Hairstyle Incompatible

This afternoon I had a practice run to find a hairstyle for the wedding......and I was very pleased. To tell the truth, this is the second run through I've had. But this hairstylist gave me exactly what I wanted! I know I'm obsessing about this, normally I don’t really care that much about my hair, but this is one occasion I do care how my hair looks. I went for the total up-do because I’ve never had one, for the following reasons: 1. I’m a child of the 70’s, long and straight was the only hairstyle those days (proms and wedding included); 2. Until recently I had “my twin” growing on the back of my neck which needed to be covered up so as to not frighten young children. So I got to experience the up-do for the first time today and that was fun, however for the wedding, I have made the important decision to go with a modified up-do. I bet you wanted to know that!

After the hair appointment, I made a delivery to Biking Brady to drop off his new “green” lawn mower – a push mower without a motor (whatever you call those). Mrs. Biking Brady and I tried it out for fun, I’m sure I looked great in my up-do pushing around a mower that badly needs some WD40!

After supper I just had to get out and ride a little but I was losing daylight fast, so I hastily changed and got ready to ride. I went to put on my bike helmet and found that it is hard to wear a bike helmet with an up-do. This is probably why my mother’s generation didn’t ride bikes. But I didn’t have time to get the bobby pins out so I smashed on the helmet and rode for about 45 minutes sprinting most of the time.

When I took off my helmet, the hair do was still, for the most part, in place. I think it should hold up well for the wedding!

Early Birthday Party

Well we're on the big countdown until the oldest daughter's wedding....less than 3 weeks away. So with my mind preoccupied on that big event, I for sure wanted to make sure we didn't forget the youngest daughter's birthday. I saw the movie "Sixteen Candles" on TV one night, the one where Molly Ringwald turns 16 but her family doesn't remember her birthday because her sister is getting married. So to make sure we didn't forget, we had a birthday party for the youngest daughter Monday evening, just a short 6 months since her last birthday party.

Are you confused? Well it's a long story, but the youngest has always felt her birthdays have not gotten the attention they deserve because of her birthday usually falling around Memorial Day weekend and high school graduation. She can tell a really good story of how she has been neglected. To add to her sad story, she can spin quite a tale of various mishaps, near death experiences, and other hardships that have occured on her birthday, including driving through an area where a tornado touched down and eating oatmeal cooked in a frying pan for her birthday meal while doing an internship at Pine Ridge.

So to ease my maternal guilt, we put on quite the "half" birthday party last November. The boyfriend came who had not spent much time around us at that time and he was quite shocked, saying he didn't know the whole town would be at the party!

Well this party was more low key, but recognized and celebrated with a special meal and a Tinkerbell cake for my grown up "Tink."

PS - There are no other similarities between the movie 16 Candles and the oldest daughter's wedding; i.e. we love the guy she's marrying and they are both bright, intelligent people, NOT like the couple in the movie!

Short Monday Ride

I thought I would get out before the wind picked up. I left the house at 7:00am and headed north to Irene for a short 16 mile ride. But so much for beating the wind. And isn't it funny that people who don't ride bike, don't notice the wind? As I was having a Coke at the convenience store, with about 20 farmers drinking coffee, they commented to me, "beautiful day for a bike ride." I agreed but when I mentioned that the wind is a little gusty out of the north, they looked at me like I had to be kidding. When I got home and checked the wind on the Weather Underground" site, they report 25 mph winds NNW with gust up to 30 mph. I was right, it is windy!

It will be a busy day, leaving for the cemetery shortly. Then we're celebrating youngest daughter's birthday - I have a cake to decorate!

Sunday Ride

I headed out for a ride with no particular destination in mind, but since the wind was out of the west that was the direction I headed. A couple of miles out of town I was greeted by a yellow lab that thinks it is great fun to run beside me, in front of me, and basically all over the road. This dog does not know the commands "go home" and doesn't care he's a "bad dog." His house is at the base of a hill so I can't out run him. With the dog darting in front of my bike I'm afraid I'm going to hit him and I'll go down. A mile into the ride I decided for the dog's safety and my own, I would give him a small taste of pepper spray. He didn't like it but recovered quickly enough and caught up with me and followed me for a couple of miles. It's time for me to go back to Cabella's and get some bear spray, from past experience I know it works very well on dogs also, but you have to take a lot of ribbing from people when you carry a canister of bear spray on your bike! No seriously, this is a very nice dog and the owners are very nice people. I'll just have to talk with them and let them know their dog is trying to follow me across the country side.

I ended up riding 41 miles......I call it my twin peaks route; there are two major hills (at least for my area) Talmo Hill and Frog Creek Hill. It was a slow ride, my average speed this year is in the gutter but I don't really care because I'm enjoying myself!