Beginners Do Cascades

From Sylvia Schroeder

Today Tammy led our beginners group to the Lower Cascades.

Beautiful scenery, nice shade and a breeze as long as we kept riding.

Appreciation Notes

[I will add any additional notes of this sort as they come to my attention. - Allan]

The Ride Across INdiana is one excellent ride!

Thanks to whoever sets the rates for day-of registration for NOT gouging us. The cost was acceptable and I know the chances that are taken when a certain number are allowed on the day of the ride. Many thanks.

The ride was wonderful (yes, even with the wind) and the rest stops and volunteers were outstanding. Plenty of GOOD food to eat there and take with, volunteers who knew what kind of moods everyone could be in and plenty of patience for those silly people .... helpful and happy.

We'll be doing this again!

Thank You.

Joyce Beebe
Cincinnati, Ohio


Thank you Bloomington Bicycle Club and volunteers of RAIN 2013!

Saying “Thank you” to each and every person who supported RAIN 2013; such a well-run event! This was my 52nd birthday gift to myself, as well as, the first time I had participated in a ride event. While I did not obtain an official time, I did get my finisher medal/key chain; my husband said my time was 2102. The time really was not the goal- I DID IT- I RODE 160 miles IN ONE DAY!

“tired, but not sleepy; sore, but no pain -- all good”

Certainly, It is only with many hours of work that this event is possible, and only with the multitude of encouragers in route do many of us complete the course. Again, Thank you! What a life cherished accomplishment you have made possible for me.

Cynthia Moorhead



Bicycle Repair

I was one of the ‘unlucky ones’ that had a technical issue on my bike (at the first rest stop, my bike got tipped over and the derailer bracket on my 2011 Cannondale Synapse snapped)….I rode unsupported and got help from Sarah and Fred, who were the bike mechanics on the site. I was wondering if you knew the number of where Fred (he was the mechanic working the first rest stop) as I want to call him and personally thank him for helping me out.

I had no sag, and Fred went out of his way to call ahead to the Bicycle Garage of Indy to find me a new derailer bracket. He also transported me to the next rest stop where I had access to a friend’s car and then could drive to Greenwood where I got my derailer bracket fixed, drove back to Rest Stop #2 and then started the ride again at 1 PM.  I made it back to Richmond by 9:15 PM and finished.

Great ride though.  And I will be back next year to do it again (hopefully without a mechanical failure!!).

Thanks

David Weber
Cincinnati, Ohio

RAIN 2013 is History

Here's an early shot taken near the start of Saturday's 27th Ride Across INdiana.

By all accounts it was a great day for a long bike ride in July. Significant headwinds almost all day made for a challenging experience.

Here's a picture of the 160 mile route as recorded by my GPS:

A big congratulations to John Connell (in charge of finish line), chair of the RAIN committee, for a first-rate event. We mention several other people in charge of major aspects of the event: Tammy Berger (in charge of merchandise and jerseys), Jen Miers (in charge of Registration), Jim Schroeder (in charge of route and start), Mark Villanova (in charge of rest stops). But many, many more club members volunteered help during the event, stuffing packets, running registration tables, packet pickup, merchandise sales, helping to direct traffic near Saint Mary of the Woods, staffing all the rest stops, and staffing the finish line.

Some I personally saw during the ride, and recall now off the top of my head, includ Tammy at the first rest stop, members of the Solar Bike Team at the second stop, Linda, Dan, Clair and Larraine at the lunch stop, John B at the ice stop. (I can't wait to see that picture John took of me prone and only semiconscious, stretched out on the grass in the shade!)

A good number of club members rode, but many more volunteered. All got to experience the energy and excitement of the ride. This is the club's premier event and main money-raiser, supporting our other activities, including our grant program. It couldn't have happened without all of you.

More details to come.

Wednesday Beginner's Ride Continues

The Beginner's Ride meets each week at the Bryan Park Pool parking lot on Woodlawn Avenue. Here's the description from the club website:

BEGINNER'S SHOW AND GO
Wednesdays, 5:45 pm
Pace:10-12 mph

This is a beginner's "show and go" no drop ride intended for those new to cycling who desire the camaraderie and safety of cycling in a group and who wish to develop their cycling skills. Speed will be dictated by the slowest rider. We anticipate 10-12mph on flat land and slower on a hilly route. Route and distance will be decided by those in attendance. The rides will begin promptly at 5:45.

Organizer Sylvia Schroeder reports on this week's ride:

Two of the riders in our group, Shaili and Angela.

Angela led our ride this week. We started out on trails then rode some challenging roads. We had a great time riding and getting to know each other.

pRAIN STORM

By John Bassett

When I wrote a blog post about last year’s pre-RAIN ride (pRAIN) I titled it “PRAIN in the Rain”.  Unfortunately, as it turns out, I should have reserved that title for this year.  So, for lack of a better title let me call this “pRAIN STORM” (Pre-RAIN Same Thing only Rain More).

A nice group of BCC and affiliated riders arrived in Terre Haute last Friday evening in preparation for an early Saturday start to the one-day one-way 160 mile bicycle adventure that is the RAIN route.  Well, that is not exactly true.  Dave, who had ridden a touring bicycle to pRAIN from Kansas City, did not arrive in Terre Haute until 4:30 AM, having completed a 225 mile ride through most of the night to get there.  This was after spending the previous week at the Tour of Colorado!  After changing a tacoed wheel with a replacement Dana had brought over and loading up on some caffeine, he was sort of ready to go.

Assessing the weather early Saturday morning, we realized there was going to be little chance of staying dry.  The best we hoped for was to get started before the rain hit.  We did not get all our ducks in a row very early and got off to a rather late start.  Here we are all lined up at the RAIN starting line at St Mary’s Road and US 150 (left to right - John, Jen, Zack, Stan, Ron, Eugene, Mike, Cissy, Dana, and Dave).

We managed to roll out promptly at 7:30AM, and were able to get all the way over to the east side of Terre Haute before the first wave of rain hit.  We got thoroughly drenched for an hour or so and spent the rest of the morning in and out of passing showers.

We took our first break at Putnamville / US 231 where our cadre of SAG support vehicles had assembled.  We very much appreciated the services of Cissy’s sister, Sasha, Jen’s sister, Lynnae, Eugene’s wife, Teresa, my wife, Susan, and Ron’s wife, Janet (my sister-in-law) in supporting this event.  We sincerely appreciate their efforts.

For the remainder of the day, we rode Jim Schroeder’s 2013 RAIN route exactly, following the trail of yellow raindrops that the BBC had placed earlier in the week.  I can attest to the fact that those yellow raindrops show up very well on wet pavement!  The 2013 route is slightly different than 2012.  As shown on the map below, a loop is added south to Mooresville and basically the entire length of Edgewood Avenue is used in lieu of Thompson Road along the south side of Indianapolis.  There are also a couple of other minor changes, but the entire route remains 160 miles (160.2 miles if you prefer that level of detail).

We rested a moment at the city park south of the Plainfield Middle School which serves as Rest Stop 2 of RAIN.  We had a leisurely lunch at the Subway at the intersection Southport Road and Bluff Road (Mile 81.5) almost exactly half way along the route.

At lunch, Stan noted that every time he cleaned off his glasses it would rain.  He cleaned his glasses, and I cleaned mine.  We soon found ourselves in a genuine downpour heading north on Bluff Road.  We decided it would be best if we did not clean our glasses again. 

Eugene took a small break to put on dry cloths and warm up after lunch.  He came back at Greenfield with a vengeance, taking on a couple of massive 10 miles pulls heading east on US 40 from Greenfield.  His efforts along with a very nice tail wind, particularly during surges of rain, allowed a group of five of us to average 22 to 26 mph over long stretches of US 40 east of Greenfield.  This was delightfully pleasant riding, when it was not raining.

We regrouped for a final time at SR 1 near Cambridge City about 13 miles from the finish, allowing Mike and Cissy, who had flatted, time to catch up.  Most of us arrived in Richmond within a few minutes of each other.  Here are Cissy and her brother Mike doing a little celebration thing at the soon-to-be RAIN finish line at Earlham College.  These guys, along Cissy’s twin sister Sasha, are a real dynamic trio.

It was fun to have all of them along.

Dave and Dana arrived only a short time later with Dave expressing his gratitude for Dana’s strong pulls in the latter part of the ride.  It was a remarkable achievement on Dave’s part.  He seemed to get stronger throughout the day, and Dana was there every pedal stroke. 

Initially, I was very pleased with my best-ever moving average speed of 18.2 mph.  That was until Eugene told me he was well over 19 mph!  I also had a personal best total time, which could have been even better had I not spent so much time off the bike socializing.  But, that is what happens when you ride with such a great group of people.

We concluded the day by loading up and driving back to the east side of Indianapolis where most of us enjoyed a very fine Mexican dinner.

This weekend is the real RAIN.  By doing the pRAIN thing, I have both the satisfaction of both doing this great ride and helping the BCC on event day.  It really is the best of both worlds.  The rain was pretty miserable at times, but I concentrated on enjoying that first-ever tailwind!  It was a great day.

Good luck to all you RAIN riders!

Mother Century

Three of us (Allan, Kelly, and Jim) did Jim's midweek "Mother Century", a drive-and-ride out of Columbus. Kelly is from Columbus and found the ride via the RAIN Facebook page and its link to the Southern Indiana Centurions FB page. Allan and Kelly were training for RAIN. Jim just does centuries.

The ride took us ENE on a clockwise loop out of Columbus, passing through towns important to Jim's mother's growing up in Indiana. We passed near Hope (of Hope Ride fame), Greensburg (Honda factory and tree growing out of the top of the courthouse), Oldenburg (German town where we at lunch in a cafe downtown), and Jim's mother's childhood home near Milhausen. The large country house appears to be well-maintained by the current owners.

The day started along the Peoples' Trail in Columbus. We took a bit of a detour to get off of some loose chip and seal. We also had something of a head wind out of the east and were looking for a nice tail wind later in the day, which unfortunately never materialized.

Although the majority of the route was pretty flat by Bloomington standards we did encounter some climbing toward the middle of the route near Oldenburg. Even so we did finish with a 15.2 average for the day.

It was shortly after Milhausen that we encountered a couple of miles of gravel that was very slow going, where we averaged between 5 and 10 mph, also significantly reducing our average for the day. Jim noted that it was worse than it had been last fall. By and by Jim had a flat. The repair didn't go so well as the tire didn't seat right in the rim and Jim had to use his last tube and borrow a CO2 cartridge to make it right. Jim did allow as how we probably should have backtracked from his mother's place to avoid the gravel!

And no rain! Altogether a great ride!

Clay City True Century with Updates

This route grew from Joe's 96 mile "almost a century" to 98 miles by the time an alternative route was picked between Spencer and Patricksburg Road in order to avoid STR 46 entirely. With at least a mile each way between home and park, I ended the day with 100.4 miles, my first true century of the season.

We had 12 eager riders show up at 8 AM for the early start. Of those one, Ron, turned at SR 43 in order to get back to town in plenty of time to attend the Taste of Bloomington, where he expected to engage in advocacy activity, with the large number of city and county officials in attendance. In addition Ron rode the entire route by himself on Tuesday and thanks to him we had the alternative route out of Spencer. Ron is adopting a plan of appending to official club maps a page of alternate routes and updates. That's how he shared the excellent alternate route for today's ride.

Three more, including Andy, Tim, and Ben... came on into Spencer but departed another way to do a 63 mile "short" option.

The remaining 8 of us embarked on Ron's proposed detour route. It was a nice road, but did seem to add significantly to the hill climbing for the day, 5800 feet of ascent according to my GPS/ The rest of us stuck pretty well together.

We had lunch at the A and W in Clay City, where "refills are free" on the root beers in cold mugs.

From there we engaged in some of the traditional pace-lining, over the next 10 miles or so averaging over 17.5 mph. (This OWLish group averaged about 14.2 for the entire 100 miles.)

By this time the day was seriously heating up and we were starting to feel it. We stopped again in Worthington for drinks and AC

By the time we got to Solsberry and Yo-Ho's around 2 PM we were all wilting some more. Dana needed to be sure to be back home before 4 PM so she took off on her own (and ultimately made it home by 3:35 she reported). The rest of us lingered in Yo-Ho's over cold drinks and ice cream. By the time we were leaving around 2:30 a cold front and clouds were coming through, and we began to feel a little better. We made a last short regouping at Whitehall and took off for the last 10-12 miles home. But by the time we got onto Vernal Pike it was sprinkling and soon turned into honest rain for the entire rest of the ride. (Dana reported that she, too, got caught in the rain just as she was crossing 37.) The Taste of Bloomington was pretty empty when we went by close to 4. We all agreed that rain is better than 90+ degree hot sun. But we were all quite soggy in the end. Allan, Dan, and Steve were the lead group in the end, with CE, Ken, Tom and Thom just slightly behind.

We got home before 4:30, dripping wet in steady rain. After a warm shower the next task probably should be to wipe down the bike and oil the change. Check and check.

We never saw any folks from the 9 AM group. I guess that means they got caught in the rain even further out than we did. I hope to add their report of the day's events.

Added Monday, from John Bassett:


 It sounds like the 8:00 group fared better than we did.  I was kind of mid-pack in the 9:00 group riding with Bob DeGroff and Dana Fielding.  All told, after lunch at Clay City we got rained on three times and hailed on twice.  Hail was a new experience, but was OK until the lightening started.  So, we took shelter in a barn south of Coal City and were soon joined by a farmhand who had been planting beans.  There we were, all dripping wet.  For the next hour, we heard a monologue all about the wet spring weather as it pertained to corn, beans, and hay.

Bob and Dana were itching to get started again so we took off south for Worthington when the rain had almost stopped.  But we hit another big storm that hailed on us again and was accompanied by a fierce crosswind.  We raced through the storm to a convenience store in Worthington.  The temperature had plummeted and Dana was shivering uncontrollably.  Inside the store was cold, but there was no wind.  Outside the store was a little warmer, but the wind blew you sideways.  My bike that was leaning against the building blew over and my helmet rolled away.  I thought somebody had stolen it, but I found it about 50 feet downwind.

When the lightning stopped, we headed out east on SR 157.  One mile east of town it had not rained at all!  Soon however, another black cloud rolled up from the south.   We discussed whether or not we could get to Yoho’s before we got pounded again.  We did not.  We did the Three Sisters and all that stuff south of Newark in the rain, and arrived at Yoho’s saturated. I called my wife and told her we were a bit delayed due to storms but would be in Bloomington in an hour or so.  She said not to hurry because Bloomington was under a flash flood warning!

Bob suggested we take a short route back and not even try to ride back to the park.  Bob usually does not say this kind of thing, but these were extenuating circumstances.  We all agreed and decided to follow the Hilly Hundred route to Hendricksville and Gardner Road back to the south side of Bloomington.  This last 20 miles was in continuous rain, making this a pretty epic day.  But, we all had in excess of 100 miles for the day and that was worth the effort.

There is something to be said for leaving early.