Joe Palooka Ride to Oolitic, August 29

By Allan Edmonds

Eighteen riders gathered for the last 8 am ride of the year, a hilly 57 mile trip south to Oolitic, just north of Bedford.

After deciding on our main refueling stop in Oolitic and several regrouping spots along the way we were off.

On the way out of town we saw a group of another eight or so riders heading out for their planned ride to Nashville. So altogether there were some 26 club members out for a ride.

We naturally split into two compatible groups, but the whole group (plus one extra rider we picked up along the way) did re-groups together in Smithville, Judah, and Oolitic before heading home with the two groups going at their own speeds.

Route to Oolitic

We had a great time as usual posing with Joe Palooka in Oolitic. For those who don't know this is a limestone statue of the comic strip character. It dates from about 1946 and commemorates the 100th anniversary of the big limestone operation in the area, although the sign indicates the limestone quarries began in the 1830s. The limestone for the Empire State Building in NYC came from the quarry just north of town.

The whole group posed with Joe...

(Click on photos, etc., for larger versions.)

After our photo ops we all went a few blocks south to the Casey's convenience store for snacks and drinks.

This ride had quite a few major hill climbs. And here are several different elevation profiles of the route. The first one is derived simply from the map created on MapMyRide.com. The next three are all based on the same GPS recording of the entire ride. You decide which one you like better. Even though the three all used the very same GPS data they gave somewhat different estimates of total climb. I think this is due to different algorithms for interpolating the recorded data, which comes every 4 seconds.

MapMyRide's Pre-profile (est. 1535 ft climb):

Garmin online profile (total climb 4215 ft climb):

Trimble. com profile (5927 ft climb):

Garmin Training Center software profile (3929 ft climb):

More photos of our regrouping time at the Joe Palooka statue can be found at PicasaWeb.