Larry Limestone Tour, August 13

Jerry Arveson led a reprise of his fun "Larry Limestone Tour," a drive-and-ride out of Heltonville, about 20 miles south of Bloomington, on Highway 58, just off of 446.

One group left Bloomington early by bike to turn the ride into a (near) century. See Mike Finger's report below.

I was the last to arrive, about 9:08, by which time the whole group had already started out. A couple of friends saw me drive up and waited a few minutes for me to catch up to them. Otherwise I would have been riding by myself the whole way.

It was a beautiful cool morning for a ride that takes us onto some roads that we rarely ride on out of Bloomington.

The route went clockwise, starting at Heltonsville. The main group stopped at a store in Leesville, but had just left by the time my little trailing group got there.  We did meet up at the next stop (at the turn south of Buddha ad Pinhook) and had a larger group riding along, including ride leader Jerry.

At two points we encountered evidence of severe tornado damage. Here's a photo of the first one, along the eastern part of the route:

The main group had a refueling stop at a convenience store on an out-and-back along Highway 50, where 446 ends, teeing into 50 (see the map).

It was a great day for a ride but that last LONG, STEEP climb before Heltonville was universally felt to be a killer. See the elevation chart:

Our group end up averaging about 14.2 mph for the 56 mile ride.


REPORT FROM THE CENTURY GROUP BY MIKE FINGER:


I arrived at the designated meeting place (Brusters) promptly at 7:47am to find I was the only one there. OK-I admit I was 2 minutes late. At about the same time Tim Dowling showed up and we waited about 5 minutes before setting out for Heltonville.  We hadn't gone far when Tim announced that there was another bike chasing us from behind and it was gaining fast. A few minutes later Kevin Hayes caught on to our back wheel, and then we were three. Kevin announced that he wasn't doing the club ride, only looking for an out and back to start his day, so he could do most of the pulling. Tim and I gladly took him up on the offer and we proceeded to fly south

Shortly after passing Chapel Hill Rd. we became aware that we were slowly gaining on some bikes going the same way and we subsequently caught them to discover it was Stan Ellis, Doug Edwards and Tom Schroeder. They had arrived at the meeting place early (what a strange concept!) and had departed at the stroke of 7:45am. Now we were six. Kevin continued to pull until we reached the bottom of the long downhill, and partway up the short rise on the other side, whereupon he pulled out for the back portion of his out and back. We thanked him for his good work and rode the last few miles into Heltonville. We arrived in time to hang around a few minutes before the large group set out, and to see more bikes arriving that had made the trip down from Bloomington. I had a fast start to my day, averaging over 20mph on the way down, thanks to the good work of Kevin.

Jerry handed out maps and words of encouragement and shortly after 9am we set out. After a leisurely ramble down Hwy 58 in a large group we made our turn onto Back Creek Rd. At that point Colin Allen and Andreas (sorry, Andreas, I don't have your last name) pushed up the pace a bit and a few of us followed in pursuit. Within a few miles we seemed to have established our working group of Colin and Andreas, Tom Schroeder, Tim Dowling and myself. Once again we were fortunate to have a real machine in Colin to stay at the front and set the pace for the majority of the day. Somehow we managed to follow the map and make all the correct turns in spite of the fact that almost all of the road signs were missing. That's right-the poles are there, there are just no signs on top of them. I decided that people must be stealing them to use as wall hangings in their homes-a sort of Lawrence County decorator chic. We continued to make good time and found our way to the lunch stop on Hwy 50 at the terminus of 446.

After a bit of relaxing and refueling we set out on the second half. Once again Colin was setting the pace, and the rest of us were doing what we could to maintain contact. With a few exceptions, we found the roads to be in great shape with a lot of new pavement. The weather was beautiful and the temps reasonably cool all day long-a perfect day for riding! We kept flying along and it wasn't long before we were approaching the last big climb on Dunn Bridge Rd. before dropping into Heltonville. The pace of the day hit me pretty hard on the way up that climb on Dunn Bridge-if I'd had a lower gear I would have been going slower. However, we had nearly 80 miles for the day, and just a quick jaunt up 446 to finish the day, so I was feeling pretty good.

As we were leaving Heltonville Tim announced he was going to take his time and to not wait for him, so we became four. The four of us stayed together (with Colin pulling, of course) all the way to the climb up from the Causeway, where I made a strategic move to the back. My last view of the gang was to see Colin and Andreas dwindling in the distance up the hill, with Tom about half way in between us and dwindling fast as well. I didn't mind. If the day was going to devolve into a bitter solo grind to the finish, that was a decent place for it to happen. I was still averaging 18.5mph for the day, and was set to finish in under 6 hours, so was quite pleased with my day. As I was approaching Moores Pike, nearly within sight of the finish line, Stan Ellis caught up with me and we finished together. He reported he had done a somewhat shortened version of the basic ride, but was still going to have 90 miles for the day by the time he rode home. When I pulled into my driveway I had a total elapsed time of about 5:50 and a rolling average of 18.3mph over a total distance of 98.15 miles. A good day on the bike!