Cool Midweek Century

Tuesday provided almost unbelievably nice weather for a long bike ride. Organizer Jim Schroeder found six other riders waiting when he pulled into Bryan Park just before 7 am. Joe Anderson, Dana Marsh, Laurence Kohler, Jennifer Miers, Allan Edmonds, and Clair Murphy quickly organized into three cars for the almost-an-hour drive to Brownstown. The temperature was in the upper 50s. In Brownstown we parked at a convenient CVS and met an eighth rider Dan Fowler who drove from home.

Check out the route map at this link. Especially take note of the elevation profile and total climb of 3907 feet. (My GPS measured climb at 4635 feet, probably too high; while Garmin's online site corrected the 4635 to 3069. In any case parts of the ride had significant climbs.)

We stopped at a country store in Little York around mile 30, at a service station in Scottsburg around mile 45, for a sit-down lunch at Christie's Cafe on the downtown square in Salem around mile 65, and for snacks in Medora around mile 89 or so.

Besides the beautiful weather, interesting sights included workers on scaffolding hanging from a large water tower (big bulb on a pedestal) while they repainted the tower and a now-defunct brick-making kiln dating from the 1800s.

We followed the planned route closely until near the end where Joe took us on a back-road portion of the Round Barn Ride route. I thought he was going to show us a round barn, but if so, I never saw it. The good news is that the route didn't add any significant distance and it had less traffic. The bad news was that some of it was old chip-and-seal, in bad shape, and shook us up rather well.

For the first half or more of the ride I averaged in the mid 15s (well the faster riders probably recorded higher numbers). I finished at 14.5 mph for the day.

The group stayed together pretty well. Thanks as usual to Jim for organizing a great ride and for taking care with some of us slower riders to be sure we made all turns and didn't fall completely out of touch with riders ahead.