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!