Tuesday, June 26, 2018

In Which We See Life Sprawled on the Trail

Turtle on the trail in Robins with my bike in background. He or she is smaller than (s)he looks, maybe 2 inches wide or so.

Map My Ride says I rode 65 miles or so yesterday—a 6-mile morning ride, and a 59 mile ride in the afternoon with my sister. Because my phone was dying when we stopped in Hiawatha for supper, I shut the app down before the long ride was completely over, so I think I approached 70 miles in total on Monday.

It was an interesting journey. My sister, on her note on her Map My Ride record of the journey (her phone says she went 60.12 miles—I rode to and from her house so my ride would be slightly longer) wrote that the ride featured “turtles, hitchhikers and the edge of the known universe. Just another day on the bike.”

Indeed. When we met a bit after noon, our shared goal was merely to get in a substantial number of miles before the rain, which was forecast for later Monday. Because I was riding Clarence, my hybrid bike, and because she had not been north of Lafayette on the Cedar Valley Nature Trail yet this year, we jointly decided it would be a good day to push past the paved trail heading north.

When we got to Robins, we decided to take the little trail loop around the city park (my sister noted she often does so just so the picture of trail rides on Map My Ride will have a feature beyond a squiggly line). As we approached the loop part of the trail, my sister noted that what she thought was a leaf was actually a turtle—and I said we would stop and take its picture if it was still there when we circled back.

Well, it’s a turtle that was warming itself on pavement—it didn’t move in the time we circled the park, so I stopped and made some images. We were commenting on the slowness of turtles and the comparative slowness of old bikers, when said young turtle (you may not be able to tell from the image, but it was leaf sized) vigorously jogged off. I am not an old, slow biker, I thought I heard it say.

Well, we may have thought that was the strange encounter with life on the trail of the day, and if we did, we were mistaken.

The ride continued north, to Center Point, to Urbana and beyond. In an earlier long ride, I had ridden maybe three miles or so beyond Urbana, and on Monday, we pushed beyond where I had gone. As we entered a pleasantly forested part of the trail, I noted that the unknown universe looked a lot like the known universe.

It was getting past 4, and there was rain in the forecast. The sky was gray, so we decided on the better part of valor and began to look for a point to turn around. At about 26 miles or so into the trail, we came to a road, marked with signs for the Black Hawk County Conservation Board, so we knew we had gone beyond the known universe in to the mysterious land of Black Hawk, and it was time to turn around.

Crossing Bear Creek into parts unknown. Linn County goes on for a long ways north, and we might be crossing the county line. Unsure--but we know we ended the ride in Black Hawk County.

Because the whole trail is supposed to be 51 miles long and because we were beyond 26 miles in, it occurred to us that we could just push on to Waterloo—but then we would have to appeal to one of our spouses for a return ride, and we were unsure of the reaction that would get. So, we decided it was a scouting ride that would prove, once we were done, that we could do the distance to Waterloo if we wanted to, and we turned back south.

Not sure what random Black Hawk County gravel road we are at, but this is a sign at our turnaround point.

A few miles north of Urbana, the trail left the shade of trees and entered an area of open fields. Ahead, it had a close to 90 degree turn, and when we went around the corner, we encountered something odder than a turtle on the sidewalk.

There was a young man and a bicycle—both of them prone on the trail. As we approached, we hailed the youth (or yute as they would say in “My Cousin Vinny”). He was simply reclined on the ground, smoking a Marlboro, although a small, odd looking bottle by his other hand made us think possibly other substances were being used for stimulation besides nicotine.

Looking a little like the dragon Smaug (small pebbles from the trail stuck to his sweaty arms), he slowly stood and faced us. “Do you have any water or food?” he asked.

My sister kindly have him her half-eaten bag of wasabi-flavored nuts. We both took out our water bottles, and he took her bottle and poured some water into the travel cup he had with him.

He picked up a small backpack, stuffed with a bundle of fake roses. He told us he had started his ride in Waverly, and was going south to visit what he described alternately as an ex-fiancé and girlfriend in Cedar Rapids.

“Where are you from?” he asked. Well, Cedar Rapids, and we were headed that way. “Do you ride fast or slow—can I ride with you?”

Well, we are old. We ride slow. So we resumed our ride south, slightly scary looking spent young man in tow.

Both of us heard banjo music in our mind. My sister bravely took to lead, strategically placing CR Biker between herself and the hitchhiker. To be fair, she took the lead for most of this bicycle ride—she was on a much better, faster bike than I was (and as I say about my sons when I ride with one of them, it's not just that her bike is better but so is her motor), but later she told me she was particularly grateful that I let her take the lead during this stretch of the ride.

We stopped in Urbana, where we encouraged the young man to fill his travel cup with water using a sink in the city restroom.

Then we continued. We were thrilled to get to Center Point because it meant both pavement and other bikers. We stopped at the depot, and I asked our hitchhiker if he had “enough gas” to ride 13 miles to Hiawatha. I meant energy, but he acted confused. So I asked if he was hungry and needed to eat now, or if he would make it if we rode on.

“I’m hungry,” he said. “I’m also broke.”

I handed him $5, and my sister and I gave him suggestions for local places he could buy a sandwich at. And so we parted ways, we to continue riding south, him to, presumably, get a bite to eat before continuing his Waverly-to-Cedar Rapids epic quest for love.

We could only hope that we were not aiding the violation of a no-contact order.

But wait, there’s more. As we rode south, my bike bag began banging in my rear spokes. It happens now and then, and simply means I have to stop and bend out the edge of the bag to keep it away from the wheel. I made an unannounced stop, and my sister, sensing that I had suddenly stopped, suddenly stopped. And fell over. She wears clips, but it was not an unclipping issue—she just simply was tired and didn’t put her feet down right and slowly tumbled to the trail.

A turtle, a hitchhiker and my sister—the long ride was filled with unusual sights of life hugging the road.

Fortunately, she was unscathed—but we decided that Scary Hitchhiker Yute was not the only biker who needed refreshing that day, and we made a pact that if we made it back to Hiawatha, we would stop at Culver’s.

It was a pretty safe pact. We were less than 10 miles from Hiawatha and even if we were both tired, we are also both experienced enough distance bikers to know we would easily make Hiawatha. When we got there we wolfed down our food there like ravenous bikers can, and my sister noted it was a good RAGBRAI analogy day—a long ride followed by unhealthy food.

Well, I hope all went well with Waverly boy, and I hope there aren’t more unsavory aspects of that saga. Rain fell last night, but didn’t start until late, so wherever he was going he had time to reach there before it got wet and added to his misery.

So, we learned several things from the ride. We could, if we wanted to, ride to Waterloo—we both confirmed that we can ride that distance on the trail and confirmed, via an unexpected scout, that the trail is open all the way to Waterloo. We both learned it’s good to do a long ride with a buddy, because you never know who you will encounter or when you might fall. We know now that Culver’s food tastes even better after a long ride—although that’s not particularly surprising. We also learned that my sister can survive a fall, but it’s an experiment we both hope we don’t repeat.

And there are things we don’t know. Every little piece of the biography we learned from Hitchhiker boy made his life story seem more complex, interesting and a little scary. He has been on his own since age 14. He has an 18-year-old ex he is encouraging to leave her family because “you’re not running away if you’re 18,” although he also assured us that she knew he was on his way. He lives with six other people, more or less.

Well, I don’t know the rest of the story. And I don’t want my assumptions to run amok. Perhaps he is a harmless soul simply seeking his way in this confusing universe. And we just helped him along the road, with water, wasabi nuts and a $5 sandwich.

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