In Which 37 Miles Proves Quite Enough

Drifts of cottonwood seeds on top of neighborhood hill this morning--summer snow of Iowa.

For the morning, it was enough, anyway. If I get a chance this evening, I may ride once more to ensure I break 40 miles and possibly approach 50 miles for the day, but my 37-mile morning ride was quite hot by the time I was finished, and I was a little late for a Memorial Day family feast, which was a bit awkward.

You know how bikers get on their bikes. Or perhaps you don’t. When I have a post-ride obligation, I try to set a turn-around time for myself in advance so that I’ll have plenty of time to get on with my life. But, today, as I too often do, I over-estimated how quickly the ride home would go. To be fair, I started the ride with a hill loop in my neighborhood, and so I knew the ride home would be a bit shorter and flatter than the ride out was.

But it would also be during a much hotter part of the day, I would be tired and dehydrated, and it would turned out I simply would not go more than 15 miles in about 50 minutes.

Door sign on restroom at depot in Center Point. The heat was on today--normal high temperatures in late May are in the 70s, but today we approached triple digits. The heat was indeed on.

I should have known.

Anyway, despite the minor faux pas, it was a very satisfying training ride—even with the heat. I started about 8:30 in the morning (I had planned a start time of about 7:30—but then again, sometimes CR Biker is one of Those Guys). After riding the Brentwood hill three times, I headed over to the Cedar River Trail. In my previous longish ride, I had gone south.

So, today was the first ride north to Lafayette and beyond. I ended up in Center Point, where I took a break, ate a snack (typo humor--I accidentally typed I "ate a snake" but corrected this one--doubtless I have left a few more for my sisters to find) and headed back home.

The return ride got to be a bit of a grind. The wind, which has been absent in Iowa, decided it would put in an appearance. It was mostly a side wind, but still slowed me. The wind was a bit awkward—on a warm day, wind can help cool you, but when it’s humid enough and hot enough, it has the opposite impact. Today, on balance, I think the wind was mostly OK, but it got less OK as the temperature warmed well past 90 on the last few miles.

During return ride, sunny stretch of Cedar River Trail, and honestly I did not often have the trail to myself. I just thought this caught the feeling of 10:30 a.m. on a hot Memorial Day.

Still, 37 miles is a respectable early summer total for a three-hour morning training ride. I tried to shoot some trail traffic images during the ride because plenty of bikers were out today, but none of those worked out, which probably means I was not messing with my camera when other bikers were really close to me—on balance, I suppose, a positive thing.

I did not forget that, besides being the unofficial start of summer, today is also Memorial Day, and I did think of the debt we all owe to the military men and women who gave their all.

So I shot the image of the flag flying on my front stoop as I arrived home, a bit late, I’m afraid. We’ll see what the evening brings.

My wife was up before me and put the flag out this morning. My front porch about 11:30. I was due home by 11.