In Which I Share A Tale of Two Wheels

 

Pretty day Saturday Oct. 12 for ride on the Cedar Valley Nature Trail north of Urbana.

It was the best of rides; it was the worst of rides.

Fall has finally come to Iowa. We had a hard freeze this week, and it has been very dry lately, so everything has a sort of drab fall look to it. Which is not as bad as it sounds—fall can be pretty, and as the underbrush leaves leave, the shape of the brown land can emerge and be pleasing to look at. On the whole, I prefer a lush, green look to my scenery but I still enjoy when the scenery of the land can be seen.

Anyway, I had some interesting bike adventures over Fall Break, last week. I had hoped to get some miles in, and I did, but there were complications. Best and worst and all that.

On Thursday, Oct. 10, I put on my biking outfit, including bike shorts. My personal rule of thumb is to wear biking shorts for rides of about 20 miles—the bike shorts are worth wearing if I am going to roll 20 miles or more, otherwise, regular clothes are fine for biking. I wasn’t sure exactly where I was going to go on this ride, but I vaguely thought of the ride south to Morgan Creek Park.

Anyway, it was a fine day, not yet as chilly as it would get this week, and I rode off. But about 6 miles from home, as I rode on the trail beside Cedar Lake, I noted a funny and familiar noise and feeling, so I stopped and felt my rear tyre.

Bike with flat tyre parked at Cedar Lake.

Yup. Flat. There was a lot of broken glass on the bike lanes in town I had used to get to the lake, and I assumed I probably got a puncture close to the lake. My wife was out of town (one reason I had planned a longer ride), and I was 6 miles from home.

It seemed like there would be a long walk was going to be my afternoon agenda. But I called my daughter who works downtown, and she called me back in a few minutes. Yes, she was on her lunch hour. She had walked from her office to the public library, but could walk back to her car and them give me a ride.

I locked my crippled bike, waited for a few minutes and then was rescued, which I greatly appreciated. Once home, I had lunch and then drove my van down to Cedar Lake to pick up the bike for a trip to Goldfinch Cyclery, where I got a new tube for the road bike (and a new tube and tyre for the hybrid bike—its back tyre was worn and needed replacing). Later in the day, I rode my mountain bike for a pleasant 10-mile jaunt to Lowe Park so the day wasn’t so lost for rolling even if I never made the 20-mile goal.

Fixing bikes on Friday. It didn't take as long as I thought.

The Fancy Beast at Lowe Park on late-day ride.

Friday for me was a work day, mostly. I had plans for a longer bike ride on Saturday, and I needed to get some grading under my belt—so it was a day for checking mid-term exams. Still, I needed to pick up some prescription drugs, so I fixed the road bike and  the hybrid bike during a grading break, and rode the rode bike up to HyVee Drug store, a ride of just over a mile. Later, I used the hybrid bike for a quick late trip on the Lindale Trail.

Saturday was the adventure. And the best and worst ride. In the afternoon, I loaded my road bike Argent into my van, picked up my sister and her recumbent trike, and then drove to Urbana. This summer, they had paved the final stretches of the Cedar Valley Nature Trail north, and we planned to check out the new trial paving north of Urbana.

Prettiest part of the trail Oct. 12, above and below.

The day was sunny, and pretty. We made good time, rolling north through Brandon, where we had made a stop. Along the way, we speculated whether we would see the bluff by the river—we had ridden this part of the trail in previous years, but not often, so we could not recall if the bluffs were north or south of LaPorte City, where we tentatively planned to turn around.

Turns out, it’s south of LaPorte City, which was nice. While we taking a snack/restroom break in Brandon, another group of bikers rode up and told us a bridge was out north of Brandon, and that they planned to leave the trail and take county roads to go around the break.

Well, we decided just to see how far north we got before the closed bridge. A few miles later, we crossed a road where there was a big “trail closed ahead” sign, and assumed it was the last road before the bridge, and that the bridge was not far ahead. We were both right and wrong. There wasn’t another road that we saw, but we crossed first one and then another bridge, and the one that was always a ways ahead. And it was north of Brandon along this ride where we reached the prettiest part of the trail, with the low rocky bluff to our right and the river off through the woods on our left.

And the bikers form Brandon passed us as we rode, but we never saw them again. Where they disappeared and how they got to their alternative route when no roads cross the trail will forever be a mystery. Anyway, we never made it to LaPorte City, which is one of the towns near the north end of the trail. As advertised by the Brandon bikers and via the sign some miles bike, a long bridge over the Cedar River was closed. So now the trial all the way to Waterloo is paved, but you cannot ride that full route yet.

Pretty rustic rest area with bench, bike art and sign between Brandon and LaPorte City.

Yeah, trail closed ahead. Maybe more than 5 miles ahead.

End of the trail, for now--we calculated we were only 3 miles or so from LaPorte City. I hope this is open next summer for a long adventure ride north on the now paved trail there.

Well, no matter, the afternoon was getting on and it was time for us to ride back to Urbana. The ride back passed pleasantly—it is a very pretty trail, always was, but is so much easier and more pleasant to ride now that the surface is asphalt rather than limestone.

So, it was the best of rides. Until we approached Urbana.

At a county highway on the north side of town, we waited for a car to pass, and then started across the intersection, my sister in front, me close behind. As I crossed the highway, I was more or less glancing back and forth to the side, as one does when one is astride a bicycle and wary of tons of motorized metal on a cross path.

Somehow, my sister heard the departing car and mistook the noise for an approaching one. Although no car was heading in our direction, she slammed on her brakes. Compared with bikes, trikes have a braking advantage, which led to a breaking disadvantage for me and my bike. My sister’s trike also doesn’t have brake lights, and I discovered that she had stopped in the worse possible way.

Crunch. The worst of rides.

Well, that’s an overstatement. I ran hard into her rear wheel, badly bending her fender, which we assumed was the worst of the damage. Until we started to ride, and an odd twinkly tune was being played by my front wheel. Because I had snapped a spoke, which was banging on Argent’s front fork with every turn of the wheel.

A spoke is broke, oh no!

It still wasn’t the worst of rides for two reasons—one, neither my sister nor I was in any way physically harmed. The other happy happenstance was we were close to the end of the ride. My front wheel was wobbly, no longer true, but I just slowed way down and rolled slowly to the ride’s end only a mile or so away.

Well, shucks. One day after fixing Argent’s tyre, I broke its front wheel. So Argent is again lame, and it will take some dollars to get it fixed. But my hybrid bike Clarence and my mountain bike The Fancy Beast are both ride-able.

Well, OK, the ride had an unhappy ending but wasn’t really the worst of rides. It was the best of days and not as good of a ride as it could have been, but still well over 30 miles on a newly paved, gorgeous trail. And in the next week, frost and freeze arrived and fall in Iowa is now looking more fall-like. Which is OK for a bike rider—it’s still a great time to be rolling on two wheels. As long as both of your two wheels work. So far in October, 169.75 miles. And the year so far, 2,568.4 miles. Not the best mileage total, maybe, but happily, not the worst.

C Avenue Pond Oct. 16--freezing morning, but pretty day fora bike ride to work.