Spring In The Country

Trans Iowa went that-a-way.

Wednesday. Day off work. Riding time again. This time I went South and decided that I would go as faras Quarry Road, since I had waited out the morning thinking rain was imminent. The radar showed a big glob of green and orange coming from the Southwest. I figured, at 9:00am, that I had little chance of squeezing in any ride at all. However; I waited, and waited, and.....shouldn't it be raining by now?

Meanwhile I figured I may as well put all the post Trans Iowa business to bed for the year. Maybe forever? Hey....if you wanted to "go out on top", this would be the year, right? Well, that's a decision that can wait. At any rate, I needed to update the Trans Iowa History page, so I did all that while I was waiting for rain that never came. When I finished that task, I took another look at the radar. Hmm..... It looked as though that the rain was being swallowed up by something unseen.

So, I ate some lunch and started getting ready to go for a ride out in the country. I took the Orange Crush rig since it had all my bags on it which would allow me to pack some rain gear just in case. The skies were overcast and the air was really saturated. It felt like it could start raining at any time, but it never did. There was a bit of wind, but nothing to what we've experienced for a couple of months lately.

The crops are just peeking through now. Soon this corn will be knee high way before the 4th of July.

The skies were looking pretty heavy to the West over Quarry Road. 

I felt pretty good on this ride and the miles ticked away without issue. I'm pretty certain I had a leaky tire on the way out but it sealed itself up and it never became an issue. I have noted that the Caffe Latex sealant I am using inside the tires on this bike tends to kind of feather out from a spinning wheel and freeze. I can get long enough that it flaps against brakes or fenders, for instance, like a stuck leaf in Fall. I noted that sound for a bit, then the stringer of sealant must have broke off and I didn't note any odd things afterward and I could not see an obvious leakage point when I got back, but I had ridden miles of gravel after that point I noticed that. So, all evidence was probably ground away by the rock.

Quarry Road and parts of Ansborough were strewn with fresh gravel. 

Gotta love the Springtime in the country.

This has been an extraordinarily lush Spring with lots of flowering bushes, trees, and even some wild flowers in the ditches. Even the amounts of calves with their cows seems to be in abundance this Spring. Wildlife also has responded to the milder Winter we had with lots of fowl flapping up out of the ditches along my route. I couldn't identify one pair that jumped up, but they were not pheasants and were too big to be quail. Never a dull moment on that ride yesterday.

Spring in the country. It's been good so far this year.