Looking on into June of this year things seemed to dry up. No more Wednesdays full of rain! This was good, but since it got more and more dry over the Summer, into Fall, and now Winter, it is looking not so great for next year unless we see a big turn around in the weather patterns here.
But back to June!
I really didn't have a whole lot going on as far as gravel events at this time. Odin's used to fill the spot in mid to late June but with that event ending its run I no longer have any big plans during June, so I went "just riding" a lot!
Some of that was to search out the course for my "Tour of Dirt Roads" style homage to the Pirate Cycling League who do a ride every year down around Lincoln, Nebraska where the search out all the good dirt roads. With the successful ending of the Geezer Ride at the Broad Street Brewing Company in Reinbeck, I decided we'd start and stop the GTDRI there as well. Road "O" figured heavily into my route plans. A ride long ago prompted me to put that stretch of dirt roads into the route, as well as some choice gems in Tama County, plus some others I knew about but had bypassed all these years for whatever reasons.
July saw many good rides and with the GTDRI the first weekend in August I didn't have anything going on all month to worry about. I got my old Badger custom drop bar bike rebuilt up for the third, and hopefully last, time and the addition of some skin wall Soma Cazaderos were the finishing touch there.
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| My Badger got up and running again this past Summer |
I hate to admit it, but I am kind of a dud when it comes to technological gizmos. I have a Lezyne Super GPS review to finish that is coming up on a year now! This camera thing has failed to capture my imagination yet as well. I finally got a memory card for it and the battery charged up enough to take a short video of my son and I riding, but I have failed to upload it yet! Ha! Maybe someday......
I wrote a piece about the hullaballo being raised about events and how they are too dangerous, and how we need to "do something about it". I still think it rings true after reading it again for the research I did for this post.
Then the GTDRI happened and it went off without a hitch. I had a great ride, and the route was spectacular. In fact, it was so good I thnk the 2018 GTDRI will be the same exact route, barring any road closings that may happen between now and then.
That left Gravel Worlds. I had actually finished the beast in 2016, but it wasn't to be this time. The heat and humidity kicked in later into the event, but my issues weren't related to that. Mine were gastrointestinal related, and basically I did as much of the route as humanly possible for me under such circumstances. I was bummed but it is what it is.
September 5th came and the announcement of another Trans Iowa. The 14th running of the event will happen next April and although I had pretty quickly sketched out a route to checkpoint #1, I was finding motivation to do anything beyond that rather difficult. The registration process wouldn't happen for another month, so I moved on to other things in the month of September. Like getting sick....
That pretty much knocked me off my training for the Spotted Horse, which I wanted to do, and the only rides I was getting in were a few shorter single track rides. It was a rough ending to the month healthwise and I ended up calling off going to the Spotted Horse altogether by the first part of October. But that's coming in the last "Rear View" post for 2017 next time.....
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