Country Views: Not Much To Say

Saturday was a glorious day here, if you take the first two thirds of it. The last third got grey, blustery, and a bit of rain was spitting here and there. Of course, I went out then!

Now to be fair, I had chores around the house. I had a recycling run, which actually also was a bike ride, and made use of my Big Dummy. Then that darn grass keeps growing, so I mowed. Then it was a bit of further yard work, ending with a late lunch, and a bit of repose to allow the internals to acclimate to the food load. After that, it was riding time.

The winds were out of the Southeast, so I decided to go on ahead and head right into them. Same ol' roads as I've done a million times before, so there isn't much to say about the views other than that things are greening up nicely and the fields are all showing corn sprouts that have been planted with corn. There still are a few fields laying untouched and I imagine those will be getting beans, perhaps, soon. Maybe. I'm not an expert at farming, so don't take my word for it!

We had rain, and it was a pretty hard rain, earlier in the week. That seems to have turned the roads to smooth, dirt two-track, or it had allowed the gravel to wash away, because the roads were clear and fast. Well, for the most part. There were some chunky sections here and there. That was okay, as I tried something different in regard to the bike I was riding which seemed to be quite effective.

The Stormchaser fitted with 700c X 50 Donnelly MSO tires.

I put on those 700c X 50mm Donnelly MSO tires I've had around here, and I decided to try to go lower on the air pressures for grins. So, I had about 28psi in the front and 30psi in the rear. Which means nothing to you out there because you don't weigh what I do. Anyway, that's lower than I normally go. I was greeted with a super smooth, super damped ride quality which was pretty nice. Combine that with the Class 5 VRS rear end? Wow.... And that brute of a fork was tamed too. That tire volume did the trick. I don't think I could get away with anything this smooth feeling at anything less than the 50mm of tire width here.

A ditch flower other than a dandelion.

Not that dandelions are bad, they just dominate the ditches early in the season.

Sheesh! That wind! It made me work pretty hard going South and East. I decided to clip my ride time to the two hour mark on this day, since I had already done a bit of riding and work earlier in the day. I was happy to turn North and get that nice assist when I did!

My left laces were misbehaving!

Heading back with the wind under darkening skies.

Of course, it didn't take long to get back with that nice push from behind. I was outrunning the gear I had most of the way back, with the obvious exception of steeper grades. Even those were super easy. It was probably a good thing I was eating up miles at this point as the skies kept growing heavier with clouds. I didn't think it was supposed to rain until later, but in Iowa, you never know!

I wound my way back through busier city streets than I've seen in a while. The state has lifted many restrictions now and traffic is picking up once again. In some ways, it's nice to see some return to 'normalcy', but in other ways I was really kind of getting to like the dampened traffic counts and mostly empty side streets. Now I have to start remembering that cars are everywhere again and the streets are not going to be very safe anymore.

At least nothing much has changed out in the country. I don't have to really worry about cars and trucks much. Of course, you still have to keep an eye out for possibilities of traffic, but generally speaking, no one is out to get you in the country. Not like it seems to be in town.

The tire experiment worked well on the Stormchaser. I think if this were my bike, these tires, or something else as big as these, would be what would live on there. That stiff front fork needs something to give the rider relief, and a big, comfy tire seems to be just enough to make the bike ride well. I suppose a suspension stem would be okay if you ran skinnier tires, but I'd likely just keep the bigger skins on here if it we up to me.