Country Views: Summer Heat

Hazy, lazy,and hot. Typical late Summer Iowa weather.

Wednesday was forecast to be 'nice' out. Whatever that means, is up for debate, but a more correct description would have been 'typical' Summer weather. Humid, hot, not much wind, and hazy skies.

I set out for Petrie Road's Level B section to test out the new Kinekt Stem I am reviewing for Riding Gravel. I've had this stem on several rides already, but this was the first time out to Petrie Road.

I took the Black Mountain Cycles MCD and when I was loading it up, I noted that the seat tube water bottle cage was wobbling more than it should. It had a full, large bottle of water in it already, and while that should make the cage move a little bit, this was excessive. I decided I could tighten things up at the launching off point when I got there.

Once I arrived at the starting spot, I took a closer look. While the mounting bolts were a little loose, it was really the fault of the cage being broken in two places. Hmm..... A quick decision to roll with that and maybe transfer water from the tall bottle to the shorter bottle I have to use on the top of the down tube was made and so I got going under a hot Summer Sun.

The roads South of town were laden with fresh, dusty gravel. The cars that passed me by early on left clouds of the stuff hanging in the air, but you could barely discern a slight Northerly component to the air. Whatever. You certainly could not feel the air movement and the heat, although only in the upper 80's, was stifling. The only relief was moving on the bike.

These fist sized rocks on Petrie Road gave the Kinekt Stem a good test.

After I stopped for some water the second time, I decided to drain what was left into my mouth of the water in the smaller bottle so I could put the water from the big bottle into the small and thus give the wounded cage a lighter load. However; when I pulled the big bottle out, the cage disintegrated, breaking again, and was not useful even to hold an empty bottle at this point. So, I shoe-horned the big bottle into the upper cage somehow, put the now empty small bottle under the down tube in that cage, and moved on.

Holmes Road looking North across Schrock Road near Hudson, Iowa.

I was riding along a non-descript portion of gravel when HEY! What the...... My frame pump jumped ship for no apparent reason. Weird! I retrieved it and put it back into its place. But when really weird things start happening like imploding bottle cages and ejections of frame pumps, I tend to take those as 'signs' that I need to just cut back my grandiose riding plans and head home. So, whether rightly or foolishly, that is what I did.

A solo detassling machine.

I came across one of those detassling machines in the field working. I had pictured a row of them in a storage area not many weeks ago here. Anyway, it was interesting. This machine is operated by a single person and the beams sticking out either side have cutting blades that basically mow off the tops of the corn which they don't want to cross-breed. Look carefully and you can see the perfectly cut tops in the field ahead of the machine in the image.

So, now they won't be needing bus loads of young teenagers to hand pull tassels anymore. Although some of that is still happening, as I have seen out there as well. No doubt someday this operation will be automated to the point that the machines will work by GPS directions and will only require a single person in a truck command center to keep track of them. But for now, it would seem that the days of hand labor in the fields of corn in Summer are nearing their end.

Times are a changing.......