Country Views: Tall Corn Ride

Escape Route: County V-49 South from Raymond, IA

 The day off this week saw temperatures into the 80's with pretty high humidity too. Just the perfect scenario for training to get ready for some of my upcoming planned big rides. The wind was even cooperating by merely being a breeze from the Northwest, hardly anything to speak of, making for really tough conditions in the heat. 

I also decided that I needed to practice throttling things back when it gets hot and humid. What better way to do that than to limit yourself to a single gear. The Twin Six Standard Rando v2 got the call for this ride then. I also decided to go to Raymond, Iowa to embark upon a fairly brief ride to just get acclimated to the brutal humidity. 

My route plan was to head out on Young Road and then to see what I felt like doing after that. So, that meant a bit of riding a gravel shoulder on County V-49 to get the half a mile South out of Raymond so I could pull off left and start riding gravel proper. The nice thing about the gravel shoulders out that way is that they were all recently graded and maintained, so they actually ride better than the gravel roads in many cases. 

It was a hazy, hot, and humid day.

It seems to me that the Chicory has been flourishing this year. 

Young Road started out very promisingly with nice, smooth lines to follow, then it went all to deep, fresh gravel. Oh well! It isn't as if I haven't ridden on that before. Onward then on the single speed! 

Most of the field corn is tasseled and silked out now. How tall is it?......

I'd say about THAT tall!

The corn growth has been amazing of late. Whatever moisture we were able to get recently was sucked up and turned into greenery out in the fields. Out in Eastern Black Hawk County, at any rate, the corn is as tall as I can ever remember seeing it. Miles and miles of it that way. It is simply amazing. 

The Barclay United Presbyterian Church on Newell Avenue.

Looking North up Pilot Grove Road

I ended up coming back on Newell, Pilot Grove, and Osage Roads to get back to the truck in Raymond. In between I came across the rare County Sheriff sighting, a few Red Wing Blackbirds still patrolling, and a smashed Apple iPhone in the middle of the road. You just never know what you'll come across out there!

My favorite 'Lone Tree' on Pilot Grove Road has survived the recent severe weather.

It was a decent enough ride. Not too brutal, although I was soaked in sweat by the time I had finished my 20 miles. Not a real long ride, but I had other things to do once I got back home. So, a good little heat training ride and I felt okay for the duration. Plus the single speed kept my efforts within a certain range which was another part of the plan. 

More soon....