Country Views: Grey And Windy

Yep! You'll hear more about this soon....

So we took a Sunday off from everything and allowed Mrs. Guitar Ted to just have a chill day for herself. That meant sleeping in late as she'd like, which meant I had the morning to myself, (post cat duties, that is) and so I decided to head out for a ride. 

We had one of those unusual Summer cold fronts blow through here overnight bringing drier, cooler air down along with some brisk North wind. It was right around 60°F when I left for my ride but with the overcast skies and that wind it felt pretty chilly. Chilly enough that I wore my Twin Six wind vest. I also wore some thicker fabric baggies and my Alpaca wool long socks, and my feet still were chilly! 

Anyway, I was out of the house and riding by 8:30am so I figured on trying a longer route on my Noble Bikes GX5. I had a new test/review item onboard.  This time it is a Wahoo Elemnt ROAM GPS computer. I will have more about that tomorrow. Stay tuned.... (Standard Disclaimer applies) 

Since the wind was out of the North, more or less, I chose a route from the house that I use to take advantage of a North wind at the end of the ride. Kind of..... You'll see.

These Canadian Geese and their young stampeded across the bike path on my way out of town.

Not much brown to be found anymore now.

I decided to head out on the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard bike path which goes Northeast, more or less. The wind didn't feel completely out of the North, but seemed to have an Easterly component to it. That ended up becoming a benefit later in the ride.

This big glacial erratic stands in stark contrast to the surrounding plants in this field now.

Newell Street had plenty of fresh gravel on it going out.

Heading East, it was a slog with a quartering headwind and lots of fresh gravel. Still, the new GPS was telling me I was averaging over 12 mph, so I felt that was a win. The Noble was a bit of a handful in all the chunk, but I held station and powered through despite that. With the good time I made coming out and now with this speed I was holding, I was encouraged to take the longer route. 

Barclay United Presbyterian Church

Prairie Roses. Iowa's state flower.

I had thought to stop at the bridge over Poyner Creek on Newell and assess my options, which I did. I was pretty sure I was going to turn back and head South, but now I was feeling less like that due to my body coming around for me and so I plowed forward toward New Barclay Cemetery where I figured on grabbing an image at the gates and then going South from there. 

Looking back down Newell. Were the surveyors drunk when they laid out this road, or does it follow an older trail?

Looking at the maps I found I was going to have to do about a mile of County road to get to where it was I wanted to be. I was aiming for Young Road to get to a Westward way back toward Waterloo. 

The intersection of Holgate Road and Osage Road.

Going South for a bit revealed that I had been working harder than I felt like I was. Now it was a LOT easier on the pedals and I was going 18mph easily. That didn't last too long as I reached Young Road and headed West, but that was still easier than going North and East.

A lone hay wagon sits in the midst of this grassy field along Young Road.

A final bit of adventure on the bike path a few miles from the house.

As I pedaled down Young Road, I became aware that my left shoulder was achy. That's my bad shoulder, and when it gets grumbly like this it can become a big bother. And well, it did just that. I held on until I got into the outskirts of Evansdale but I had to stop for a while to relieve the pain for a bit. I was wondering how bad this was going to get before I reached the house, but strangely enough, that break I took alleviated all the major pain and I was "fine", so to speak. 

Leaving Evansdale on the bike path I came across a cut through the path and the dike it sits on where construction was taking place. I found that the construction crews had made a dirt road crossing down below, so I MTB'ed it down and crawled back up in my low gear without having to dismount. That was a quick bit of adventure but it broke up this usually boring path into nice shorter bits. 

34 miles later I was home again. A nice outing on a strangely chilly, grey June day.