Country Views: Pre-Harvest

Escape Route: Lafayette Street

September had 14 days of rain in Waterloo, according to a friend of mine who keeps track of such data. I'm not surprised. It was a terrible month for trying to get out to ride in the country. I was itching for a country ride badly, and now that September has been passed by, October seems to be the month for Fall rides. 

The weather is still weird. We generally have had frost by now and maybe a freeze. We have had nothing even close to this. Maybe upper 40's on a couple of mornings. 

It has dried up quickly and now it has gotten windy again. The temperature for my ride today was in the mid 70\s. Again.....weird. And that isn't the only odd thing going on outside these days. 

Even the lawns and ditches are brilliant green yet. It is as if it were April out there, but the corn and beans are all dried out. The contrast is striking. Generally we have more brown than green by now. Well.....you'll see. Just pay attention to the images in this post. It's 'unnattchural', I say. Weird.....

A most excellent bike path has opened up between Evansdale and Elk Run Heights. 

The winds from the South were strong and gusty on this blue-bird sky day. I decided to do a ride which would put the wind as a crosswind to me. This meant going East and then back West with a little bit of South and North thrown in for good measure. 

I rode the pink Black Mountain Cycles MCD as it has tires and chain lube I am testing out on it. The tires are pretty smooth so that was a good fit for this route which was about half pavement. The City has been digging up portions of the bike trail from downtown Waterloo to Evansdale, so I took the sidewalk along Lafayette Road to Evansdale and then I hopped on this awesome new bike path from Evansdale to Elk Run Heights. From there I took the new sidewalk along their newly paved street South toward where Young Road/Birdland Drive intersects with Gilbertville Road. 

Al this green seems unnatural for this time of the year. 

It doesn't get much better than this.

Now there was one 'silver lining' to all the rain and cloudy weather we had in September. That was the fact that the roads were not maintained and traffic smoothed out the gravel by pushing the gravel into the softened base material. The result was roads so smooth they were better than pavement in most places I rode. 

This creek, (typical), is usually just a small trickle. All the little creeks and rivers I saw were swollen yet. 

 

An 'over-the-shoulder' shot looking back down Young Road the way I came. 

I had felt pretty good going East. But my fear was that the crosswind was actually from the Southwest, and that would mean I was getting a push. Well, the good thing was that I did not have to go too far North if I did not want to, and this ended up how I chose to go. 

We had a top-ten ever (since records have been kept here in Iowa) rainy September, so streams and rivers are very full yet. I saw several little creeks still full of fast-flowing water. Then I also saw ditches in places with standing water. These were all green with algae. Thanks nitrate run-off! I really dislike seeing this.  

When you see a tower reaching into the sky, you know you are pretty high.

It wasn't all smooth sailing!

I went as far East as I could without going into Jesup, Iowa. This meant I turned North on Garling Road. The push from the Southern wind was nice. But I knew it wouldn't be long until I had to pay the piper for this easy passage North. 

Garling ends in a mile, then you have to jig-a-jog to the right and then left as the Northbound Holgate Road is about two tenths of a mile East from where Garling intersects Dubuque Road, which used to be Highway 20 in these parts. 

Holgate ends up becoming part of County road D-20 a mile North from Dubuque Road, so I turned left on Osage Road and ended up taking this all the way back to Evansdale. The first two miles were all chunky gravel. The only 'real gravel' I ran across on the entire loop. 

The Sun is hanging lower in the sky each day now. 

Osage Road finally smoothed out. Good thing too!

My fears were realized when I came back West on Osage Road. The wind was out of the Southwest, so I was bucking that all the way back to Evansdale where I was able to escape its direct effects in the urban environment. 

I decided to check out the bike path from Evansdale to Waterloo and about two thirds of the way to Waterloo I met with a check. There was heavy equipment on the trail and the men there were digging and everything was blocked. So, I had to turn-tail and find another way. I went back about 100 yards and saw where some of that heavy equipment had crawled over a grassy embankment. If they got there stuff down on the trail by coming from that direction, I figured I could retrace their route and get back into Waterloo.

Turns out I was right, and the rest of the trip was no big deal. I ended up with a few ticks shy of 29 miles in for the day. Not bad! I'll take it after not getting much of anything in September!