May 23rd

Milepost 3??

I was much improved for a day off of the bike yesterday. I read a lot and watched some dumb videos and ate some great food and some not so great food. Someone stole my remaining water bottle from my locked-outside-the-hotel bike and that’s fine. If you need a water bottle that badly, you can have it; a gatorade bottle has filled its spot on my frame and serves to hold liquid just as well as the orange purpose-made one did. So now I have 2 disposable drink bottles on my bike for holding water. Best possible item to lose or have stolen, really!

Partially as a result of relaxation but also partly due to getting a reasonably early start, I rolled at a mostly relaxed pace today. I feel the need to pedalpedalhard when I’m on a too-skinny shoulder with too much traffic and that was mostly not the case today. Another good-route day from the ACA route on some stellar low-traffic, old-disused-but-not-falling-apart highways parallel to the interstate for the win!

A couple of early bad driver interactions were the only remarkable thing about shared roadway use today. Every time someone buzzes me, I play the “careless or asshole?” game, trying to guess whether they were intentional in their choice to endanger me or if maybe they didn’t even see me. Once I’ve spent long enough thinking about that I’m usually cooled down enough to not continue to obsess about the latest in a string of near death instances that constellate my lifeline (and probably yours, too, even if you don’t bike down busy roads…)

There were some long climbs, and some steep ones. Definitely much hillier today than yesterday! Including what is the highest number I’ve ever seen on a sign like this: 16% grade! It was swoopy on the down, and struggly on the up.

A screaming downhill stuck at 42.1mph for a while, wonder if that is my speedometer’s top reading? (The internet refuses to substantiate that theory but it seems like I was coasting in various different aero positions with no change in the readout, so I am suspicious!) There was also another downhill beyond the top speed I can pedal on this bike - which is around 35mph unloaded (loaded I can’t pedal quite as hard without substantial wobble…so probably usefully 30mph or so as top-pedal-able). That’s not been super frequent this trip (or indeed in my riding overall!); you really have to trust the pavement when going that fast since dodging is mostly impossible and there’s definitely been variable pavement quality this trip. But I chanced it and survived!

Today I crossed the interstate at least a half dozen times, and was thankful not to be riding on it. It was useful to remind myself to be thankful when the shoulder of the road I was riding seemed a big small

Had lunch at Betty’s Place in Toledo, featuring hella malt (big-as-my-head, for $3.50) and a good burger. It was a good lunch on a good day. Was pretty sunny all afternoon so some additional sunscreen plus actually drinking plenty of water this afternoon left me feelin’ pretty good once I pulled in.

For some reason, today was Minions day. 2 separate displays some distance apart.

Longview and Castle Rock are quite pretty. It’s clear Castle Rock is trying very hard, for instance this skills park that Lori and I volunteered at an event at last year (I rode the pump track fully loaded…But I did not ride the skinnies, since I was not feeling well-balanced.)

…and while I’m not sure about Longview’s story I can at least say it was nice and pretty and park-y too!

fair number of pictures in ye olde album-du-jour

Written by Chris McCraw who resides in Portland, OR but maybe his heart is on the bike?