Beyond the Ride

  Post #22:  8am sharp we turned the pedals out of Dinosaur Park.  The band of three gravel riders took the start of the inaugural Gravel Promenade.  Believe me when I say this was a Galactic Premier Gravel Event.  If you did not attend, you missed out on being on the ground floor of a fabulous and well organized event.  Seriously, it was just a bike ride, and it was nothing special.            We had a bit of rain the night before, so we avoided Petrie Level B road with the thought that soil retains moisture and it would not be good to get the bikes all muddied up at the beginning of the ride.  With that said, we went east towards LaPorte City.     Before we got into LaPorte City we took a jaunt south of town and explored a B-Road called 13th road.  It looked like it recently had grader work done on it.  As we rode we realized the roads were extremely dusty and were confident that B roads wou...

  Post #21:  Tomorrow July 31st we roll out of Prairie Grove Park at 8am.  The park has a bathroom and a water spicket (I grew up saying spicket, not spout, I also say Crik and not Creek).  We may have showers to contend with in the early morning hours, but they appear to taper off at 5am.  These roads are dry, so I do not expect a mess.   Revisiting the route, there are no Level B-roads except for Petrie.  We can easily re-route around that if need be.       In other news this ride is officially a international known event.  Thanks to a internationally known blog Guitar Ted Productions .  We made his blog a few times, it is not like he lives a few blocks away from me.  But hey if I was not obnoxious about something, people would think I would have a fever.       So come on out.  If it does rain, i only expect that to make the ride go faster.  If it does not, I expect the ride to be...

  Post #20: This Saturday, July 31st @ 8am, we will launch into a 77 mile gravel ride .  We will travel the south and eastern border of Blackhawk County. The official name of the park we are leaving from is Prairie Grove Park, but I will always call it Dinosaur park.     I will be riding to the ride from my house and rolling out at 8am sharp.  We will be racing the sun all day, so we will start with a slightly cooler temp, but by 10am, BOB will be high in the sky and pushing his heat on us.  In short bring water.  Our first stop is Jesup at 40 miles in.  I plan shorter stops towards the end of a ride because of this very reason.  We will have another stop in Dunkerton.  In short, a lot of water opportunities to be had.       I will be riding my Twin Six FSU with Vittoria Terrno 2.1 tires.  I am telling you this, as this shows I am not expecting to set any land record speeds.  Ride what ya got, I would think ...

  Post #19: It began with a simple exchange of text messages between Guitar Ted and Myself, as it once was pre-CoVID.  "Hey, wanna ride?", and we discussed the ride details.  It is generally easy to get Mark to go on a ride, if I promise two things, a route with roads I have never done and a doughnut stop in La Porte City.       Sometimes on our rides I get the sense I have explored more gravel roads around the counties surrounding Blackhawk County.  I know this sounds absurd but there are times when Mark's camera is out non-stop on a ride.  Mark has an on-going joke that he keeps going on taking pictures of barns.  He took a lot of pictures on Saturday.       We left town under the cover of overcast skies.  It had that late summer/early fall feeling of an Indian Summer heat wave.  The major difference was the corn was still up and ready for harvest.  That overcast came and went through the ri...