Note: this may be a little confusing. I actually already had my surgery on Friday. See my status update here. I just didn’t get around to writing about this ride until afterwards.

After work on Thursday, I wanted to fit in one last ride before my foot surgery. I thought about planning  a route, but never really got around to it. Instead, I decided to do a ramble west of town. I stopped by home first to drop off some dead weight, but forgot to drop off my lock, and I had a pannier with me, so I still had a few extra pounds to deal with. The ride was short — around 11 miles — but hilly. And, I was still dressed in my work clothes. This actually worked out just fine. I’ll be posting a video, but I will put that at the end of my post. The scenery in this video is a lot better than in previous videos. Here’s a map of the route I ended up riding.

I started heading west on Rhorer Road, which turns into Gordon Pike. This road was slightly busier than what I’m used to, and had a couple of good hills.

But I wasn’t on it for long before I turned onto the Bloomington Rail-Trail. It didn’t take long for scenery to turn more rural.

Before long I was on Church Ave, which took me to Victor Pike. I then crossed State Road 37 and was truly out in the country. The riding in this area is a lot different from where I’m used to riding. The hills are just relentless on this side of town. Most of them are smaller, but you ride one hill after another. It’s both exhilarating and exhausting. And, there are several limestone quarries out in this area, which are always interesting.

I mostly took video throughout this section, so I suppose this would be a good place to post the video. I did more editing and added music this time. The music is a track I wrote a few years ago.  The video is rather long, but the beginning and portion from about 4:30-5:30 are the best parts. Toward the end it gets dark but I kept this footage to give an idea of what the experience was like. The light was incredible for most of the ride, as it went from near-sunset, to full-on sunset, to dusk. Just lovely.

And here are a few more still shots. It felt wonderful to get out and ride, and I especially relished the opportunity, since I knew it’d be a while before I could ride again.

This was a fitting ride, both as a first real recreational ride after moving to our new house, and as the last ride before my surgery. It felt like a chapter of my riding closed but another opened at the same time. Here’s looking forward to more exploration of this beautiful land, which is different from my previous riding territory, but equally full of wonder. And, my old riding grounds aren’t too far away, either.

I had hoped to get a lot of riding in over my birthday weekend, but things didn’t pan out that way — I ended up spending a crazy amount of time at work — but I did manage to get out for a little while on Saturday before I had to go to work. I did my Water Works route, a favorite training route of around 24 miles. It’s a scenic route to begin with, but the snow made it even better. The roads were clear, however, making a relatively fast ride on The Trucker a possibility; it felt great to cover a lot of ground more quickly.

I was in a rut, cycling-wise, before this weekend. On Saturday, I headed out for a road ride, even though we’d gotten a few inches of snow the day/night before. I was a little unsure what to expect; most of my riding this winter, except for commuting, has been on trails or gravel roads.

Fortunately, it had been warm enough that the main roads had little to no snow on them. State Road 45 was clear completely. Mt. Gilead, a side road, had some snow, but it wasn’t too bad. Still, I was riding the Trucker, with slick tires, so I had to be extra careful.  Interestingly enough, the hills were the *easiest* part, as they had large amounts of sand and salt on them. The flat sections were largely untreated, and as such has some snow and ice.

In the first few shots, you can see the progression of the road conditions, going away from town.

Here you can see that I’m enjoying myself. It felt great to ride the Trucker after spending so much time commuting on The Beast.

More importantly, the scenery was tremendous. I’ve ridden through this area dozens of times before, but it’s never looked like this.

You can see how thick the sand is, on this steep, winding downhill.

I made my way over to Bethel Lane, another back road … and the road conditions were OK at first, but quickly deteriorated. Icy snow and snowy ice made for very little traction. I was impressed at how well my slick tires handled these conditions, especially at one point when I stopped and put a foot down, only to have it nearly slide right out from under me.

At one point, my rear tire suddenly slid sideways. I recovered without falling, but it was nerve-wracking. I just had to go very slowly for a few miles.

I stopped to take a break for a minute and realized icicles were accumulating on my fenders. I had to break the ice off the front fender, as it was starting to rub the tire.

I was worried about the hill that I would have to ride down to get to Lake Griffy. The road there was in slightly better shape than Bethel Lane had been, but not by a whole lot. Once I reached the bottom of the hill, the road was clear and I rode across the causeway. The lake was frozen and a lone fisherman was out on the ice.

The road up the hill on the other side of the lake, back toward town, was clear and easy riding. Well, easy except the fact that it’s a big hill.

Within a few minutes, I was back in town. It’s a bit jarring to turn the corner after riding past a lake and through a forest, and suddenly see one of the busiest roads in town. That’s one thing I love about Bloomington, though, you don’t have to go far to get to what is essentially the middle of nowhere.

From there, I rode home, basically following my commute route. Some kind soul had again plowed the bike path. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a vast improvement over what it’s like when left alone. Whoever is responsible for this: thank you!

All in all, a great ride. Just a bit over 18 miles, but it felt like more, given the conditions.