Cycling

It’s been an interesting year, so far. I’ve ridden a few centuries, and even completed the 160-mile Ride Across INdiana. I’ve ridden faster, and covered much greater distances, than ever before. All of this leads me to ask: what now?

I’ve given some thought to pursuing even longer distance rides, either through Randonneuring or other channels. And I have to admit, longer distances do sound appealing. For a while it felt like I was trying to see just how far I could go (literally).

But, the thing that I didn’t really consider, going into the longer rides, is that not only do the long events themselves take up a huge chunk of time, the training it takes to be able to do them is even more time-consuming.  It seems a few of the more hardcore local riders ride centuries on at least a weekly basis, if not more. For me, I think that would be physically doable, but it would leave me drained all the time, and I wouldn’t have time to spend with my beautiful wife, or doing anything else. I also think it would cease to be fun, if I approached riding that way.

After RAIN, I debated finding a double century or something else to build up to. But instead I found my riding tapering off a bit. Aside from commuting, I’ve been doing less riding during the week, and my weekend rides have mostly been shorter. And you know what? I’m having a blast!

Ultimately, cycling is a hobby. I’m glad I focused on it enough to do RAIN, but I need to find some balance. I need to spend more time with my beautiful wife, and our dog, and the rest of my family. And I also want to spend time on my other hobbies … especially writing music.

Music

You might ask, “What music?” I originally started this blog to chronicle my music-writing. I used to make electronic music, on a regular basis. Cycling just took over, and I haven’t written any music, or written about music, for quite a while. I miss it, and I’m going to start making music again. If you want to check out my music, listen to the album I made back in 2006, Elements (it’s free). There’s more where that came, which I will find a good way to share soon.

What does this mean?

Cycling-wise, I still intend to ride a lot, and probably even do centuries on a semi-regular basis. For right now, at least, I have no intention of pursing anything much longer than that, unless it takes the form of a multi-day tour. I’m not really scaling back my cycling much, except to return it to normal levels before I started training for RAIN.

And hopefully, you’ll see some new music from me soon. You might also see some music-related posts popping up around here. If they don’t interest you, ignore them. Or, you can always read only my bicycling posts, if you prefer.

I’ll leave you to ponder this hilarity: Ambient Sequencer AS-606.

Sarah and I spent the weekend in Fort Wayne, visiting her family. I set aside some time to ride on Saturday. Initially, I was planning on riding with the 3 Rivers Velo Sport club, who I’ve ridden with before, but their ride was starting at 8:00 am in Roanoke, IN, about a 25-minute drive from where we were staying. After being up late Friday night, I knew there was no chance I’d be getting up that early. Instead, I put together a route south of town. Here’s the route.

In the morning, a few storms rolled through, but based on the radar, it appeared they would blow through, and then the rain would stop. So I waited a while before starting my ride. As soon as the storms stopped, I got ready and rolled out.

It was still overcast and gloomy and the roads were quite wet. I bought some clip-on fenders for the Bianchi but forgot to bring them. Oh well!

After riding on a couple of busy roads very briefly, I was surprised at how quickly the scenery started looking rural.

In fact, within probably about a mile of where we were staying, I found myself on a gravel road.

I have been wondering how the Bianchi would handle gravel, so I suppose it’s just as well. Frankly I’ve been reticent to intentionally take such a nice road bike on gravel roads, but I didn’t hesitate to take the gravel here, that happened to be on the route.

Naturally, the bike did just fine. It sure got dirty, riding on the wet gravel, but that’s OK.

There was even some washboarding and still, the bike did fine. It sure was a rough ride, but I had no problems.

Once I was back on paved roads, I mostly had chipseal to deal with. It wasn’t really much smoother than the gravel.

I crossed I-469.

The roads here are so much flatter than what I’m used to. There were a few small hills here and there, but not many.

The scenery was different from what I’m used to as well. Long flat fields of soybeans and corn, and farms, and a few homes, all laid out in a grid pattern. At home, where it’s hillier, the roads take a much more circuitous path. I prefer my home terrain, but I always enjoy trying to get the feel for different areas.

Soon I reached the small town of Ossian.

It was a cute town, with a nice downtown area.

A bakery, and later a coffee shop, tempted me, but I was only 10 miles into my ride. I kept on riding.

As I left Ossian, I could feel the heat picking up a little bit. It was already quite humid, from the earlier rain. Things also got a little hillier.

And then, I found myself on a gravel road once again.

This time, I was on gravel for a good three miles or so, and a few hills made it a little more challenging. Again, the Bianchi did fine, but I do think that trying to ride gravel with big hills would be a problem, with such skinny tires.

I crossed “Eight Mile Creek” a couple of times.

The next sections of road altered between paved and gravel.

I reached Zanesville, IN. It seemed to be too small to have much of a downtown area. In fact, according to Wikipedia, “Zanesville residents are ineligible for street mail delivery, and thus, must get their mail at the post office.” In other words, it’s tiny.

There was, however, a place called “County Line Pizza & Mini Mart.” It seemed to be part restaurant, part convenience store. It reminded me of Pinnick’s, in Williams.

I stopped here to get some water and have a snack. The lady running the place was very nice and said she had had a few people come through who were riding across the country. Pretty cool!

A little past Zanesville, I turned back toward Fort Wayne. I spent 7-8 miles going due east, on a long, straight road. I am not used to that! It was fun being able to push a big gear for a while.

I passed the small town of Yoder, which seemed to consist mostly of a set of railroad tracks, and a grain company.

Soon I turned back north on roads I had ridden on earlier, including a little more gravel.

This was a fun ride. It was fun exploring a new area, and seeing a couple small towns. I would like to go back to Ossian sometime and spend more time looking around.

Last week was the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. The shower peaked Thursday night, but Sarah and I went out both Wednesday and Thursday nights to see what we could see. We drove outside of town a good 20 minutes or so, into a very dark state forest and laid on the ground, on the dam of our favorite lake, looking up at the night sky.

Wednesday, we saw about 15-20 meteors, include 3-4 really long/bright ones. I tried to take some photos, and while I did get some good shots of the stars, the meteors proved difficult to photograph.

In this crop, you can see a meteor. I had to increase the brightness a lot to be able to see it, but it’s there.

The next shot appears to have a meteor, but it’s actually an airplane.

Thursday night, my mom and nephew joined us. I was worried that my nephew, who is 12 1/2, would get bored — even at the peak of the shower, in a very dark location, it can be 10 minutes or more between meteors. It takes a lot of patience. But he was fascinated! And, he was great at spotting meteors. He counted 22 meteors … and he noted that number 5 was the best.

Even if there hadn’t been a meteor shower at all, it would have been a great experience. It’s shocking how many more stars you can see, just by going a ways out of town. We all also enjoyed the sounds of various insects, and the occasional ”ploop” sound of a frog jumping in the water, or a fish coming to the surface.

Watching the meteor shower certainly gave me a renewed sense of appreciation for astronomy, and I’m glad my nephew was fascinated as well. My great-great uncle discovered Morehouse Comet, so I guess it’s in our blood!