Author: bbcbike

Informal Ride to Hendricksville

By Allan Edmonds

Thanks to new club member Marion K for initiating an online proposal for a moderate informal club ride last Saturday afternoon. A total of fourteen riders showed up, including newcomers and old-timers. Tom R fell naturally into a leadership role, getting us organized. As previously suggested by email we agreed to do the club’s Hendricksville Ride to Rosie’s, a little over 30 miles.

So off we went. On the way out of town we passed Joe W’s group of six or so returning from their late morning ride.
We headed out 7th Street and Vernal Pike, as usual. For some reason I had a version of the route that took us on Howard Rd up to 43 in Whitehall rather than staying on Vernal. Everyone agreed to do it that way for a change. But we did have an extra hill climb that way. But the subsequent climb on Gardner headed back toward town dwarfed that.
We occasionally got a bit spread out. But several regrouping stops kept everyone together. We averaged right at an OWLSish 13 mph on the bike or about 10.8 including stopped time.
This was a nice group, not out to set any records, but succeeding to get out to enjoy a relatively warm, late autumn afternoon. Let’s aim for more of these moderate weekend afternoon rides whenever the weather cooperates!

Boltinghouse Challenge Unofficial Results

From Jennifer Miers
We have a new Unbelievable, (possibly) Unbeatable record!
Seven unhinged participants presented themselves for the Unsanctioned Boltinghouse Challenge 2009.
Unofficial results:
Participant Laps
Kevin “Purple” Hays 16
Nikhil “My water bottle is where?” Navkal 16
Dave “this isn’t nearly enough mileage” Tanner 14
Bob “Old Guys Rule” DeGroff 12
Chris “Argyle” Bonham 12
Jim “I’d rather be in Hawaii” Isenberg 12
Mark “medic!” Villanova 7
Thanks to the cyclists who took the dare and the spectators who came to cheer them on. Thanks also to Klaus Rothe for documenting the event (photo gallery at: http://gallery.me.com/krothe#100324&view=carouseljs&sel=0 ) and Stan Ellis for officiating.

Joe Palooka Ride to Oolitic, August 29

By Allan Edmonds
Eighteen riders gathered for the last 8 am ride of the year, a hilly 57 mile trip south to Oolitic, just north of Bedford.
After deciding on our main refueling stop in Oolitic and several regrouping spots along the way we were off.
On the way out of town we saw a group of another eight or so riders heading out for their planned ride to Nashville. So altogether there were some 26 club members out for a ride.
We naturally split into two compatible groups, but the whole group (plus one extra rider we picked up along the way) did re-groups together in Smithville, Judah, and Oolitic before heading home with the two groups going at their own speeds.

Route to Oolitic

We had a great time as usual posing with Joe Palooka in Oolitic. For those who don’t know this is a limestone statue of the comic strip character. It dates from about 1946 and commemorates the 100th anniversary of the big limestone operation in the area, although the sign indicates the limestone quarries began in the 1830s. The limestone for the Empire State Building in NYC came from the quarry just north of town.
The whole group posed with Joe…

(Click on photos, etc., for larger versions.)
After our photo ops we all went a few blocks south to the Casey’s convenience store for snacks and drinks.
This ride had quite a few major hill climbs. And here are several different elevation profiles of the route. The first one is derived simply from the map created on MapMyRide.com. The next three are all based on the same GPS recording of the entire ride. You decide which one you like better. Even though the three all used the very same GPS data they gave somewhat different estimates of total climb. I think this is due to different algorithms for interpolating the recorded data, which comes every 4 seconds.
MapMyRide’s Pre-profile (est. 1535 ft climb):

Garmin online profile (total climb 4215 ft climb):

Trimble. com profile (5927 ft climb):

Garmin Training Center software profile (3929 ft climb):

More photos of our regrouping time at the Joe Palooka statue can be found at PicasaWeb.

Harrodsburg via Ketcham

Pre-ride chatter centered around the “dogs” on Ketchum. Everybody except me had seemed to have heard about them and everybody had a unique theory to bring. Some with pepper spray; some _hoping_ the dog(s) were gone or restrained; others ready to yell at them to go home.
Kathy grabbed the sweet spot in the shade.

(click for a larger version)
Glenn explains the route to the gathering group:

The group started with 24 riders. We had a good mix of people: Several familiar faces and a few new ones; a father daughter pair dropped by to visit; and somebody who had just joined the club today (he had his printout to show me! ;).
We regrouped on the edge of town at Clear Creek School.

We took the “normal” route out through Olcott park and over to the raceway to Church Lane to Victor Pike to Fluck Mill. Pretty familiar territory for most OWLS riders. At the end of Fluck Mill we turned right to check out a part of Ketchum I had never ridden before. Then the surprise… Hills!


I was ready for the dogs; mentally at least, but nobody warned me about the hills! I honestly had not ridden this section of Ketchum and was myself a little surprised by the climb up out of Cedar Bluff. What about the dogs? All in all I counted 5 dogs. One that I was happy was restrained, two beagle mixes that just wanted to come out and say hi, a brown puppy lab that was too lazy to leave his shade tree, and another one just wondering in a farm field.
After making it off of Ketchum we turned onto Popcorn for a nice downhill all the way into Harrodsburg. After a brief rest it was time to tackle the last “big” hill up Monroe Dam road then the normal Strain Ridge route home.
All in all a great group to ride with!
Glenn Berger
More photos are available at PicasaWeb.

OWLS Go on a Wild Klaus Chase, August 25

By Allan Edmonds
Klaus Rothe led a group of 22 OWLS on a somewhat wild chase…through town and campus, down to Griffey Lake and up the other side. With busy streets at 6pm and many more cars in town because of the impending IU semester, Klaus several times zoomed to the lead and went out into the cross street at a stop sign, stopping cross traffic while our large group moved through. That guy does have…guts.
Klaus instructing the group on our new route:

(Click for a larger version.)
Then we cut over on Bethel to Old 37, down the hill on Audubon Drive through Marlin Hills. But before we got to Business 37 we took “the first right onto a gravel road” for God’s sake. We went along N Stone Mill Road for for a somewhat excruciating half or three quarters of a mile. Then we crossed Business 37 on Bayless, connecting to Kinser Pike. Whew! Some hill. Most of us had never been on Stone Mill or on Bayless. (Well, I think I once went _down_. That used to be a sometime Al Abbott shortcut coming back into town from Bottom Road.)
From there it was Bottom Rd to the Sewage Treatment Plant, where we regrouped on a bridge in the shade on W Maple Grove.
Here’s the group on W Maple Grove Rd:

(Click for a larger version.)
Then it was more new roads (for me) on N Maple Grove, W Acuff, etc. back to Kinser Pike.
From there we came back a familiar way through Cascades, but still had to deal with a lot of town to get back to the SE part of Bloomington. Along the way people began to drop off and head home. My small group, which thought we were last, enjoyed getting caught near the stadium by several riders who had taken a wrong turn back in the Ellettsville suburbs and had had to backtrack to get back on the route.
It’s always fun when someone in our group designs a new route and shares it with us. We proved that one actually can ride a road bike on gravel, at least for half a mile or so. And we found a few roads we’d never been on, several with substantial hills. Thanks to traffic, gravel, and hills my overall moving average was about the lowest it’s been this season, around 12.5 mph, closer to what I often average when I include stopped time.

Winery Social Ride, August 23

By Allan Edmonds

Kathy Smith and Ralph Zuzolo continued their longstanding tradition of leading a Sunday afternoon social ride out to the Oliver Winery, with an informal picnic on the winery grounds before heading back to the park. As usual Mark Napier drove a sag vehicle so that riders could send a snack along with him or commission him to transport purchases back to Bryan Park.
About a dozen riders took part in this 25 mile round trip event on this cool August afternoon.

Gathering in Bryan Park

This shot doesn’t do justice to the classic 1980s BBC jersey on the left!
Regrouping after the first crossing of Highway 37 at Kinser Pike.


We got fairly spread out, but eventually everyone made it to the winery.

One neat tidbit: Stan Ellis reported that a study showed that the three top reasons people visit Monroe County are
1. IU
2. Lake Monroe
are you ready?
3. Oliver Winery
We headed back home in a couple of different groups with some accepting a sag ride back to the park.
The scariest part of the whole trip was crossing a very busy Highway 37 FOUR TIMES. (Is this all because of the IU fall semester which opens in one week?)

Chris Tietz: I know I'm late to this discussio…

Chris Tietz:
I know I'm late to this discussion (as a new member, I've not explored the blog before), but it is important to note:

I see a new study just released out of Toronto indicating that 90% of bike/car accidents are caused by the car…To me, this means that we need to be defensive.

1) The rules of the road apply to bikes. All cyclists are safer when cyclists and cars adhere to the rules of the road. Period. With equal access comes equal responsibility…and this includes stopping for funerals…

2) Safety is never redundant. We help one another at the same time that we take responsibility for ourselves. I would never take someone elses "clear call" as authorization to risk my own safety, but likewise, redundancy breeds safe outcomes. None of us has license to "blow through an intersection" unless it's a closed course…and those don't exist.

3) The League of American Cyclists is sponsoring an LCI Certification this weekend coming weekend in Bloomington. I will be participating (and hopefully will become certified). My wife is LCI certified. Raymond Hess at the City is LCI certified. If we need to put on a special seminar for the club and it's members, let's do it.

Safety is a priority at our house after my wife was riding with a man when he was struck and killed in Evansville about three years ago. It profoundly affected her. Then, on his memorial ride one month later, my wife wrecked and broke a wrist, 5 ribs, collapsed a lung, and was hospitalized for 2 weeks.

Chris Tietz

Busy Saturday, August 22

By Allan Edmonds
Bryan Park Pool Parking Lot was more crowded than usual this Saturday at 8 a.m. We had our usual large group of Saturday riders, more than enough for the two separate rides that set out to a certain amount of kerfluffle. But we also had a big city-sponsored garage sale filling up the lot across Woodlawn, with buyer vehicles parking in “our” lot.
Stan goes over plans for the Clay City Ride.

Stan Ellis, leader par excellence of the Clay City almost-a-century ride, got things organized, distributing maps, deciding the main stops, including food stops, etc. About 8:10 we all set out, with eleven of us heading east on South Downs toward Nashville, doing a small, common, variant of the club’s Nashville Ride (Old Hilly Hundred route), but taking Owl Creek (naturally enough) down to Helmsburg Road. The other larger group headed out 7th Street toward Spencer.
When the OWLS group was crossing College Mall Road we encountered Rudy Savich heading west, late, toward the park. That put him at least a ten minute deficit to the main group.
Ron dropped back to work on a squeaky brake. Although we learned later that he continued the ride, he never caught up and eventually decided to take a more leisurely break in Nashville.
Some of Lanham Ridge was quite rough. I was holding on for dear life. It was only later at the turn onto Owl Creek that noticed I had lost my trusty old CatEye computer which I had had for the last nine or ten years, with not even a battery change. The mount broke last year and since then I had been using a different mount in which the computer fit rather loosely. Oh well. These things happen. Its odometer showed something over 15,000 miles.
It seemed like it might rain, so we were anxious to get to the Shell Station in Nashville before it started. But we never got more than a little spittle…not really a sprinkle, even. Even so the temperature remained in the low 60’s for the whole ride, and more than one rider went with the temptation for coffee over Gatorade or soda. Ken bought a bag of doughnut holes at the shop next door and shared them around.

We then headed out for Bear Wallow, the first time ever for some of our group, and the first time in the south-to-north direction this year for any of us. At the top of the long steady climb we briefly regrouped and took a photo of some of our group in front of the wallow.
We returned following the standard route to Bean Blossom, then in on 45, with a detour on South Shore Drive. We covered the 52 miles in a little over 4 hours, including stops.
As for the Clay City crowd … [to be continued when I hear more]

Chris Tietz brought up many of these issues earlie…

Chris Tietz brought up many of these issues earlier in the season, after witnessing a couple of preventable bike-on-bike collisions. Perhaps he can add his perspective, here.

I think all riders should be prepared to stop at all stop signs. While I appreciate when motorists yield their right of way to the group, these crossings work best for everyone when the cyclists are tightly packed. Somehow, we should figure out when it makes more sense to do multiple group crossings, with the riders and motorists yielding (and exercising) their respective stop sign rights as they should.

–Keith V.