Author: bbcbike

Midweek Century to Vincennes

The first of May marked the season’s first drive-and-ride century, great spring weather, and the largest group we’ve had yet. Jim called his route the the “Odon Ride”. He designed it as a test of a middle part of the planned Double Century from Bloomington to Vincennes in June. As we will see there were a couple of issues! This map shows where we crossed the new I-69 coming and going.

We had nine people meet at Bryan Park at 7:30 AM to carpool: Jim, Allan, Klaus, Joe, Dave, Dana, Jen, Mike, and Stan. Kathy and Mark met us in Odon. We called Glenn as we passed by Crane and he took off work for the rest of the day to ride with us. That made a group of 12. Only a few of us are retired, but we are all folks with somewhat flexible schedules!

We got started a little after 9 AM and rode along quite happily for a while until we had trouble trying to cross the White River on backroads.

Here’s the route most of us actually took:

We had a little trouble staying on the route in Washington as you can see if you look closely. After a while we passed a sign that said the road was closed, but didn’t quite believe it since it was off to the side. Pretty soon we came upon some water in the road that we could go around. Then came more water, which we rode through, most of us getting our shoes wet. Then we came to MORE water, this time appearing much deeper, with a visible current. We razzed Jim a bit until he said he would try to wade it, carrying shoes and bike. The rest of us decided we weren’t up for doing that, and with Joe’s recommendations we backtracked adding several miles to the day’s route. In the end Glenn also stayed with Jim.
We had no decent cell phone service and had no idea what had become of Jim and Glenn as we approached Vincennes. We left messages saying we were stopping at a Subway on the main drag. We had just sat down to eat when they showed up. Although they had taken the much shorter route, it took them quite a bit of extra time. It turned out that they had to wade FOUR times. And then Jim had a flat, which turned out to be a punctured sidewall that required a boot not to blow out. WHEW. But all was well and we ate lunch together before heading down to old town and the river, etc. As usual, Joe was able to regale us with stories about the history of Vincennes. One tidbit: This is one of the few places one can ford the Wabash River, here where the ancient Buffalo Trace crossed. Another thing we learned is the Vincennes University is the oldest university in the state. You can read some of the history of Vincennes by clicking on the link to Wikipedia.

Here’s a picture Klaus took of most of the rest of us at the George Rogers Clark National Historical Park Rotunda on the Wabash River in Vincennes:

On the way back we got split into at least three groups, which has been unusual for the century rides. The largest group headed out from a refueling stop because at least one person needed to be back in Bloomington before 6 PM.

Then my group of three went. Finally Jim and Klaus brought up the rear.

A close comparison between the planned route and the actual route shows a little “appendix” along the northern edge. This was there for services and to bring the route closer to 100 miles. My group skipped it and I expect others did too. After all we already had added 5-6 extra miles.

The last surprise is not obvious from the maps. But near the end the road turned to gravel. Our three debated what to do, but finally decided to plunge ahead. It turned out that over 3 of the last 5 miles were a long gravel stretch, including a 15 degree climb. My moving average for the day dropped from 15.1 to 14.7 just in those 3 miles. And I never would have used my granny gear except for that one steep climb. Too bad there’s no helpful and current database of paved roads! In the end it turned out that Jim and Klaus backtracked and rode back into Odon on the Highway 58 shoulder, but all the rest of us did the gravel. Jim did report that the highway was rough going since it had been shaved in preparation for resurfacing.

According to Jim’s Ride with GPS route we expected only about 3000 feet of climbing for the day. My GPS recorded only about 1700. Maybe the truth is somewhere in between. But in any case you won’t find many century routes in southern Indiana with less climbing.

Altogether it was an adventure of a ride on a beautiful, warm and sunny day. A great time.

For insurance reasons and the desire to keep these centuries open to people across a wider area of the state, these centuries are not designated as official club rides. Anyone interested in keeping informed or in joining in on any of this years midweek centuries should contact Jim Schroeder to be put on the special email list and/or join the Southern Indiana Centurions Facebook group. 

Bicycling the Natchez Trace

For those interested in bicycling vacations, you may read about Jim and Sylvia Schroeder’s spring break vacation on the Natchez Trace in Mississippi. As usual you may click on the photos for larger versions.

By Jim Schroeder

March 30, 2013

We started our Spring break north of Nashville with dinner with the Shirley’s at Calhouns, a fancy BBQ place.  We did the Nashville thing on Friday and visited Willie Nelson’s museum and gift shop.  We skipped the expensive museum, but we did get our cache of souvenirs.  Next door was Cooters, the authentic Dukes of Hazard museum and it was the right price, free.  Next was downtown and Broadway, Ernest Tubbs Record Shop, Raymon Auditorium,the original home of the Grand Old Opry, and Puckett’s Grocery and Restaurant for lunch.  We then drove to Hohenwold  via the Natchez Trace that we wouldn’t be riding.  They finished the entire Trace as of 2005, about 13 years after I had ridden it with Jon Adair.  An architecturally acclaimed bridge and thirty miles of rolling highway awaited us before we got to the town of Hohenwold.

Sylvia and I rode an out-n-back of 39 miles to and on the Trace.  We first stopped at Tina’s General Store to load up on snacks, but couldn’t find any moon pies.  The traffic picked up a bit as we got closer to the Trace.  First, there was the Meriwether Lewis Memorial, and we learned of the unfortunate demise of one of the exploring duo of Lewis & Clark.  No traffic, smooth pavement, and overcast: what more could a couple of cyclists want.  Well, a little warmer (51 degrees) and some sun would’ve been nice.

We were buzzed by a Home Depot semi, and I immediately called 911.  No commercial vehicles are allowed on the Trace, and I hope that the ranger pursued this and fined Home Depot.  I’m a Lowe’s man!

It was a great first day of riding with the long inclines and 40mph declines.  We saw some nice falls and a few wild turkey. Unfortunately, the 3pm rain came at 2pm; confused with the time zones maybe?  So, the last five miles were in the rain. Mexican food at Rio Colorado for dinner.

March 31, 2013
The plan was to ride all the way to Tupelo, a daunting 130 mile trek.  But, Sylvia wanted to leave the hotel when I did, so she drove me to the Trace and leapfrogged me along the way.  Every now and then it would sprinkle a little and I’d put on the jacket and then take it off.  I was riding well, until those long inclines sprang up.  The average speed that I’d built would dwindle down, so my goal for the day now became >15mph.  By the time I got into Alabama, the rain stopped.  In my mind I was screaming, “Roll tide!”. This state was God’s country.  I even saw my shadow a couple of times!  But as I was crossing the Tennessee River, not the state’s border, the rain came back pelting me, and then a radar yellow downpour.  Sylvia had no where to stop, so I told her to go ahead to the first turnout available.  Well, two miles of uphill later, this almost run over sopping wet of a cyclist found the waiting Subaru.  New plan:  check the weather radar and wait it out and what the heck, drive some down the road but not too much.  I still wanted the 100, not 90!  So, even with a few drops still around, I hopped back on the bike and forged ahead.  After awhile the rain stopped and I was in time trial mode to finish strong.  102 miles and 15 mph.
April 1, 2013
Today, was a loop on the tandem northwest of Tupelo.  Our first introduction to Mississippi was the rumble divots on the narrow shoulders of the state highways.  Oh well, instead of riding over on the shoulder, I had to stay two foot in the lane, still mine, and slow down the auto and truck traffic.  We finally turned onto a country road, and the ride was the best. Phlox growing wild  covering whole lawns, the red buds starting to appear.  We even spotted a harvested cotton field with a few remnants sticking around.  The popular local route was a good find from “Ride with GPS” and we even went by a Civil War Trail monument documenting the battles around Tupelo.  It was odd that the north was called the enemy in all the depictions. And here we were, Yankees on a blue and yellow Union tandem.  We got back to our hotel via the Natchez Trace, and we stopped at the Park Service and learned more about the history of the Trace. 29 miles
April 2, 2013
I left Tupelo at about 9am with a cold northeasterly tailwind.  Despite a bright sunny day, it was a chilly 52 degrees. Today’s route to French Camp was rather dull, but the riding was good.  Sylvia would drive about 15 to 20 miles ahead, and wait while reading her book.  The trees were all budding out with many redbuds inter dispersed.  The wildflowers were flanking the highway, whites, lavenders, yellows, and crimson sorts keeping my sights occupied while my legs did all the working.  I spied the first two dogwoods of the trip about ten miles before my destination.  The tailwind died down, and the temperature shot up to a high of 65 degrees.  All layers were shed as I sped to French Camp Bed & Breakfast.  This  small town is all about this Christian academy for troubled youth and families desiring a fresh start.  Known as “the town with nothing to do”, French Camp is a divine destination for this wearied traveler.  90 miles, 16.8 mph
April 4, 2013
We didn’t ride the tandem yesterday as it was too cold, too windy, and off and on raining.  So, we drove to Starkville to check out my son-in-law’s alma mater, Mississippi State University.  We saw one of those SEC football stadiums.  Boy, do these people love football.  We also had some lunch at one of the tailgater’s favorites, Dooey’s, for some catfish and pulled pork.
The forecast didn’t sound good for today, so a little drizzle to start the morning was a hopeful sign as I left French Camp. The pace was surprisingly fast and steady as I was averaging 17mph or so the first 30 miles.  I slowed a little, and the drizzle finally ended, yet it was still cloudy and cool. I saw a few birds, some egrets and herons, and I rode along a 20 mile long reservoir before reaching Jackson, and then the excitement began.  In order to get to our hotel, Sylvia had to drive with an uncooperative GPS, “Michelle”, while I tried to keep her on course while I was an eighth of a mile behind.  After a couple of dicey left hand turns, we finally made it to our hotel, where our rooms were booked on the wrong days.  Oh well.  83 miles, 16.3 mph.
April 5, 2013
We decided to ride an extensive Multi-use Path system that paralleled the Natchez Trace for about 12 miles.  Twenty years ago, I remember that there was no parkway and a lot of resistance to it in Jackson.  Twenty years later, Jackson got the Trace and Ridgeland got those paths.  Although Sylvia didn’t like the traffic getting to the paths, it was a rather enjoyable 33 miles. We even took pictures of bridges for Ron Brown.  Unfortunately, the rush hour traffic getting back to the hotel was quite stressful especially when a right turning car turned into our path.
April 6, 2013
I started my last day just north of Jackson with a beautiful sunny morning as Sylvia dropped me off at the ranger station.  There were many joggers stretching before they embarked on their Saturday morning runs on the bike path.  I saw quite a few more bicyclists on the Trace, also.  There were some local Jackson riders meeting up at any of the turn-off points and also some loaded tourists just starting their journey on the Trace.  The speeds were a little slow due to a pesky 5-10mph headwind the entire distance. Sylvia leapfrogged me every 20 miles or so.  At the last stop she toured the Mount Locust Inn or stand. She the waited for me at the southern terminus to pick me up so we could hunt down the hotel in Natchez. We enjoyed some southern cooking at a resurrected old train station along the Mississippi River and the we drove around looking at all the antebellum mansions of Natchez.  105 miles 15.6 mph

Ellstietc

The Saturday ride this week was the 57-mile Ellstigospewhi Ride invented a few years ago by current club president Jim Schroeder. It heads out on Vernal Pike, then through Ellettsville, Stinesville, Gosport, Spencer and Whitehall before heading back in on Vernal Pike. It was a somewhat cool, very windy, fine spring day.

Ride coordinator John Bassett organized the group of 20+ at the park and provided a few maps for those who needed them. While the main group probably completed the full route there were eventually at least four different routes taken, accommodating many different time and fitness constraints.

About 10 of us split off at Stinesville, opting for the “official” short 43 mile option. The group included (I think) Clair, Dave, Stan, CE, Ken, Allan, Dan, Martha, Mike and Ben. We looped west and south across 46, eventually T-ing into Hardscrabble. At that point Dave and Clair were anxious to put the wind BEHIND them and headed back east into town. Call them the Ellsti group.

The rest of our smaller group went west to 43 and then  south to Whitehall, where we took our last rest stop before heading into Bloomington via Vernal Pike. Like everyone else we were very happy to finally have the wind at our back. Call us the Ellstiwhi group.

Presumably most people did the main scheduled ride. If I hear any more from them I’ll add to this report.

Meanwhile Glenn Berger who organized a small group aiming to expand the ride into a century, gives us the following report. You’ll see that they must be the Ellstigoscatspe group.

Today as part of the club ride four of us decided to try our first club century.  The four brave souls, Paul, Nathan, Klaus and I left the main group after the stop as Gosport.  We took off up hill, but downwind to begin our adventure.  After a quick detour through a local cemetery(a sign of things to come?) we were off to a beautiful section of Indiana 67 with the wind to our backs!  After our lovely ride on 67 it was time to turn off and “face the music” of some of Indianas finer country roads.  The scenery was fantastic and the company was good.

After about 10 miles Klaus, the smartest of the bunch, decided to head back towards town on his own; while the three hard heads marched on.  We took in some chip and seal and then turned into the wind….ohh the brutal wind.  After what seemed like an eternity of riding directly into 20mph headwinds we finally found ourselves descending into Cataract Falls.  What a sight!  With all of the recent rains the falls were running at full force!

We took in the falls and part of the river along an old walking path(marginal for road bike riding, but we managed) and had a very short climb to the Cataract Falls local store(it’s open but for sale if anybody is interested :).  The store with the wood stove going was a welcome stop for water and Gatorade.  After a short stop Paul T. informed us he had to be home by 4:30….it was 2PM and we had +40miles to go!  We started rolling on with the wind FINALLY at our back….oh that sweet wind now!

Another short descent into a stream-lined valley and we road along the stream…down stream that is for a few miles.  We climbed out and we knew Spencer was soon to be next.  At Spencer we all agreed that due to “time constraints”…aka tired legs it would be a good idea to shave a few miles off.  We called Tammy to verify a short cut and headed back to town via the Hilly Hundred route….Hilly yes but we had that wind to our BACKS again :).

What sweet way to end the day with the wind literally at our back and the sun out in full!  Oh and we made it back to town by 4:45 PM (not bad all in all!)

Hope everybody on the 57 mile ride had a good time!

For more information about Cataract Falls, Glenn offers the following links:

Indiana State History
Google Map
History of Cataract Falls

The 70% Solution

This week marked the first of this season’s Midweek Century rides, organized by Jim Schroeder. He called the route for today Tulips Blooming in Solsberry.  This was intended to be a 95 mile route out to Solsberry, then riding on to Worthington, back to Bloomfield, then on to Solsberry again, finally returning to Bloomington. Jim has adopted a friend’s recommendation that anything over 95 miles counts as a century. This ride in particular would deserve it, as the route indicated 5647 feet of climbing. The weather was also predicted to be warmer by far than anything else we’ve experienced so far this year.

When we got to the park at 9 AM, we were a small group of 4: Allan, Jim, Joe, and Clair. Clair announced that he only intended to go as far as Solsberry before returning via the standard club route for the “Yoo Hoo at Yo Ho’s Ride”, for a total of 40 miles. Meanwhile Joe said he didn’t want to go as far as to Worthington, and Allan said he would really like to be back by 3:00 to 3:15. Joe and Jim are probably the most knowledgable and capable bike route designers in the state of Indiana. Between the two of them they agreed to skip Worthington and take a shorter route from Bloomfield back to Solsberry. They were right on the money as I rolled into my driveway at the end of the ride exactly at 3 PM, with 75 miles, home to home. (It did require no stopping from Bloomfield to Bloomington, though.) It may not have been a century in the end, but it was more than enough for me, thirty miles longer, than any other rides so far in 2013. I’m not in such a big hurry to rack up miles. Even for the shortened route my GPS recorded 4559 feet of ascent, and my legs are feeling it as I write this later in the evening. Seventy per cent of a century route may not count as a century, but it was just right for me.

Although there obviously had been a little isolated showers in places, we were never rained on and only felt a few sprinkles. We were glad the sun didn’t come out very much, since this was by a significant margin the warmest riding day we’ve seen so far this year. Joe’s computer has a built-in thermometer, which showed a reading in the low 90s at one point when the sun was beating on our backs and we were riding over relatively fresh smooth blacktop.

Altogether we had a great early spring longer ride.

P.S. Jim has developed a schedule of weekly century rides for the whole season, with approximately one a month being a drive-and-ride. Because of insurance issues and because he wants to try to attract some riders from outside our immediate area he is not billing these rides as BBC club rides. They aren’t on the club calendar. If you would like to be on the separate email list drop him a line or, if you do Facebook, then check out the Southern Indiana Centurions Facebook Page

BBC Cares for Its Adopted Road

From Jennifer Miers, intrepid organizer and the heart and soul behind our club Adopt-A-Road efforts reports on the latest work:

Saturday’s Cedar Bluff bike ride route brought riders back to town on Old 37. If you were on that ride you saw that a winter’s worth of trash had our little stretch of adopted real estate looking pretty shabby.

Thirteen club members spent a little over 2 hours Sunday collecting 34 bags of trash and recycling.

Some of the BBC road crew heading out to work.

The BBC made a positive difference in our community today. Thank you!

The next Adopt-A-Road cleanup is scheduled for Sunday, June 2.

Check Your Tires!

From Tammy Berger

Oh what a beautiful day for a ride…….. Or strike that, what a beautiful day to fix the bike tire!  Here is a great safety reminder.

 Glenn and I rode out to meet Klaus and Mike at Bryan Park for a beautiful afternoon ride.  Plan was to ride the Elletsville/Whitehall loop and it was perfect for it.  As we were heading out of town we were stopped at the light on 7th and Walnut.  Glenn noticed a problem with my rear tire, and we pulled over and saw the problem was more than could be temporarily saved with a boot.

A simple check of my equipment this morning before hopping on the bike would have saved my ride today (all I did was air up my tires).

As it was Glenn and I came back home for replacements while Klaus and Mike headed on out.  So instead of the planned 40 miles with friends we had a casual 8.5 miles around town.

Obviously as bad as this tire was I had been riding on a bad tire for some time.  I count myself among the lucky that Glenn saw it when he did instead of it giving out farther from home or while blazing down a hill!

I will be more diligent about safety checking my equipment before taking off now.  Guess I was overdue for a reminder that safety should always be first!

A True Afternoon Delight

I was part of a group of seven riders who did Tom Reynolds’s “Afternoon Delight” ride this Thursday.

We had a nice, varied group: Tom, Tammy, Klaus, Gail, Mark V, John C, and Allan. We did a standard club 29 mile route, Ride around Rosie’s, to the west, modified to take the B-Line Trail out of town and the Clear Creek Trail coming back into town.

We sailed along at a pretty good clip over the first half of the ride, which is essentially all down hill until we turned onto Gardner after Rose’s and Hendricksville. Some people say the climb up Gardner is not so much steep as long. I say it’s steep, too.

Everyone did a good job of staying together or letting slower riders catch up. Only when we reached the Clear Creek Trail where it crosses That Road did we finally split up with three going south and four going north, back to Bryan Park.

It was actually quite nice on the trail, with very few people there at 3 pm on a week day. It was almost shocking to see the construction project where the trail starts and stops at Tapp Road. We crossed there and worked our way through the neighborhoods to Rockport and then Rogers and Grimes back to the park.

Altogether we had a fine time on an early spring weekday afternoon. Thanks to Tom for organizing these delights.