Blog Post

By Jim Schroeder

Sylvia and I were in Joliet, Illinois, visiting her children and tending to doctor appointments, but I managed to fit in a bike ride on Saturday.

I had contacted the Joliet Bicycle Club and was all set to go in the morning at 8am.  The rain had already blown through but it was still quite cold, 40’s, and very windy.  Sylvia dropped me off at Chammahon State Park, one of the many state parks that are on the historic I & M Canal. Apparently they are fair weather riders, as I was the only one to show at the designated parking lot.  I grabbed the Illinois state map from the car and decided to venture west, while Sylvia drove into the western ‘burbs for another appointment.

After about a couple of miles I was greeted with a last remnant of precipitation, but it was just a few drops and I was fully protected with my tights and rain jacket.  While riding along Hansel Rd, probably old US highway 6, it abruptly stopped to make way for one of those suburban housing additions in the middle of the country.  Well, at least they created a bike path where the road once was, and so I didn’t get lost figuring the development’s detour.

The route to Morris followed the I & M Canal and its pea gravel towpath, but I was advised not to take the towpath on my skinny-tired Kestrel. Instead I had to battle the breeze without any wind break.  The sun eventually broke through and it became a glorious but chilly morning, and I got to Morris and stopped at the Liberty Cafe for a chai latte and omelette croissant.  A couple of racer men, not boys, decked out in their kits, arrived as I was about to leave.  After some chitchat they wished me a better ride back with the wind, as they assumed that the cafe was the return point.

I had other plans.  After perusing the state map I decided to venture west and north to Norway and learn about my new wife’s heritage.  Yes, this old German married one of those sexy Scandinavians!

I left Morris on US 6, which had minimal traffic due to its close proximity to I-70.  The NW winds picked up to a constant 20mph with gusts of 30mph. It was quite arduous even to this flatlander, and the day reminded me of a century named TASSLE I had done in Ohio some twenty years ago.  The Sunday return of TASSLE on the south shore of Lake Erie had gale force warnings from the west, and so was the worst day of my life on a bike.

I turned north just north of Seneca.  This area was ripe with French and Indian heritage: Joliet, Chammahon, Seneca, Marsailles, Ottawa, and Lasalle.  But, north of I-80 it became a little more rolling, still flat in a southern Indianan’s view, and names became Scandinavian.  As I approached Stevanger, with the accent on the second syllable according to Sylvia, I came upon this grand farm house that had recently got a classy renovation.  

I then turned west again and tried to hide from the wind by hugging the few cornfields that were still left to harvest.  A few friendly horses greeted me as I stopped to say hello.

I turned north as I viewed down on the water tower of Ottawa and rode into what was used to be Danway, and then checked out the quirky Norwegian humor displayed along the road.

Then came my destination of today’s journey, Norway, to learn something about Sylvia’s heritage.

In fact I later found out that the road with the horses was where her aunt lived and the family farmed in the past.

Norway was a delight as evidenced by my photos, but I didn’t go into the country store and sample the lutefisk!

I returned back to my daughter-in-law’s in Joliet with rolling farmland surrounding me on a quiet US-52 with the long awaited tailwind.

A total of 73 miles and a whopping 1000 feet of climbing.

By John Bassett

I believe one of the key ingredients to getting people to volunteer to work the BBC’s RAIN event is to provide a pre-do, or re-do, of the event so that those volunteers also get to participate as a rider.  This is something of a tradition and has gone by various names including, most recently, the BRAIN (Before RAIN) ride.  For various reasons, BRAIN did not happen this year.  However, a few individuals in the club expressed interest in a Post RAIN (PRAIN) ride, and I set about trying to get that organized.  In consultation with interested parties, a Saturday, September 1 date was set.  This was Plan A.

Plan A went awry when Hurricane Isaac moved into the area late last week.  We reset the date to September 3 (Labor Day) hoping to get behind the worst of the weather.  This became Plan B.  Unfortunately, we lost a couple of riders due to the date change but added Dana Marsh who had the day off.  After drenching rains on Sunday morning and some consternation over the advisability of a cross-state bike ride through a near-stationary tropical storm, a group of five riders, Jim Schroeder, Jen Miers, Laurence Kohler, Paul Toth, and John Bassett headed over to Terre Haute Sunday evening.  Stan Ellis and Dana deferred on a decision to ride until early Monday morning.  This became Plan C.

Monday morning in Terre Haute was dark, gloomy, and excessively humid – but at least the pavement was dry.  Rain chances were 60%, with thunderstorm potential, and a constant east headwind.  After a quick breakfast we headed to the start at the intersection of St. Mary of the Woods Road and US 150.  In the spirit of the event we put out an official RAIN traffic cone to mark the starting line.  We began at 7:43 AM, about as early as daylight conditions would allow.

My goal for the first part of the ride (before lunch) was to make sensible pedal strokes and to burn as few matches as possible.  The five of us worked as a group, alternating pulls, to the first designed rest stop at US 231 (38 miles).  The ladies got out ahead at this point following Jen’s ‘minimal-stop’ ride strategy.  The guys did not object to this since we were having difficulty with Laurence’s furious pace at the head of the line, anyway.

Meanwhile, Stan and Dana had decided to try it.  They started in the middle of the route near Southport Road and SR 37, rode the route backwards until encountering the Terre Haute group, then joined for the ride to Richmond.  The meeting point came near Stilesville on US 40.  We welcomed their additional help with the headwind.  Dana reported that the route from SR 37 to Stilesville was totally in the rain and lamented the fact that her shoes overflowed with water and made a lot of squishy noise.  This was PRAIN in the Rain.

We pretty much rode as a group of seven from Plainfield, along Camby Road, and across Highways 67 and 37 to our designated lunch stop at a Subway (Mile 79) at the intersection of Southport Road and Bluff Road.  The ladies opted to do a minimal ‘snack-and-go’ and got on down the road.  We wondered if we would see them again before Richmond, but lunch sure did hit the spot.  Here are the guys ready to go after chowing down.

The weather improved slightly on the southeast side of Indianapolis as the four guys kept a pretty brisk pace into an east headwind.  We nixed an optional stop at New Palestine and decided to press on to Casey’s at US 40 at Greenfield (Mile 111).  We got there just in time to see the ladies saddling up and heading off to Dunreith.  I was able to stay with Stan and Paul until Mile 126 at the grade just east of Knightstown.  The legs just did not respond to that hill.  The last 30 miles of this ride can be a real test of will.  The road is flat and should have been fast, but fatigue, a battering east wind, and blowing rain frustrated progress.  Various pains came and went, but soon Centerville appeared on the horizon (Mile 155) announcing an imminent finish in Richmond less than 5 miles ahead.

Pat Toth and Susan Bassett arrived at the official Earlham finish line ahead of us and set out our orange cone to mark the official finish.  Here is Dana admiring the cone at the conclusion of her second state crossing this year!

There was even an official medal presentation.  Here are our hard-working Jim and Jen accepting their medals.  RAIN could not have been done without them.

Laurence (above, right) enjoyed her medal by biting it Olympian style.  This was her longest ride ever, and she did a fantastic job battling the wind.

Comparing notes at the finish, it was apparent that all of the ladies had done the entire 159.6 mile RAIN route, which included a construction detour on US 40.  On the other hand, all of the guys blew through the construction zone and used no detour.  There is probably a life lesson here somewhere.  Here is an ad hoc comparison of the RAIN and PRAIN in the Rain events.

Criteria	RAIN	PRAIN in the Rain
Distance	159.6 miles (with detour)	159.6 (ladies route) 156.9 (guys route)
Riders	About 1,500	7
Riders Completing	1,216	7
Weather	Hot Dry Headwind	Cloudy Tropical Storm System Same Headwind
SAG Support	Optional	Provided
Rest Stops	Provided	Optional
Orange cones at Start / Finish Line	Yes	Yes (0ne)
Medal Ceremony	Yes	You Bet !

From Steve Parker, Wheaton, Illinois

This is just to say thanks to the BBC for putting on a great ride each year, and to tell a story.

Will Streeter, a close friend of mine from South Bend, was an avid cyclist and had done the RAIN ride several times alone over the past years.  Then about three years ago, Will was diagnosed with ocular cancer and had one eye removed.  But he kept on riding, and last year asked me and several other of his friends to ride the RAIN with one of his two teenage sons.  It was a great experience and we all enjoyed it immensely.  The first photo below is of that 2011 group at the finish, with Will on the far right.

This past spring, however, Will passed away at age 49 from his cancer, leaving behind his two sons and his wife.  There was some hope that Will would live long enough to do the 2012 RAIN, but when it became clear that wouldn’t happen, his sons decided to ride the RAIN in honor of their father. So before he died, Will asked me to organize a group to ride with them.  By July 21, we had over 20 family and friends from South Bend, Chicago, Tucson and Boston on our “Remembering Will” team, and a jersey that Will’s sons designed.  The second photo is of that group at the end of this year’s ride.  Another of Will’s friends rode Will’s bike, which is in the foreground.

Will’s two sons rode the entire 160 miles, as did some of the others in our group. Others did parts of that distance, many achieving personal goals to ride distances they’d never done before.  Will’s sons crossed the finish line with huge grins, greeted by cheers and hugs from our team.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the two boys do the RAIN again, but 2012 will be the one they definitely remember.

So on behalf of our group I want to thank the BBC and all the other volunteers for their dedication and hard work to make the RAIN a great event!

 Friday is the wedding day of Sylvia Stoub and Jim Schroeder.



When has the BBC been the matchmaker between members? We have much to celebrate with them!

Jim served as a very successful RAIN director this year and has promoted bicycling in so many ways, especially those long and longer rides. Sylvia served as Volunteer Coordinator for RAIN and is our Social Chair, developing new ideas for club members to get to know each other besides on rides.

We join all the members of the club in wishing Sylvia and Jim many happy years together.

A cyclist’s adaptation of the classic Irish blessing:

It’s a small, but appreciated, touch to give each official finisher a memento. Note the iconic BBC “B” and cyclist, the background Indiana motif, the year, the mileage, and the block of dots that mirrors this year’s t-shirt and jersey. Math geeks that my wife and I are, the first thing we did when we examined the t-shirt was to count the blocks, assuming they must somehow represent the year or the mileage or something. We never did figure it out!

This is a continuation of my post on this year’s RAIN ride–one person’s experience–just a small slice of everything that went on that day.

Last we heard I was changing a flat I shouldn’t ever have had, still in Terre Haute. After that our group continued along without problems. It was great seeing those bank signs showing 62 degrees. We made a brief SAG stop around mile 20 and took our first real break at Rest Stop 1 at 231 and US 40. There we saw a few friends on bikes, and a number of club members volunteering to run the site. All was working smoothly. They had plenty of Port O’ Johns, requiring only a short wait. It was my first experience with the water set-up where you get to choose your own GatorAde flavor in liquid concentrate. It worked well. It was also my first time to fill up with ice. I really appreciated having plenty of ice available at every stop. It would have been critical if the weather had been much hotter.

Continuing along we made it to Plainfield for the second stop. There we picked up another BBCer, Thom Simmons, who joined our group. Note all the nice shade!

Then we had the stretch on smaller roads as we worked our way south of Indy. This is an area where having good signage is very important. I can say that the combination of road marking and signs at turns was quite effective. Those back roads are a lot rougher and some of the chip and seal rattled my bones a bit and bothered my wrists.

We eventually got to the lunch stop in Franklin Township. Again it was well-organized, although a bit spread out, wrapping around the building. By this time of day, around 1:30 or so the lunch stop was probably beginning to wind down a bit. Having the pre-made lunches in bags was pretty effective. There was no wait to get food. Those Port o Potties were starting to get really hot in the afternoon sun, though.

Continuing along I really enjoyed new ice and drink stop just before getting back on US 40. We pulled into the shade and had some quick snacks and drinks. John Bassett was running the stop and snapped a photo of our group.

As Kathy said when she saw the photo: 110 miles and all still smiling! By this time we were all out beyond our longest rides of the year up to then.

We had another couple of brief SAG stops with Letha Taylor and Mark Gelhausen, plus the Dunreith stop at mile 129. At the latter we took our time. I had two popsicles and two cold orange drinks, used the facilities, even took off my shoes for awhile. Ken tried the mister and came back with a wet bandana over his head, under his helmet.

Altogether the last 50 miles were something of a slog, as expected. That’s the time when you just have to buckle down and get the job done.

We actually out did ourselves toward the end, and arrived a little before we were predicting earlier in the day, rolling into the finish at 7:28. As the first-time finisher in our group, Gail led the charge up the final rise and into the finish line at Earlham.

We were all in a bit of a daze (at least I was) but none of us fell over or passed out. We appreciated being greeted by friends and volunteers at the finish line and had several pictures taken.

From that point on it was time for a little relaxing, a cold soda, and soon a warm shower. Even at 8 pm the showers were really busy, with a line, so that the showers didn’t even get turned off between riders.

Then it was time to head home, with a quick stop for a bite to eat and to fill the gas tank. We finally arrived back in Bloomington around midnight, tired but happy.

A special thanks to a first-rate group to ride with, including CE Taylor, Ken Dau-Schmidt, Kathy Cummins, Gail Morell, and (for the last 100 miles) Thom Simmons. A double thank you to our SAG drivers, Letha Taylor and Mark Gehlhausen. And a triple thank you to RAIN director Jim Schroeder, his core of volunteer assistants, and the large cadry of club volunteers whose help made the day possible.

P.S. Many more photos and even movies are available on the web. Check out the RAIN Facebook page if you haven’t already.

Many of us are still decompressing from a very successful weekend, some club members riding and many club members volunteering to make our Ride Across Indiana a big success. Special KUDOS to the main organizers as well as the cadre of day-of volunteers who made it all possible.

I first rode RAIN in 2001, and didn’t actually expect to do it again. But Tom Whitehead organized a Ride to Remember team through the palliative care unit at Wishard Hospital and I was one of 5 Bloomington riders who joined 40+ others. I rode with CE Taylor, Gail Morell, Kathy Cummins, and Ken Dau-Schmidt. Through OWLS we all knew we were compatible riders. We got organized and practiced our rotating pace line a few times and were prepared, as well as we could be.

Our group stayed at Saint Mary of the Woods overnight. We benefited from a special supper buffet provided by the Ride to Remember folks. The dorm accommodations were good and the breakfast buffet provided with the room was excellent. (Note to self: Next time you use your cell phone for a 5:15 am wake-up alarm please remember to turn it off. Being awakened at 5:15 on Sunday morning was not so nice.)

Here’s our group just finished with last second preparations in the parking lot at SMOW:

(Note to self: if your tire is flat when you take it out of the car, just change it. Don’t inflate the tire with its slow leak, only to have to stop within 5 miles or so to change it on the road.)

The start was neat, but we were so far back that we neither saw nor heard anything at the start. But the giant group of 1300+ riders started smoothly without incident. Here’s a photo a bit closer to the start line than we were:

I like to follow bike routes on my Garmin Edge 605 and record basic ride data throughout the day. I was a bit concerned because the 4.5 year old unit has been acting a bit flaky lately. I missed a few minutes at the start because it seemed so slow loading and calculating the route that I started it over. Then 10 miles or so into the ride it just shut down. I bravely but without much hope restarted it on the fly. It started up again and performed perfectly for the next 12 hours! One amusing side effect of the missing few minutes of location data was that it got very confused about my max and average speed. Check out my maximum speed!:

The moving time is a little low because of starting about 3 minutes late and then having to re-boot. The elapsed time is a little high because I forgot to stop recording right away at the finish line. The average speed reflects the jump at light speed early in the ride. Earlier in the ride I had an “average” in the 50 mph range for a while. It gradually became more realistic as the day wore on. But the average moving speed is about right. This screen shot doesn’t show the estimated calories consumed: over 9300.
And here’s the recorded route:

Here we are changing my rear tire early on (thanks to Ken for the photo and thanks to everyone else for their patience):

One effect of this was that we were riding much more alone afterwards until we gradually started reeling in other groups.

To be continued.

This week our head midweek centurion, Jim Schroeder, expected to be busy marking the RAIN route, with assistance from John Bassett and David Yeomans. Therefore during last week’s century, the BSSM (Brownstown, Scottsburg, Salem, Medora) ride Jim worked to convince Joe Anderson to lead the next ride. The BSSM ride was a great drive-and-ride out of Brownstown, with great weather. It took no persuasion at all to convince Joe. So after a quick check with Barbara he said he would lead a drive-and-ride from Spring Mill State Park to the Overlook Restaurant at Leavenworth Indiana on the Ohio River. But as the intervening days wore on it became clear that we were trapped in a period of extremely hot weather. More than one rider and/or spouse questioned the wisdom of riding so far in such hot weather. With highs expected around 103 Joe therefore announced that we would do a long ride north from Bloomington, to Mooresville and back, leaving Bryan Park at 7 am on our bikes. As he noted it made no sense to drive during the best biking hour of the day. He also planned out a route with as much shade as possible and that had some “RAIN-like” qualities.

So two of us, Dave Tanner and I, joined Joe for this 85 mile “century.”

The route up to Martinsville is totally familiar to BBCers as part of the club favorite M & M Ride. The 20 miles from Martinsville to Mooresville is flatter than anything we have around here. So we treated that part, coming and going, as RAIN training. We also did the 40+ miles from Bloomington to Mooresville without a stop beyond putting a foot down briefly at a traffic light, again as RAIN training for getting to that first rest stop.

The ride to Mooresville was actually quite enjoyable: not too hot, plenty of shade, and that 20 some miles of flat, smooth roads, along the Blue Bluffs road aka John Wooden Interurban Parkway, then through Centerton and Brooklyn. We got there some time after 10 am and had a leisurely breakfast snack at the local McDonald’s. We all invoked our “senior drink” in order to be able to fill up our water bottles with ice and Powerade. After reading the Indy Star and eating a second helping and discussing the Higgs boson we by and by set out on our return to Bloomington, fully expecting several stops along the way.

We took the more westerly half of the north loop for our return, using the still fairly shady Goat Hollow Road.

After crossing 67 again, Dave pulled a big chunk of the way on the flat portion, averaging around 20 mph. Our little pace line was finally broken up in the outskirts of Martinsville when a semi slowed and then made a left turn in front of us. I just braked and gritted my teeth, but Joe went around me, then into the other lane to avoid slowing down so much. He then turned his head and let the driver have a piece of his mind. (I doubt the driver heard, of course.) After that we zigzagged our way through Martinsville to the McD’s near 37. There, after dreaming of cold ice cream, I opted for a big chocolate chip mocha “frappé”. We were all thirsty and beginning to get really warm. While there we visited for some while with the owner/operator, an old friend of Dave’s (who had coached the owner’s son in swimming some years back).

Eventually we had to get back on the road again. We opted for Hacker Road (the last part of the right hand loop) into Morgan Monroe, for offering more shade. Of course there was a trade-off: a humongous hill climb. I didn’t stop, but I sure thought I might have to. The sweat poured out. From that point on I wasn’t feeling so good and tended to lag behind a bit.

We stopped one last time at the Firehouse for drinks and to steel ourselves for the last few miles. Joe opined that we had done our six hills (3 out and 3 back), if you don’t count Cascades. I said I count Cascades (at the end of a ride). It was a bit of a slog into town. We did use the new side-trail from Business 37 up to the stop sign at the road to Upper Cascades. Without any cars in our direction, Dave had to push the walk button to get a light change.

Soon we split up, with Dave heading home, Joe to a bike shop downtown, and me to home.

Despite the difficult weather I did experience for the first time on a bike the roads between Martinsville and Mooresville and also for the first time rode Hacker Road into the Forest.

I ended up with 85 miles, and an average in the lower 14s. By 2:20 I was home and the temperature was 102. My stomach was cramping a bit and I also ended up questioning the wisdom of biking so far in such hot weather. I was beat.

The first 60 miles went great. The next 20 miles were HOT. Old 37 felt like an oven set on broil. I was well done when I got home. I really like this ride though. It is a good challenging route with beautiful scenery.