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.