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.