Gary Jackson: Fire When Ready Pottery
A Chicago potter’s somewhat slanted view of clay & play
Categories: bike

Yesterday turned out to be a wonderful day of riding.
The weather cleared up, after lunch it warmed up… and today should be even better!

saturday2

Today started off with a beautiful sunrise and the prediction of much better weather!
So we were all hoping for another wonderful day of riding. We started the ride with a few
rolling hills – enough to warm up the muscles, and require a few layers to come off quickly!

Here’s a quick list of some of the best hills for Sunday…
Photograph Hill – 0.3 miles long at 14.5% incline
Anonymous Hill – 0.4 miles long at 13.3% incline
Bean Blossom Hill – 2.0 miles long at 17.2% incline
Turkey Track Road – 0.6 miles long at 11.0% incline
Salem Church Hill – 0.5 miles long at 11.0% incline
Mount Tabor – 0.2 miles long at 20.2% incline – my arch nemesis!!!
Mt. Carmel Road – 0.7 miles long at 13.0% incline
Water Tower Hill – 0.8 miles long at 17.0% incline

That’s a total of 50 miles… and 4,156 feet of hill climbing for the day!!!

fence-bike1

About 15 miles into the ride, we have our first rest stop for breakfast! The three of us
enjoy some donuts, bagels, apple cider and some more live bluegrass music. After a
brief stop, we head off – and separated from Nancy who had chosen the shorter route.

Mid-morning, we rode up Bean Blossom Hill, a long, drawn-out curving hill.
It’s a strenuous ride… with a great pay-off at the top. Beautiful scenery and great place
to catch your breath. Chris and I stopped at the top to enjoy the color before heading off.

tree-lined-bike

tree-linedchris-biker

As you leave the top of Bean Blossom Hill, the pay-off begins… with the rolling downhill.
Curving… rolling… trees… leaves… wonderful. Especially the scenic vistas along the way.
Chris and I are never the ones who fly past it – never stopping to appreciate it.
I’ve often said that one of the best parts of biking… is stopping.

me-chris

chris-on-edge

red-bush-logs

sassafras

When you take a moment to stop and get off the bike, you can appreciate the smaller
details and the natural beauty around you. Including the random sighting of my
favorite – the yellowed sassafras leaves seen above.

colored-leavesred-leaves-berries1

Frequently, while Chris and I are stopped for another “Kodak moment”…
the rest of the biking pack keeps flying by… presumably not even noticing
the beauty they’re rolling right past!

chris2

After Bean Blossom Hill, we roll into lunch and meet up with Nancy for another
great fried chicken meal. After lunch we pedal on towards my arch-nemesis…
Mt. Tabor. It’s the steepest hill of the entire ride. It’s a steep incline straight up
with a sharp right hand turn at the top where you need to keep going even further.
It’s so steep that you climb it really slow, plugging away, huffing & puffing. I finally
made it to the top, met up with Chris – and we head off to the last rest stop
in Stinesville… and more apple cider! The downhill ride into Stinesville is so steep
and full of switchbacks that one of the houses actually sets up a dozen bales of hay
against their house for those bikers that may not be able to make the sharp turn!!!

apple-cider

After our stop in Stinesville, Chris and I head out for the final leg of the ride.
The weather was perfect, and more layers were coming off – by now,
down to a sleeveless jersey! Beautiful weather AND beautiful scenery!!!

yellow-tree-bike

At the end of the route, we meet back up with Nancy who had finished before us.
We all had a wonderful time riding the hills of southern Indiana – over 7,000 feet
of vertical elevation gain… and some equally great downhills along the way.
A beautiful end to another beautiful weekend on my bike!

1 Comment

October 27th, 2009

awesome pics. brown county is so beautiful.

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