roadcx.net

Once again I am headed out to China for a few days.  The trip will be short and sweet, not much time to look around.  Part of it is that I don’t want too long of an interuption of training at this time of the year, the other part is that my first race is next weekend (Rouge Roubaix).  I am coming back on Wednesday after spending only two full days (three nights) in country.  Unfortunately, I am missing our training race tomorrow which should be starting around the time I am flying up to Detroit (first leg of the trip).

I think I am in pretty good shape despite how hard my solo ride today ended up.  It wasn’t terribly long at 62 miles, but it was windy and I was alone out there.  Before I did my ride, I took Andrea’s Bulldog CX tires off my Dura Ace wheelset and put my Bontrager Hard Case tires on.  Those are going to be my wheels for Rouge.  My bike, at this point, will be my Felt.  Andrea’s team Trek Madone came in on Thursday, mine should be soon, but I might not be ready to race it in the few days that I have before Rouge.

Well, I suppose I should pack some clothes.  Andrea is out to race Spa City 6 hour.  It is an NRC mountain event in (relatively) nearby Hot Springs, Arkansas.

After doing a bit of WordPress research (my least favorite activity), I found this solution…  Gallery for win!

Here are is a small album of a few random shots that I took in China last week.  Most are in Shanghai, some on the road to Huai’an, and back in Shanghai at the radio tower in the Bund.  No captions, just sort it out….

I will add more to this gallery once back home, Wordpress is being a bastard in corrupting while uploading.  :@

[Gallery deleted, see next post]

I am writing this from the Chicago airport awaiting my (delayed) flight to Shanghai.  I am going over there on a whirlwind trip, spending half of my time in a van driving to another city.   I optimistically bought workout clothes in my jam packed carry-on, but with the delay, pretty much lost my chance to do anything tonight (unless I can’t sleep when I get there).

I get back late on Thursday which should set me up nicely for Marx – Bensdorf team camp (note the change, I guess it is now M-B, not M&B).  It will be down in Oxford next weekend.  I probably will be a wreck, but I’ll get it done.

Last night, Andrea and I ventured out to Flying Saucer where we couldn’t get anyone to join us (what’s a little ice?).  We joined the U.F.O. beer club.  All it will take is 197 more beers (each) to get our plates on the wall.  (It’ll probably take us a while to get that:  with 3 beers / night max and considering we only go 2-3 x’s /month…  Sounds a lot like 2 years.)

Andrea and I headed over to Mountain View / Syllamo to spend Thankgsiving with her family at her dad’s new place up there. Our plans were to relax and ride as much of the Syllamo mountain bike trails as possible.

stopping to let the dogs run around on the way there by some random rice field along US64 west.

We got up this morning (after sleeping in a little bit) and headed out from the cabin (we stayed last night at a cabin since her dad’s house had too many there on Wednesday night). It was a quick 2 miles on the road, plus another 5.5 miles up a gravel road (Green Mountain Road) to the Bad Branch trail head.

We rode the 12 miles Bad Branch trail without too much problems. As the easiest both in terms of skill and required fitness, it was good one to do first. We clear off some newly fallen branches over the trail, but it was clear that a lot of chain saw work was done on this trail in the recent past. The trail has some nice flowy sections riding on top of pine needles/leaves over the hard pack surface. The rock in the area breaks apart and packs nicely making a great trail surface.

Our original planned trail involved creek crossings and we didn’t want to deal with those in the cold (on the menu for tomorrow). We ended up have a nice ride of 28 total miles with the first 7 and last 7 being pavement / gravel road. The climb up to the trail heads on Green Mountain road is no joke, it is about a mile or so at 6-8% grade.

Andrea with her commuter safety vest. Hunting season… can’t be too careful.

Back at the cabin, getting packed up to move up to the house for the rest of the weekend. My Titus on the way up, her Air9 on the ground to the left.

In the morning, we drove a few miles from the campground and hiked up to an overlook to look at the mountains / valleys at sunrise. We missed it by a few minutes, but the view was still good. My iPhone photos don’t do it justice….

After my final road race of the year (Chattanooga), I have been taking it pretty easy. In fact, I took off three days off the bike this week (Monday, Tuesday, and Friday)! Wednesday, I hit the trails with Andrea on a borrowed MTB (that I might buy from him) and Thursday I participated in the hell on wheels that is the AM Peddlar ride. (Which was made even more sketchy as I arrived late and watched the field roll by as I was finishing getting ready… nothing like starting 1/2 mile back and then working my way up from the back.)

Saturday morning, I took my fresh legs to the Trinity ride. The group was a mixed bag, but there was handful of people in there to make it interesting (although a few of them turned off for some reason after 10-15 miles). Did some fun attacks that pretty much left it down to Bryant, Jeff, and I… Sit up and repeat… At the store (BP in Gallaway), a RV pulled up and asked direction to the Collierville antique shop or something like that. After explaining to the gentleman it was about 20 miles south and that he shouldn’t have gotten off the expressway way at Arlington… the group was long gone and Bryant, Dale and I rolled off in pursuit. We started off easy and then did some solid turns, but we only were able to get the group in sight by the end of the ride (Lenow Rd) after picking off a few that fell off the pace of the group. Oh well, the group was super sketchy anyway.

At the end of the ride, I started to think about what I would do later in the day since Andrea went west to the Ouachita mountains to do some mountain biking at the Womble and later at Camp Robinson. She left on Friday afternoon and set up camp at Lake Sylvia. I got it in my head to pack up some gear and our two dogs and surprise her by heading over. I got on the road at 11:30a, grabbed some Subway and started driving the 170 miles to the campground. I made good time despite a especially annoying run of I-40 traffic (i.e. Truck #1 is going 71 mph, Truck #2 is going 72 mph, clearly Truck #2 HAS to pass truck one and then bog down going over a hill… and line up 20 cars behind … and then have a few cars try to zip up the right lane and squeeze in…)

On the way, I tried to call to make sure that she didn’t pull up camp and ended up leaving her a text asking about the ride. I didn’t hear anything (figured she was still riding?) and went to the campground, getting there around 2:30pm. I easily found her campsite (the campground was a ghost town) and waited a minute hoping that the occasional moments of phone coverage would let me know she was done (by text message, probably). I let the dogs run around and then decided that I should run to town and get something to eat (and be in better cell coverage for a while). And the mosquitoes were eating me up at the campsite (I didn’t bring repellent thinking that Andrea took it with her). So I went to Perryville (about 10 miles away) and got a chicken sandwich at Sonic and waited. After a while, I tried to find some repellent, but couldn’t manage to find it at the grocery store or the gas station. I went back to the campsite and planned to lay down in the tent and wait.

By this time it was getting late (around 5 pm) and I still hadn’t heard from her. So I ended laying down in the tent with the dogs…. I was drifting off when I heard my phone ringing- Andrea’s ring. I picked it up and we talked for a few seconds before the call dropped. I tried to get over to where the phone seemed worked better earlier (up on a hill near the campsite entrance) and she called back. I found that she was close and planning to come back and pick up the tent and stay in Conway.

A few text messages played out like this… (I usually had to resend each of these at least twice since the cell coverage down in the valley where the campground is bad.)

A: “Service is spotty. I will call you in a couple of hours once I am at Lance’s in conway”
R: “Conway is lame.”
A: “Yeah, I know”
R: “Lake slyvia [sic] is a better place.”
R: “Much more private.”
A: “?”
R: “Probably pretty quiet out there I bet”
(after a minute….)
A: “Be there in a minute”

30 seconds later, I saw the Element coming up the drive. I brought her sleeping bag that she had forgotten, but that was not why she was happy. Surprise visit FTW.

On the way from Marquette to Midland, Andrea and I stopped on the side of US-2 near Brevort to go down to the lake with the dogs. This was the first time the dogs had seen water like this…. Indy’s initial instinct was to lunge and bark at the waves as they came in.

Andrea has a passion for back roads and we found a couple that didn’t quite go like the map says they should go…. Just as last post, here is the plan (in red) versus our actual (in blue).

Map from today with notes!

Both days were good rides, but if you are in the area, I would advise against M-35 north of Palmer (Tilden mine location) if you can… Most of the roads around Marquette County are covered up with dump trucks going somewhere, but this highway is pretty narrow with lots of double trailer dump trucks going along pretty quick.

A nice cut over turned out to be Jarvi road connecting M-35 to Old CR-480. It was short, but had a nice short hill on it which made it interesting (and functional).

Here are a 4-pack of photos from Suicide Bowl Road (sign, ski jump, random lake at the end, and end of the road for us). This road is casually paved… or at least casually maintained, leaving me wishing they would just grind it up and turn it to gravel-it would ride better.

Suicide Bowl Rd near Negaunee … dead ends to Cleveland Cliffs private road.

The last part of our ride had us chasing after dead ends almost back to Marquette, trying to find another way back to Marquette (cutting off some riding on US41). All of those attempts led to nowhere.

And for the random photo of the day, this one had to win. This camper / truck combo was spotted down on the Marquette waterfront when we went to go see a short musical comedy (about Ice Fishing, of course) down at the boat house last night.

Our trip started out by heading north to my brother’s in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. We knew from last year that the riding was good in that area, so we were looking forward to that (and this time we wouldn’t have to rely on maps, since I have a Garmin 705 now).

The area is pretty much farms. Both dairy and crops…. And wind farms.

A few wind turbines….. Am I wind powered now?

Dairy machines.

7 Hills Road near Fond du Lac.

One of the roads we worked to get into our long route was the semi-famous 7 Hills Rd. This is an ~8 mile road that includes probably about 12 hills, not 7, but some of them might not count. Each hill goes into the next.

After spending a few days down at my brother’s in Wisconsin, Andrea and I headed further north to my mom’s in Marquette, Michigan. Last night Andrea plotted out a semi-ambitious route from Marquette that was likely to involve some gravel…

We started out right away on the gravel going up and over Mount Marquette.

Gravel road… pretty rideable.

Overlook over the city of Marquette.

After we descended, we rode down the highway to the next section of gravel. It started out pretty innocent, the pavement ending a few miles off the highway, but then as the road narrowed, the sand started…. And deep. We walked through the deep stuff, and managed to ride the not-so-deep stuff (we started to get pretty good at that, some skills that will play out at some point). After another mile or two the road went to pretty ridiculous, turning into a sandy, rocky, 2 track… Just when we were about half way to the next pavement (we think), the road ended at a private road.

End of the road and deep, deep sand.

So we had to turn around and head back…. after getting back to the highway, we continued on finding some more gravel along the way to the east end of our planned route (this time it went back to the pavement again). Just when we thought we were doing well on completing our loop, it happened again… The road (this one completely rideable) ended at two closed gates.

The route we plotted on MapMyRide (in red) and the actual route (in blue) we took on the ride are shown below… The two dead ends are on the south/west and the east end of our actual route.