Overnight trip

Jenn and I had wanted to do more riding this year, especially since we were not doing the Race Across America thing. The Bike Virginia summer tour always appeals to me, although I've only made use of three opportunities to ride it. This year's adventure returned to southwest Virginia, the same general area I got to enjoy the first time I did their tour in 1993.

Sadly, it wasn't to be for us this year. The reasons are not really but so good; one was that I never felt the store had adequate staffing to deal with my absence, the other (and larger) was that I put off registering until I figured we'd have staff, and found that I missed the registration deadline.

Jenn, of course, had scheduled vacation months in advance, so she's off this week regardless.

Not being the best planner around, it took me until yesterday to finalize routing and destination for what became our two-day self-supported tour. Self-supported, in this case, includes things like two CPAP machines (ten or twelve pounds each), a tent, sleeping pad, sleeping bags (forecast lows in the high 50s for our destination), a change of clothing, and a way to carry some food. All of that stuff got stuffed into the Burley trailer. That trailer has developed a tire-scrubbing behavior that will need some attention--with the load, it reduced our average speeds from sixteen or better to less than twelve. Crawling up some long grades at less than four miles an hour on roads like KY 146 or US 42 or US 421 out of Milton is quite an adventure in traffic "calming."

I'm still not sure whether the destination was more important or the journey. It was good to get out on the bike. It was great to ride with Jenn, even if we were both feeling a bit out of sorts that last ten miles getting home (shifting when one is tired can be a bit less smooth than is ideal, and dealing with the captain's tired shifting is apparently an even larger challenge). We didn't fight over it, of course, but worked on dealing with the fatigue a bit and went on.

Our destination was a friend's farm in the hills behind Vevay, Indiana, not far from Bennington Pike. The road to their place used to be gravel from end to end, but got paved some time in the last ten years--at least from one end to their place. From their place to the other end (the shorter distance, of course) there is a steep hill that Switzerland County has not had the money to pave. The end of the road at the bottom of that hill features a creek crossing as well, and links to another gravel road that has its own problems--a wash out a year or two ago has closed the end nearer to our route, and the resulting lack of traffic means that the gravel is often VERY loose coming from the other end. Since all that gravel was on the shorter distance for us, we wound up walking a mile or two, including that aforementioned-steep hill, at the end of our ride when we were already tired.

I suppose well-traveled gravel roads are not as bad. This one had a LOT of loose 5s and 7s on top, with not a lot of dense-grade dust mixed in to stabilize things. It hasn't been rolled or graded or oiled in I don't know how long. There was mud from recent rains. Some folks like riding on such roads. I like staying upright on my bike, especially when the penalty for falling is gravel embedded in one's (and one's stoker's) skin.

For the return trip, we opted for the paved route. Although longer by a few miles, it was far more comfortable, and yielded better average speeds.

As much as I would like to put more about our trip on here, though, I'm tired. Jenn is off to the bus station with her older daughter, as my stepdaughter is going to study for a month or so in Quebec. Jenn's very tired, as am I, so it's time for me to get the bed ready for her return to make it easier for her to simply fall into it.

One more fun factoid: Our little tour poked my June 2011 mileage total to make it my highest month since I started recording on mycyclinglog.com. 854-point-something miles for the month, and we still have car-free happy hour tomorrow (and a few errands beforehand).