I went out for a little bike ride on Saturday, the best sort of ride, the kind where there’s no route, no plan at all, and you just find out what happens. This is much more fun than estimating a time or distance, and far more fun than the normal enterprise of planning a route. Saturday I just went … that way.
And so I went by the historic haunted house and past the church and down the three stretches of a road named after a town which was named after a plantation. From there, I turned left. Part of this road I know, in the reverse direction, because it is one of the regular routes. But I did not turn onto either of those two roads. I just kept going passed this barn.
There were clouds in the sky, something to keep an eye on, but i was going in another direction.
Over this way, for example, we had beautiful skies. And so I just kept pedaling. I contemplated alternated lefts and rights, but figured I would be sure to mess that up on the way back.
I just kept going straight, because the road allowed for it. Passed the houses and the woods and the cattle.
At some point I passed a “Now enterting” county sign. I hadn’t even realized I’d left the county, but now I was back. I’d been riding a straight line, but it was maybe a circle?
Maybe that explains the thunder, and then the rain, and possibly the small hail. It was raining, hard; I was 20 miles from home and who knows where this misbehaving storm cloud was headed.
I turned around, laughing, and started back. I had to do about two miles in the rain, but dried out for the last hour or so in the sunniest weather possible. It was 40 miles, round-trip, and at one point I went 11 miles without seeing a car.
And that’s how a spontaneous trip becomes a planned route. I’ll be doing that again.
Sunday afternoon I did the now-usual 15-mile route. I met this tractor near the house.
Nice of the guy to wave. Then, on the way back, I passed another tractor. This one was tilling right by the side of the road.
And that guy waved, too.
Me and my shadow are quite popular, sometimes.
Today’s ride was one of the standard 21-mile routes. (We have two of those.) And in this ride, an oddly misshapen rectangle, I encounter a dozen stop signs, seven turns and two railroad crossings. I did not have to put my foot on the ground the first time.
That’s a great ride, too.
