This would have been a very pleasant morning of biking, with beautiful scenery, good snacks at the the rest stops, very nice weather, big blue skies, and plenty of time to enjoy it all, except for one thing:
THE STINKING WIND!!!
Everyone riding the 40 and 100 mile routes, had to ride right into the face of 30 mph winds, gusting to 35, for the first 17 miles of the trek. And that's the portion of the route that has all the hills too. It's virtually flat the whole rest of the way. It was the hardest thing I've done in years! And probably the stupidest. (Okay, not giving up and going home was probably the stupidest.) It took me 2 hr and 15 min to ride the first 17 miles. Then, with the wind mostly at my back, I did the next 17 miles in 1 hr 30 min.
The final 6 miles or so had two stretches of a mile each that were back into the face of the wind, but we struggled through those. And waiting for us at the finish line was the free meal.
40 miles isn't really too bad. As noted earlier, I rode 55 miles over the course of 5 days (20-15-20) this past week. The hills are not terrible either. But that wind just killed me. I admit that I only passed maybe a half dozen people the whole trip. Dozens passed me. I'm not anything if I'm not slow. I started at 7:30am, and finished at 12:00 noon. That included 10 min at each of the 3 rest stops. I had planned on probably taking 4 1/2 hours, so that was right on the money. Without the wind, I could easily have made it in 4 hours total.
Anyway, below are some photos I took along the way of the various sights and sites. I even took my Action Cam and shot some video from the final 6 miles. What you see is edited down from the total 34 minutes of raw footage. Who knows. maybe I'll do this again - on a calm day.
At the start of the race. The Sutter Youth Organization building.
Several views of the Buttes. This time of year everything around here is green.
I've often thought that if Grandpa Vern had known a place like this existed, he would have thrown up everything he had in Utah and moved here to the Buttes to raise his prize winning sheep. What a great place to live!
A couple of views most of you have never seen of the Buttes. The one on the left is the west side (looking east), and the one on the right is the north side (looking south). The north side photo was taken at the first rest stop - after the tortuous 17 mile ride into the wind.
One of the rest stops. The second one I think.
This is an old farm house on Pennington Road. It was probably "rustic" even when it was new.
And this kind of farm house was very common to see on the ride. While some were not in as nice a shape as this one. But I could be happy living in a place like this. Especially since it is well removed from other people.
This was taken at 30 miles. It's worth noting that I saw cattle farms,
sheep farms, and tons of orchards. So why not hay too? This is alfalfa.
When we lived in Sutter, I used to love that they made a memorial out of this old watering trough.
And look, the undertaker gets into the act in a prominent way on the bottom left. Good advertising.
For those who remember, this is the house we owned and lived
in for 7 years in Sutter. Sure looks different than it did then.
And finally. . . the video.
1 comment:
I assure you that we have more "stinking" wind here in Jerome. Beautiful views there!
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