dirty bike from rain spray (the floor could use a cleaning too!)
Somehow I managed to ride 100 miles today! First time I rode that far since the Horrible Hundred back in November ’93 (I think that was the year). I’ve been contemplating a 100 mile ride for a couple weeks, as I have been up to 68 miles on 95 degree days without feeling too bad. Today it was quite nice, mostly cloudy (and some rain) with mid 80s for highs! But I was not thinking I would ride so far since I rode 3 hours off-road at San Felasco yesterday afternoon & only slept a little over 5 hours last night. My ride started with the discovery of a gas tank in the middle of the paved Gainesville-Hawthorne trail. It was right by a sink & had a trail of gasoline flowing across the pavement towards a sink in Paynes Prairie State Park (connected to the aquifer!). I quickly surmised it had fallen off the back of a maintenance vehicle & called Bubba (Rick) who works as a Parks Biologist with his office a quarter mile from this sink. He got right on it! A little further down the trail I ran into the Park maintenance people and told them what I saw. It appears it had slid out of the bed of the guy who blows the trail clear of leaves. The spill could have been prevented if he only took the time to close his tailgate! One of my pet peeves has been the litter that come falling out of the back of pickups, by fools that treat it as a trash can only to have it blow out in the wind when driving (I see this all the time & I imagine you have too). Seeing this disregard for the environment by Florida DEP (stands for Don’t Expect Protection) staff reminded me of the time I got a ticket by FDEP cops for running the stop sign on this trail. That really burned me up. These guys are totally useless at enforcing rules to protect the environment, but yet they give me a $134 ticket for blowing a stop sign, when I clearly looked both ways. Coincidentally I ran into a FDEP cop at a stop sign at mile 32 today and came to a complete stop!
So enough venting at authority. I continued my ride. Hit Hawthorne at mile 18, back to road into park at mile 32 (saw cop). The gas tank was removed (I later found Bubba removed it). I got back to Hawthorne at mile 46 & arrived back home at mile 64. I did see the guy who spilled the gas spreading sand over it on the way back. So it was looking like rain, but I still had energy (it was actually forecast to rain earlier). I took a little break at home, grabbed some lunch, recharged my ipod shuffle & waited out a storm. The reason I did 64 miles was because I wanted to see how that would go, knowing one more trip to Hawthorne would give me an even 100 miles. I thought I should wait, but the weather did seem to be clearing & it was quite nice weather temperature wise. So I decided to go for it! I was riding surprisingly strong & noticed I felt stronger on the last two thirds of the ride than the first third. Around mile 80 the rain caught up to me. Not too hard, but did make me take off the ipod shuffle I clip to my helmet (music keeps me gong!). I got to Hawthorne the 3rd time at mile 82 & rode the 18 miles back in a bit of a drizzle. The whole ride took a little over 6 hours riding time and I maintained a 16.3 mile per hour average
yesterday's mushroom find (Chanterelles)
speed. I’d like to be faster, but that is OK, especially considering it includes the hills 6 times & 4 times through the 2 mile city stretch with some hills & many stop signs.
So after showering off & giving my sweet doggies some love. I treated myself to dinner made from the mushrooms I collected while biking yesterday. Not the biggest score ever, but adequate for dinner! Usually I go the olive oil & garlic route, but decided to go more Asian tonight. I first sauteed some sweet Vidalia onions in some sesame oil. I next added some
DINNER!
broccoli, a little organic soy sauce & some rice vinegar. Finally I added the Chanterelles & a splash of Agave Nectar! I know I was hungry, but this had to be one of the best mushroom concoctions ever!
So now Bubba has invited me to join him for another 3 hour ride at San Felasco early tomorrow morning?
Tom…You are really sticking with it man. I did 100 miles one day when I was touring Vietnam. By the end of the day , these old Vietnamese guys started to pass me on their Chinese clunker bikes, but I blamed my tortoise like pace on the bags hanging off my back tire. The weather has been scorching here; it has been breaking 38 degrees Celsius on a daily basis. There are some amazing places to ride here, and the Taiwanese are out mountain and rode biking in droves. It is truly amazing how fast a culture will take to a new activity…good little conformists. Proud of you man. Keep it up.
Thanks for the support Ben! I got even crazier & woke up at 8am the next morning (Saturday) & went out to San Felasco & rode another 28 miles out there! That made for a total of 100 miles on-road & 50 miles off-road in less than a 48 hour time period! I think this is likely the longest I rode in my life, though the Horrible Hundred Century ride may have been more effort due to all the hills. I think I was in better shape then too. I was pretty hurting on Saturday. I took Sunday off, then had a really strong 29 mile ride at San Felasco yesterday (Monday). Only did 36 miles to Hawthorne & back today (got rained on). I probably should not be riding every day, as I definitely feel stronger when I take a day off & I hear rumors about muscles needing time to recover. Kind of on this weight loss kick now, but hope to slow down a little when I drop another 20 pounds! I guess I should set a mileage goal like you have. So far I have ridden a little over 1000 miles in the last 6 weeks! That puts me on pace to beat my 5000+ mile year back in 1993.