F-Ride-Day

Without really realizing it, I’ve created a habit of going for long rides on Friday afternoons. It’s not a bad way to spend a few hours, especially if work has been squared away, and it’s sure a good way to kick off the weekend.

This Friday, I ventured south and west of town, toward Shieldsville, a little town on one of the several lakes down that way. It was a great ride. I saw quite a few things that I didn’t or couldn’t photograph:

• three motorcycles carrying burly dudes up front and women in bikini tops in back (is this a thing now?),
• hundreds of cows and scores of horses,
• the highest heart rate I’ve seen in years, at the top of a nasty climb near the end of the route,
• hypnotically linear fields of corn and soybeans,
• a rather stout farmer who, when I encountered him a second time on the road a few hundred yards from where I’d met him earlier (but after an hour and many miles of riding), yelled, “You didn’t get very far!”
• a huge auto junkyard hidden out in the middle of nowhere,
• glimpses of four or five sizable lakes, all just about a half-mile from the roads,
• birds, butterflies, and dragonflies that (stupidly?) flew directly down the road away from me, so that I caught up to them over and over, forcing them to flee and flee,
• the immense deliciousness of a strawberry-flavored slush drink at a convenience store near my turnaround point.

I also saw some things that I could and did photograph:

Turkeys both domestic and wild (just at the edge of the brush, to the left of the evergreen):

A stately old red-brick silo:

A familiar street name, but no #8 bus:

Many odd little triangular patches of grass at various T intersections.

Quite a few sections of Rice County pavé: rumble strips along on quiet rural roads (note the strip on the white line: that’ll wake you up if your front tire wanders!).

A lof of gravel beneath me (and increasingly on me) and skies like this above me: