One ride, which I’m calling the Tour de Fagen (map), accounts for a good chunk of my recent cycling mileage. Covering 16 miles, mostly on hilly gravel roads, the ride starts by going straight east of our house – and I mean straight, on a road that’s as plumb as any dreamed by Thomas Jefferson – over some rolling hills and off the pavement. Now gravel but still perfectly straight, the road – 100th Street East – goes down a long, ridiculously sketchy hill (here, looking back at it, way off in the distance)
over the line between Rice County line and into Goodhue County, about which I know nothing except that they are good about marking abandoned townsites, as with this sign commemorating the town of Fagen. I have no idea if Steely Dan ever plays here.
There, perhaps because it’s now free of the oppressive hands of the Rice County commissioners, the road changes its name to 350th Street, passes some verdant soybean fields
and starts to bob and weave over some nice ridges, some of which appear (judging by waterlogged roadside signs) to be untouched by human hand.
The road struggles and then finally succeeds in heading south, now as 10th Avenue,
and does so pretty much all the way to Iowa.
My rides haven’t gone that far, stopping a few miles on, at the paved east-west highway, Dennison Road, where there is a pretty little farm.
I’d love to continue south, all the way to the little burg of Kenyon, eleven miles further south and making for a nice 38-mile round trip.