This week’s weather has been less than desirable, and for whatever reason I have had a bitch of a time dodging the rain since Monday’s mountain bike ride. Today however I somehow got my ass out the door, on the road and back before the cold, steady rains returned.
J.D. Wilkes & The Dirt Daubers (formerly The Dirt Daubers) are quickly becoming the number band on the imaginary soundtrack in my head during dirt road rides. At one time it was the sounds of Hank III that country-fried my brain and filled it with images of the critters, farms, landscapes and undercover back road meth labs of rural Michigan, but Hank is on the back burner now, replaced by J.D. and his Daubers.
I had a bit of free time on my hands this morning, so I monkeyed around with some recent pics, utilizing some textures I recently found in the computer web thing. Some worked, some didn’t, some were too much and some added just enough of what I was looking for.
Today was another amazing fall day in the palm of “the mitten,” and I was eager to get out on some dirt roads. I extended my northern dirt road route further west and south of town today and got in just under three hours of pavement, gravel, dirt, sand and as you can see– dust.
I really don’t know what I was thinking when I decided to get out my “new to me” camera and expose its lens and mechanical naughty bits to the tsunami of dust a speeding sand pit bound dump truck left me today. You just know tomorrow I’ll be complaining at length about how my lens is scratched, the shutter grinds and my photos look worse than they already do. Idiot.
While this is technically fall, It just hasn’t felt like it, at least not the nipple hardening type of fall riding that I am used to. Night-time temperatures have been cool and during the day it’s been mostly sunny with temps in the 70s and NO humidity, so it’s been about as perfect as you can get for riding. Today was one of those days, so I got out riding on the dirt and gravel roads again for couple hours.
Today was a good day for a ride on the dirt roads surrounding my crib, and they did NOT disappoint, that’s for sure!
I won’t go to into all of the details of the ride, ’cause they ain’t that impressive, but just as it is with riding in the woods on singletrack, I see a little more than most when out on the dirt roads, so for the most part, I will let the pictures do the talking.
Basically the ride broke down like this: go south of town, hit Deerfield Road which is one of the shittiest roads I’ve ever been on (teeth rattling, nut sack pounding ripples of suck and THAT is on a freaking mountain bike), do some flats, do some mild hills, do some pavement, some sandy roads, see some freaky dirt road stuff, enjoy the ride, get 2.5 hours of riding in and go home. Fin.
Here are the pics…
Eddy Merckx didn’t give a flying Belgian shit if he was on road bike, cross bike or “gravel” bike. Eddy just rode… and crushed it.
Souce: pic originally seen at roadworksbicyclerepairs.tumblr.com
Today seemed like a good day for a dirt road ride.
And it was. Continue Reading →
Tuesday morning meant it was time for another edition of The Tuesday Morning Anti Worlds– an easy, meaningless, non competitive, non group ride on dirt roads and farm roads that doesn’t really have to be on Tuesday but since today was Tuesday it’s the TUESDAY Morning blah, blah, blah…
Today I shot out for a quick hour and a half dirt road ride before a lunch meeting with Wifey. A bit of hard packed dirt, some deep sandy gravel, a nice headwind and some long steady elevation gain (still talking hundred of feet here, leave the high fives for later) made for a fun way to burn some calories off of my hulking figure and gelatinous thighs which have started more and more to resemble raw pork shanks.
