Hardinsburg Solo Century: June 2022

"Time flies over us

but leaves its shadow behind."

Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

It has been awhile, perhaps too long, since I have ridden a solo century.  The weather is supposed to be perfect for early June with wall to wall sunshine, low  humidity, and highs only in the seventies.  I really want to ride a new course I have put together to Bedford, but there are too many concerns about flooding around Medora.  So I decide to ride an old favorite:  Hardinsburg.  There is some road construction going on there that I strongly suspect means a favorite old bridge is being replaced by something more modern, and this trip will give me the answer to the question that has been haunting me since I first read of road closures in that area.  

 

 

One benefit of riding solo is that you can leave whenever the whim strikes you.  If you feel like one more cup of coffee before hitting the road, fine.  If you don't, that's okay too.  There is nobody to answer to except yourself.  I slip out into the chill of morning a bit after seven clad in shorts, short sleeved jersey, and a pair of sun sleeves that serve as light arm warmers but are way too hot to wear as intended.  They don't stay on long.  The climb up Leota Hill warms me and I peel them down around my wrists.  

While it is technically still spring and not summer, and while it is cool outside, the green no longer tells of new birth and spring but of summer.  Trees are full figured,  ripe with greenness.  Daisies litter the road in numerous places, so cheerful.  I briefly think of how I would wander into the pasture to pick them when my marriage was new, trying to brighten the small mobile home in which we lived. 

 

Despite our lack of "things," I do not regret those days.  Indeed, sometimes I feel rather sorry for those that start with everything.   When I look around me now, though without him at my side, I see what we earned pulling at the harness together.  I remember the sacrifices and the achievements, the wins and losses, and the happiness that comes with an honored commitment though like everyone, there were times when we wondered if we would/could remain a couple. A burst of love and thankfulness fills me knowing that he worried about how I would do alone and that I have done okay partially due to his worry. 

It strikes me that there are still no orange day lilies.  And the crops....throughout the ride I notice that the crops, particularly the corn, is not as tall and as healthy looking as it normally is in early June.  Perhaps, I think, it is my imagination.  But a Facebook memory from this very date a year or two ago notes that the day-lilies were in bloom, their orange faces turning throughout the day to follow the sun.

I also notice throughout the ride that numerous people have gardens that did not have gardens in the past.  Some of them are not much to look at, but many of them are glorious and I miss my gardening days.  That thought takes me back in time to the hours I would spend tending the garden, canning and freezing.  Hard work, but how satisfying to hear the lids seal after taking them out the canner.  To open the freezer door and see frozen vegetables galore.  And how, sometimes when I would cook with them in the midst of winter, it would seem as if a trace of summer returned right there in  my kitchen.  The smell of food cooking so that one can fill the empty bellies of loved ones.  Is there a better perfume, particularly when combined with a warm, cozy shelter against cold weather? 

I notice mulberries on the ground and remember how a large mulberry tree grew near the front of my husband's mother's house.  How the children loved them.  And just as I am in the midst of my thoughts, I turn the corner to come upon an eagle feeding in the road who immediately takes flight to a nearby tree, his white tail feathers taunting me yet telling me I have identified him for what he is.  I stop to try to get a better look, but he must think I look dangerous because he leaves his perch taking again to the air, gloriously beautiful.  Tears briefly water my eyes as it all seems too much to take in.  So much beauty.  A gratefulness for the health to ride a bicycle fills my heart.

And then a descent is upon me, difficult to navigate because of the shadows that dapple the ground.  I have ridden this road enough to know it is not well maintained and there are quite possibly pot holes waiting to fell an inattentive rider.  It demands my attention and I heed its warning.  For almost a year now, I have been able to sleep on both sides, normally with no pain, and I know from past falls how easily that can end.  Falls from bicycles are how my shoulders got messed up to begin with.   A cat is at the road edge following a curve near the bottom of the hill.  My descent messes up his hunting, and he gives me a brief, disgusted look before melting, ghost-like, into the brush that lines the road.  

 

During  the ride I find that the bridge I was concerned about is, indeed, scheduled for replacement.  The sign says it will close on or after April 1st, and while I wish it was an April Fool's joke, I  know it is not.  This shadow of time's passage will soon disappear, laying down its life for progress. I say my goodbyes. I have lost count of the older bridges that I have ridden that are now gone, replaced with more practical but not nearly so beautiful replacements.  The number of small country stores that have closed their doors, unable to complete with Walmart and Dollar General and other large conglomerates.  I  accept that this is the way of things, but that does not mean that I necessarily like or approve of the changes time has wrought.  They shadow rides, these stores and bridges, when I pass their way. 

Lunch is at Little Twirl, the first place I ate at when first reaching this area.  At that time it was open year round.  Now, it is not.  There was a gas station that was open as well, long closed. Afterward, a Mennonite store briefly made an appearance and I enjoyed frequenting it with its delicious sandwiches on homemade bread.  But time closed it as well.  Little Twirl is all that remains as a rest stop in that area. 

 

After I have left the lunch stop, I remember that I was supposed to call the kayaking place my daughter and I are to go to tomorrow.  I stop thinking that there is no way here, on Branahan Road, in the middle of nowhere, I will have service only to find that I have better service than I do at home. Four or five bars.  Go figure.  I call and ensure they are open and not flooded.  Back on the bike to prepare for the long climb up to the Red Barn.  During the climb, I want to go to granny, but I remind myself I am, for the first time in a long time, training for a ride so quit whining and turn the pedals in the way that builds strength in both the legs and in character.  

 

When I reach the Red Barn, Amos is sitting outside.  I always wonder how he stays in business, there in the middle of nowhere, but while we sit talking another customer arrives so perhaps he is busier than I realize.  When I ask the man that arrives how he is doing, he grins at me and says that if he were any better, he would have to have help.  This tickles me and reminds me of the Lloydism's I used to share with friends and how we would laugh.  A grin on my face, I pull out of the parking lot to finish the century out.  

 

During the last 25 miles, I am surprised that I am tired, but then I remember that this century always leaves me a bit drained.  It is not the hilliest century, but there is very little flat other than Blue River Road.  But still I continue to enjoy myself, maybe because I love Eden and Delaney Park Roads.  Will, I wonder, this day be another shadow of the time spent?  I hope so.