Campbellsburg Century in 2024

An Evening Bike Ride

by Gary L. Misch

Race toward the mountains,

Peddle through redbud alley,

Chase the blood red sky. 

The weather is to be nice on Saturday and I need to prepare.  Dave and I are, yet again, returning to Scotland, this time to ride across her beauty from east coast to west.  I feel relatively certain this will be my last trip there, but one never knows. Still, I intend to savor every moment and to do that, I have to whip this old body into some semblance of being in shape.  I have no intention of going all that way and then riding in the van rather than on my bicycle.  And so I put the Campbellsburg Century on the club calendar.  It is good to have some motivation to get out of the winter doldrums.

This was the first century that I ever designed and it was designed in bits and pieces, before GPS, without maps.  I would ride and mark turns with sidewalk chalk, searching for stores,  cobbling them together until they became a route I liked.  This would have been 2004.  Not only was it the first century I designed, but it was the first century I captained for the bicycle club.  But I have not had it on the ride schedule for a few years.  I knew it had some hard climbs, but I had forgotten how hard.  It is like looking back on long brevets and asking myself how in the world I did that. 

It is a small crowd just as I expected.  I suppose it should bother me, but it really doesn't.  There is a time and a place for such rides, and today is, hopefully, such a day. I rode this century alone when I first put it together and I have ridden it alone many times since.  It will be nice to have company, but if nobody shows I will make do.  At first I believe it will just be Jon and me, but I get a text from Dave that he is coming but running late.  We head on leaving him a cue sheet on the windshield.  I know he will catch us. 

On Eden Road, I begin to see the first of the dogwoods and I know spring is partially gone, stolen by my refusal to go out into the stormy, wet, windy, cold weather we have had recently.  Sure enough, the redbud trees, my favorites, while still retaining some muted color, have scattered petals along the roadside as if a marriage has taken place prior to our arrival.  It always saddens me a bit, this shedding of the redbud trees, despite the fact I know other flowers will now begin waving from the roadside, that the dogwoods will whiten and be around for a bit,  and that the trees are greening though not yet fully leafed out.  

I think about the cataract surgery I have elected to put off until the fall.  Everyone tells me that colors really pop afterwards, and I pray that I live to see another spring.  I have no reason to expect that I won't, but life has taught me that our time is limited.  I must admit, I am afraid of the surgery but of course I will do it anyway.  Watching mom's macular degeneration gave me more insight into the value of eyesight, even dimming eyesight, and while the risk of losing sight from the surgery is almost ridiculously low, it still worries me.  I shake it off, however.  Today is for enjoying company and the ride.  

Jon and I chat a bit to the first store stop.  At the large hill leading up to the Red Barn, he asks if this is the big  hill I had told him about it.  I tell him no.  It is a hill, and it is a tough hill, but it is not "THE HILL."  I explain to him that there will even be foreshadowing, that we will be riding along on a fairly flat road for a number of miles next to farm fields, and then we will see where the trees begin to hang over the road, branches like tentacles waiting to ensnare,  and a dark shadow will arc across the ground:  the start of the climb.  

Dave catches us when we reach the first store stop.   As we park our bikes, I notice a couple of robin eggs on the picnic table and wonder if Amos cleaned out a robin's nest from over his porch overhang, but I see no sign of mud or a nest up there.  Amos tells me there were those eggs plus a few others in the parking lot one morning.  He said that a man who watched the solar eclipse in his parking lot told him that the eclipse caused birds to lose eggs, but Amos points out if this had happened the eggs would have broken.  So the robin's eggs in the middle of a gravel parking lot are a mystery.  I later google it and learn that the eggs probably were either infertile and dumped by the parents or that they were stolen by a crow or bluejay who dropped them when being pursued by a pissed off parent, but neither of those explanations explain why the eggs are not cracked.  

Dave regains the energy he expended catching Jon and I as only the young can, and we are soon on our way.  Before you know it, we confront the "HILL" on Cox Ferry.  I remember my first time up that hill and how the construction workers bet I could not ride up it.  I remember descending the hill one time when a mother and her fawn ran parallel to the road and how I worried they would dart out as I didn't and still don't know if my brakes would fully stop me on such a steep descent.  I think about walking, but scramble up.  Dave admits to the same thoughts but also scrambles up.  Even Jon, an excellent climber, is  panting deeply, something I rarely see but then I rarely make it up a hill before him so perhaps that is it.  Both Dave and he had stopped to lighten their loads giving me a head start.  

Dave tells me his GPS kept jumping from 24 to 26 percent, and we laugh about this, particularly as I keep making it steeper and steeper. You said 28 percent grade right?  I am glad it is behind us, but I am glad I was still able to climb it.  I think briefly of all the times riders have had to walk that hill and am grateful to my legs for their strength and determination.  A bit after this, a woman becomes enraged that we are on her road, giving us the finger from inside the truck with her right hand and then with her left  hand outside the truck.  None of us have any idea why she is so angry.  There was no car to block her passing or slow her down.  But regardless, she is.  Instead of allowing it to dampen our spirits, however, we just laugh it off.  Jon begins making jokes about her being ambidextrous. People do seem to hate cyclists, though I must say I see surprisingly little of this on the country roads that I normally cling to. Indeed, many people are interested and kind and bid me to be careful on my travels.

 

It is then that the wind seems to be seriously slapping us around.  I think how glad I am that we should have it mostly at our backs after lunch.  Lunch is at Little Twirl since the Mennonite store closed and I am elated when we arrive.  Jon and Dave get shakes with their meal, but I get a child's ice cream cone which is plenty.  Despite it still being a bit chilly, we outside in the sun at a picnic table.  

The ride homeward after lunch is delightful with the wind pushing us along so that we need barely pedal.  We earned this, this feeling of flying with little effort, and I intend to suck every last bit of joy from it.  The worst of the climbing is behind us and I am glad.  My legs, while better than during last weeks century at that mileage, still tell me that I am being a bitch asking this of them.  I don't cramp though, as I did at the end of BMB.  I NEVER used to cramp, and if I did it was normally on the drive home after a long ride or in bed that night.  This seems to be changing, however, and it worries me a bit, this along with the knee pain I am starting to have.  I know we wear out, that I will wear out, but I am not resigned to wearing out even while I accept it as a fact. 

 

We quickly reach the Cheddar Depot. I am surprised at the changes and decide I probably need to find another store stop, but not today. We sit on the front porch taking some nourishment before heading onward, soaking up the last of the sunlight.

After the ride ends, we all go out to dinner together.  Being single and living alone, it is nice to have human company and laughter for an evening meal.  The perfect cap on the day before we part ways knowing/hoping we will meet again on another ride.  Life is good when it holds bicycles, friends, hard hills, and redbud trees in it. 

Easter Ride 2024

"Spring drew on...and a greenness

grew over those brown beds, which, 

freshening daily, suggested the thought

that Hope traversed them at night, and

left each morning brighter traces of 

her steps."

Charlotte Bronte

As always, there is something about spring that makes me glad to be alive, to have survived another of winter of dark and dreary cold, and come out of on the other side.   I give a prayer of thanksgiving to God that he has let my eyes feast on yet another spring.  Today's ride, an unexpected gift on a day predicted to be rainy and stormy.  Instead, the sun bursts through the clouds and the sky is as blue as my granddaughter's eyes, and I suppose, as innocent.  Perhaps the greatest gift is that the wind is mild and not the strong, bossy, punishing wind of recent rides.  

I decide to take the Calfee, my new bike, rather than my old, dependable Lynskey.  I don't trust the Calfee yet, not in the way I trust the  Lynskey, and I spend part of the ride trying to decide why.  Don't get me wrong....I absolutely adore my new Calfee, particularly the electronic shifting.  The ride is smooth as silk.  It is a beauty with remarkable craftsmanship evident from stem to stern.  I think the only thing I might change in a do over is the disc brakes:  they seem rather an overkill and are still rather unfamiliar to me and what they mean for tire changing, etc.  

 

But I still love my Lynskey, the way it takes abuse without complaining, the triple that has gone out of style rather than a compact double though it was always rare for me to use the smaller chain ring.  I got the Lynskey right before the 2011 PBP and it has served me well.  I intend for it to be my go to bike during bad weather.  In the end, I think it is because the Lynskey has proven itself that makes me comfortable.  We have a relationship.  So many memories. The Calfee and I will have to spend time together to make that happen.  And with the spring, there is hope that there will be time.  

I worry about my mind going anymore, the way I struggle sometimes to recall things, to pronounce things, to draw the words from my mind to mouth.  I have no diagnosis, but I worry about dementia or Alzheimer's and how I will handle it if it becomes reality because, in this country, you don't have choices as you do in some other places.  But this day is for appreciation, for celebration of another spring, a day and season for HOPE. And so I thrust the negative thoughts behind me as forcefully as possible, leaving them on the road as can only happen on a delightful spring day on a bicycle. 

It always amazes me how quickly spring arrives.  I don't mean that the winter is short, but that once spring decides it is time, how quickly green commandeers the brown and gray of winter.  As I ride, fields are alive with purple deadnettle.  Soon the farmers will spray and till it into submission, but for now it is dominant and absolutely gorgeous.  It brings a memory back of pulling it in the garden to plant and a bee getting angry with me.  It flew into my hair getting caught in the strands and I ran indoors, screaming.  My husband took the sting in his hand pulling it free. How often he saved me pain.  Always the protector.  How I miss that. 

 

I decide to head toward Henryville for, despite the sun, there are predictions for afternoon thunder storms.   The daffodils still brighten the landscape, painting the roadsides yellow, though they are fading. I love  how they stare winter down, daring her to do her worst, how they laugh at the strong spring winds, dancing and showing how those that are flexible survive hardships thrust upon them better than those that are rigid.   

 

I pass Helen Trueblood's, her yard alive with color, and regret that, with her passing, these flowers will not be cherished and cared for as they were while she graced this earth.  But I also remember how you can almost always tell an old homestead, despite the house being dilapidated or gone, bones sagging with age, by the daffodils that someone once planted.  During a hike on the Knobstone, Chris and I found an old well he was looking for that way.    The house was long gone, but the daffodils remain.  The words of a Leann Womack song come to mind, "And that's something, something worth leaving behind."  The name of the artist long forgotten, but the beauty remains, a reminder that actions, perhaps, last longer in preserving our bit of time here. 

 

The wheels continue to roll as I decide what roads to take and pick a few I don't normally ride.  I think how we tend to become slaves to routes as we become familiar with an area, maybe because of terrain, maybe because a bad dog lives on a certain road, maybe just because.  I decide to ride past my mother-in-law's old house.  So many memories there, some my own some shared by  my husband while he was still alive.  

 

The sky begins to darken and I decide it is best to head homewards despite being reluctant to give up this precious time on the bike on a day that was predicted to be stormy and rainy.  The day, instead was an Easter gift, and Easter is, I suppose, like spring, about hope.  And despite the ride ending, I smile.