Five Bridges Century on a Pleasant Spring Day

"Just living is not enough.  One must

have sunshine, freedom, and a little 

flower."

Hans Christian Anderson

 

Deep within me, despite my age, I still have the desire to ride my bicycle and to explore despite the fact it is harder physically than it once was.  I am fortunate in this, in having this desire, because ironically I also have the desire to sit and rest.  Sloth and the need for activity war within me at times, particularly when a ride or activity will be physically demanding and possibly painful at times.  I know, however,  which brings the most satisfaction. Not always, but often I make the right decision, assuming either one truly is "right."  And perhaps that is because right is the wrong word:  satisfactory, desirable, rational, discerning?  Bless the English language  with all the words and their shades of meaning. 

 

Jon is putting on a century I have only done once before and have only done when the weather was decidedly unpleasant: the Five Bridges Century.  It passes by five covered bridges:  

Mile 26  Busching Covered Bridge, built in 1885 by Tom Hardman, Howe Truss, 176ft, spanning Laughrey Creek, Ripley County, IN

Mile 37.6 Otter Creek Covered Bridge, built in 1884 by Tom Hardman, Howe Truss, 112 feet, spanning...well, Otter Creek, of course! Near Holton, IN

Mile 50.3  Westport Covered Bridge, built in 1880 by Archibald McMichael Kennedy & Sons (Emmett, Charles), Burr Arch, 130 feet, spanning Sand Creek. Decatur County, IN

Mile 65.7  Scipio Covered Bridge, built in 1886 by Smithe Bridge Company, Howe Truss, 146ft, spanning Sand Creek, Jennings County, IN

Mile 87.2  James Covered Bridge, built in 1887 by Daniel Baron, Howe Truss, 124ft, spanning Graham Creek, Jennings County, IN  (Names and information on bridges copies from Jon Wineland post). 

 

Today there is to be at least some sun and warmth, though the prediction, which never comes to pass, is for increasing cloudiness.  The wind prediction does give me pause, but this is apparently going to be one of those  years where you ride in wind or you don't ride.  It will be a head wind most of the return, but I have already told Jon I don't intend to ride fast and he says he is okay with that. I often have a hard time accepting someone's word when they say this, but on this occasion I will since he knows me well enough to know my pace and could have just not asked. I originally had suggested a shorter ride, but then he tempted me with this century and I acquiesced shoving any doubts firmly down.    

 

My right knee has been bothering me.  It is not painful, but it makes me know it is there and whispers to me that if I abuse it, it will become painful.   But while there is lots of climbing on this route, there are no exceptionally long or steep climbs and I am taking my new bike which has easier gearing than the Lynskey.  

 

We meet at the hospital unsure if any other riders will join us.  They don't.  We are fine with that knowing that while we would have enjoyed the company of others, our friendship will be enough to see us through the day.  And we have not spent much time together recently so we do have things to catch up on.  What books are we reading?  What travel plans are in our future? And so on and so on. 

 

Sadly, the redbuds are gone, but there are still dogwoods at places along the route.  We see wild blue phlox, grape hyacinth, and other flowers that are lovely but which I can't identify dancing alongside the road.  In places the fields that farmers have not sprayed or plowed are thick with butter-weed, their yellow so beautiful and cheerful as if they are applauding the sun.  It is hell on allergies, but oh so very lovely.  The purple Dead-nettle and Henbit are mostly gone. Occasionally we see iris beginning to bloom.  Some fields are browned from being sprayed, and while we will pass some fields where farmers are working, we somehow elude being nearby while they are spraying, something we are both grateful for.  At one point we pull off to allow a tractor to pass.  We are playing.  He is working.  

 

As we climb a hill, we both view what we at first think is a wild turkey, but it turns out to be a stump and we both laugh at how our eyes can trick us.  We later do startle a turkey who takes off, awkward in his flight due to the size of his body but sufficiently upset at our passage to actually fly.  Jon tells me an interesting fact about Pterodactyls and how they would not be able to fly today as the air is different than it was then.  Sometime during the morning, as we descend a hill, a car is stopped in the wrong lane.  As I approach, the car door opens and a young lady goes running down the hill.  There is something lying in the road she is obviously going after and I wonder if a child threw out a toy.  I then see it is a box turtle.  She parked in the lane so nobody would run over it and gently moves it to the side of the road.  It is a good way to start the day, watching this act of kindness in a world which seems to be constantly reminding us is not kind.  

 

As we near the first store stop, we decide to skip the first bridge as we both have seen it many times both during rides and when we hike.  It also will avoid one of the steeper, longer climbs and cut about a mile off the 107 mile course.  We stop at a coffee shop before heading onward.  At the first bridge we stop at, I find a large hunting knife as we walk up to the bridge.  It is too large to fit in my front bag.  Jon helps secure it in my rear bag though it sticks out a few inches.  He later finds a cord along the road and we tie the zippers together so that they won't loosen and I will not lose anything.  Jon finds a nickle at the same bridge and chuckles saying how it pays to ride.  I tell him I think it would be interesting to keep track of everything that we have found and taken home on rides.  Earlier this week I found garden clippers on a ride. He agrees that it would be. 

 

While I don't photograph them all, we stop at each covered bridge and even at a bridge that is not covered but is old reading graffiti.  One still has Christmas lights hanging and I think how beautiful it must be at night during December.  Jon reminds me it would require riding at night to witness it.  And of course, I used to ride at night a lot but haven't since I quit working and quit doing brevets.  A part of me misses it as it is so different from daytime riding, but it is unlikely that I will ride very often at night anymore.  Not impossible, just unlikely. 

 

At lunch we sit outside on a bench and enjoy our sandwiches.  At the third store stop, the manager of the store comes out and tells us we are crazy when he hears how far we are riding and then asks if there aren't normally more of us.  Jon reminds me that the last time we did this ride, we heard the same words, just from a different person and reminds me that she rolled down the window as she left the store cautioning us to be careful. And perhaps they are right:  maybe those of us who ride distance aren't quite right, but we are pretty harmless in our addiction. The stop is welcome as the wind is wearying, but we move on and finish it out.  Near the end Jon runs into a friend from the Madison Bicycle Club whose wife is trying a borrowed ebike.  She quits at their home but he rides with us to the hospital where we end but he continues.  I tease Jon telling Doug that I have had to put up with him all day and it is now his turn to do so. 

 

  

 It has been an altogether pleasant if long day saturated with sunshine and friendship and flowers and a little freedom.  By the time we end, my feet and hands and body are ready for it to end even if my mind is not.  I remain thankful for bicycles, sunshine, flowers, the health to ride, and friendship.  I am blessed.  

 

 

 

TMD 2026: Tour de Hanover

"Each mistake teaches you

something new about yourself. 

There is no failure, remember, 

except in no longer trying.  It is 

the courage to continue that counts."

Chris Bradford   

 

Whether or not to ride this century, for me the first century of the year, was a challenging decision, and one I may have made differently if the weather had been worse.  I can't remember ever being less prepared to ride a century.  Yes, I have stayed active through the winter.  I eschewed Zwift but did do some spin classes.  I hiked and I walked and I swam and I lifted weights.  But I have not ridden outside much at all:  my longest ride was only 38 miles and that was two weeks ago.  I missed the two good days for riding last week visiting my son and his family.   To ride could definitely turn out to be a mistake, and a painful one at that.  (at least if any choice to ride could be considered a mistake)  If asked, I would advise others to wait until they had completed a least a 60 mile ride before attempting the century distance.  But there is no fool like an old fool I suppose. Experience should teach us to know better, but some of us never learn. 

 

Before committing, I do email Thomas to see if he minds if I leave a bit early so as not to hold him up.  It won't be much of a head start because the ride is the first day of day lights savings and the start time is sun up.  But it will be a bit of a start.  Thomas replies that he is just glad I am riding and I hope that he is being truthful.  And so, with the temperature prediction of forties to sixties with wind less that  10 miles per hour, I commit knowing that I can always turn around at the first store stop if I find I have bitten off more than I can chew.  Yes, it could be a mistake, but it certainly would not be the first one I have made in my lifetime. 

 

The day before I ready my bike, checking the bike bag for spares and tools and adding a gel or two, something I rarely use but carry in case of a bonk.  It is not that gels don't help, but I normally struggle to sleep the night after a century and adding caffeine from a gel does not help with the sleeping though it does with the riding.   Before I leave to the start, I throw in a warmer jersey just in case.  I will  later be so glad that I did for the ride start is colder than I expect. I have found that with season changes, with both hiking and biking, I have to re-learn how to dress. Normally I tend to go too warm, but that will not be the case today. 

 

After signing in, Bob Grable, Steve Rice, and I head out about fifteen minutes before the official start time and I thoroughly expect all the riders to catch us by the first store stop.  As mentioned, I added an extra layer for it is still quite chilly and the sun is not supposed to pop out until mid-afternoon.  But it is so nice to be on the bike again, at least for now.  

 

My mind has yearned for the bike and the open roads and what awaits there.  I have missed the conversation and fellowship and just the quiet calm of riding side by side with a friend who will share what happens and who may dream the same dreams tonight.  A friend who understands how tired a ride can make a person and how challenging even short climbs can be if they have a bit of depth to them, particularly this early in the season.  Cobb Hill comes up in the conversation, a hill I have only mastered one side of and have miserably failed at climbing on the other.  Steve Rice says he has never mastered the other side either and I laugh bringing up the memory of Chris Quirey telling me how the hill was so steep that when he was forced to dismount, he began sliding down the hill on his cleats.  Steve Rice talks of the first time he encountered the hill and had a similar experience while sporting Look cleats.  He ended up taking off his shoes so he could walk up the hill and someone drove by, rolled down the car window, said not a word, but shook his head at him.  His story reminds me of how much I miss stories from others during the solitary winter months.  It brings back other memories, for that brevet was the one where the driver stopped and pulled a gun on Steve.  So long ago.  

 

I don't remember how Cobb Hill came up because I know this is not an extremely hilly course, still I am surprised when my Wahoo tells me there are only seven climbs for the day. I blithely and naively believe it.  Later, near the first store stop, it will tell me I have finished riding.  I have to re-load the course to find there are 19 climbs for the day.   The new Wahoo occasionally does this and it is quite annoying.  It  has been over a year ago they said they were working on a fix for the issue.  Obviously, they have not been successful.  But I will continue to use the Wahoo until it gives out I suppose.  I do love its simplicity even while missing Garmin's map which gives street names. 

 

I also made the switch to a Fit Bit Versa 4 over the winter from an old fashioned Timex Ironman watch.  But I have found that it is virtually useless on hikes and bike rides.  On hikes it is wildly inaccurate and on bike rides it switches off if you happen to pause at a stop sign, etc. Like anything new, I am sure there are things I don't know about it, but I can't say that I am yet sure it was worth forsaking my old Ironman watch for.   

 

We spend the first of the ride in conversation, something that will become more rare as the hours and miles pass.  When it is full light, I begin to notice the first of the daffodils in places.  How welcome they are dressed in their bright shades of yellow which only emphasizes the green of their leaves.  My eyes have been winter starved for color.  Fields remain brown and barren and dull showing no promise of future fruitfulness, trees remain naked and stark, but daffodils promise that this will change.   I am always so thankful when God decides to grant me another spring and the strength to watch it from the seat of a bicycle.  I send up a silent prayer of thankfulness. 

 

The worms, however, are something I am never grateful for while riding and bring back memories of brevets. The wet weather has drawn them out onto the road and there is no way to avoid them.  They splatter my bike and my clothing and my wheels and even my water bottles.  It makes me wonder how many earth worms I have unwittingly eaten during rides where they splatter everywhere including my water bottles.  On walks,  I often pick them up as the day warms and place them back where they can go to ground rather than die on the pavement, but on a bike I just become a worm murderess, however unwittingly.  

 

We are not too far down the road when an individual rider passes us as if we were standing still.  I don't recognize him as I don't recognize many of the riders here today.  I know better than to follow my instinct to give chase:  if I am to finish I must ride conservatively.  About ten to fifteen minutes after, another group passes.  Jon says hello as they pass.   We will not see them again until the first store stop in New Washington.  

 

We reach the store stop and  I grab a quick drink to have with my homemade oatmeal bar.  It tastes unusually good today.  But we only pause and are ready to pull out when Thomas Nance and the group he is with arrive.  Needless to say, fool that I am I decide to head on rather than to turn around and make it a 60 miler instead of 101.  Steve and Bob begin to pick up the pace.  I stay with them for a bit, but then decide it is too swift for me.  I have not shed the expected layer at the stop, and I am glad I have not. Jon stays with me and we don't see them again until lunch.  I am grateful for his company and he teases me when I worry about finishing telling me I will be singing before we are through.  And indeed, I do sing a bit later, when the sun pops out, and he teases me about that as well.   I try to remember to drink.  

 

At my age I am already at risk of stroke, and dehydration ups that risk for anyone.   After Lloyd's stroke and seeing that of others, particularly my aunt who lay for a year or longer unable to talk or move,  I am fearful of being left so helpless whereas I was not when I was younger.  Perhaps, as is often said, ignorance is bliss, at least in some areas.  Or is it youth thinking that things could never happen to them, only to others. Maybe even getting old is that way.  We think it will not happen to us.  Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and wonder how I ever got this old.  And why.  Why me and not somebody else?  I remember my mother, who outlasted all her siblings and many of her friends by a number of years, telling me that it is not always a gift to be the last one left.  But then, who really wants to die unless they are in pain or the throes of depression?

 

Jon and I eat at McDonalds.  As always, I remain amazed at how popular it is because the food just is not very good and it is not cheap.  The woman taking my order looks years older than me, weary and beaten down by life.  I think how fortunate I am that I was able to retire and not have to continue going to work when age had gripped me tightly.  Bob comes in asking if we are about ready to leave.  We are and head out together though I have told him to go on.  He needs to get back and I have, as Jon often says, all day.  There is a comfort in knowing that if I do fall back, Thomas and the rest of the group are still back there and will sweep me up.  But my fear of being the chubby anchor never materializes. The four of us will finish the ride together.   The sun begins to come out and while I initially wondered if taking off a layer at lunch was wise, in only a few miles I am glad for disrobing. A few minutes of misery in exchange for future comfort.  A lesson cycling teaches us if we ride for long. 

 

The third store stop is absolutely disgusting outside with bird droppings on the chairs and tables and scraps of food (at least I hope that is what they were) just set outside.  The sad part is it could be a lovely stop with the outside area and the tables.  But it would take soap, water, and elbow grease.  We don't linger overly long before striking back out.   

 

When we cross 62, my legs and I are ready to be done, particularly when there is anything that even remotely resembles a hill.  They are not failing me yet, but they are consistently grumbling about the demands I am placing on them.  I think  briefly of how one day, if I continue to challenge myself, or even if I don't,  they will sputter and give out and fail to respond when I ask them to;  will I consider that a mistake in judgement or will I be glad that I still made the attempt?  Was Dylan Thomas right, should we "not go gentle into that good night?"  I suppose I will not know the answer to that question  until it  happens.  I just  hope that I have the strength of mind to continue to challenge myself, to have the courage to plunge onward without letting fear of failure hold me captive.  I have failed at so many things, I should be a pro.  But I also have had my share of successes.  One builds on the other perhaps. .   I think when it happens I will just feel truly old and sad.   I hope I also feel that it was not a mistake to continue for as long as this body I was blessed with allows me to. 

 

I know from doing this course  previously,  this stretch after crossing 62  always seems as long as the entire century:  the car seems an eternity away.   But eventually we arrive.  I sign in and go home.  We are about an hour behind the first rider and about a half hour behind the second group and there is still a group out.  Somehow, I survived and never had to call my daughter to rescue me.  So I smile as I get in my car and head home to rest and prepare for the coming riding season, mentally and physically.  It is good to be back in the saddle, but I am ready to put the bike away until tomorrow.  

A Riding Week in February

"I used to try to decide which was the 

worst month of the year. In the winter

I would choose February. I had it figured

out that the reason God made February short

a few days was because he knew that by 

the time people came to the end of it they

would die if they had to stand one more

blasted day."  

Katherine Paterson

 

Our unusual cold, snowy spell has been followed by an unusual warm spell.  It has not quite dispelled the snow that still daintily laces the shady places, defiantly white,  where the sun cannot reach.  It is definitely ebbing, clenched fists slowly and reluctantly relinquishing dull brown ground.  There is a bareness there that will be unrecognizable once spring weaves her magic.   I wish I knew for sure that winter was done for this year, but I have heard predictions that winter will defiantly reclaim the land toward the end of the month.  I hope they are wrong but it would be quite off for winter to let us off so easily in early February.  I have had quite enough of the snow shovel this year and have vowed that by next winter, I will have a snow blower.  The weather has always swung wildly, but more so now than ever in memory.  Then I grin to myself thinking that in a few months I will be cursing the heat.  Dissatisfaction, part of the human condition.  

 

 

 I feel fortunate that I have been able to get out on the bike during the past week for a few rides, including today.  But today is dreary and it is still cold with the sun shielding his warmth from not just my body, but my soul.  I mind the cold more than I used to, and I mind the wind even more.  Age, it seems, has weakened not only my determination, but my tolerance for those things that increase the difficulty of a ride though I still do not mind hills even while I curse them.  There is something about the use of my legs and my breath that reminds me I am alive and still strong, relatively speaking.  It is not the strength of younger years, but it is still strength, and I rejoice in it. 

 

  I used to enjoy the challenge of wind and extreme cold, but not so much any more. Perhaps it is because my winter rides have become almost exclusively exercises in solitude.   Those that used to face these roads with me throughout the depths of winter no longer do.  Some have quit riding and some have yielded to Zwift.  And those that do ride are so much younger and stronger that I would be a burden.  Or perhaps it is just because of the passage of time......when there is no longer change, when we no longer change, we are dead.  February has been hard regardless since Lloyd passed as it held both Valentine's Day and our anniversary.  

 

But I can say I have enjoyed the short rides this week, most of them in the twenty mile range or a bit more.   Despite the cold, the wind has not been too demanding, and it just feels good to be outside and for the road to be passing underneath my wheels.  As I climbed Leota Hill earlier this week, I swore to myself that it has gotten slightly steeper and longer over the winter.  My breath was ragged and gasping, my speed a mere crawl, but still I ascended.  When asked, my legs did not fail me.  I worried about cinders causing my tire to flat or to spin out, but thus far it has not happened.  I truly detest changing a tire when my fingers are freezing cold.  I briefly wondered how the finger I have to manually straighten in the mornings anymore would react to the demand and I am glad I don't find out. 

 

On Saylor, I stopped briefly when I saw ice blocks. I have seen ice fishing before in this area, but never the blocks.  They gleamed in the sunshine of the day.   They were in front of an Amish house so, while my first thought was an igloo, I realized it is probably for their ice house since the Amish do not use electricity and thus do not have refrigerators.  It made me think of my mother and how she told me the children would run behind the ice truck in the summer hoping that the ice man would be kind enough to chip a free piece of ice for them to stick in their cotton dry summer mouths.  How spoiled we have become.  All my childhood we had a refrigerator, and all my childhood my mother continued to call it the icebox.  Sometimes I wonder if the progress has actually made us less satisfied with our lives, perhaps because it yields us time we would not otherwise have.   I miss my mother:  the sound of her voice, the sound of her laughter, the way she would call my name,  the gentleness of her touch, the very smell of her.   These, I thought, are the important things in life, but too often we do not cherish them  enough only realizing their importance and their rareness when they are gone. 

 

 

I wish I had been a better daughter, closer to what she wanted me to be.  Did she ever understand my love of the bicycle?  How I cried when we left our home to live in England for year and they sold my sister's bike, the bike I had inherited and learned to ride on. I know she later came to hate my cycling, but time has made me realize how interlaced that hatred was with fear for my safety.  And how could she have understood, she who was raised in poverty and never owned a bicycle.  Our personalities and likes so different, and yet I swear we were cut from the same cloth.  Sometimes I see her in myself.   At one time it would have made me turn away, but now I embrace it.  Yes, I miss my mother and the others I have loved that have died.  

 

My thoughts were interrupted by two deer that stand, uncertain, timidly gazing at me from the middle of the road.  They decided there is safety in flight, and they gracefully bound and melt into the forest, survivors of another hunting season.  I noticed squirrels scampering and one that did not scamper quickly from an automobile demanding passage thus paying the ultimate price.  I assume they are hungrier than normal because of the snow making dinner harder to come by.  But I do not know.  I hate thinking that I will die with so much left that I do not know or understand or have never seen.  

 

All these are thoughts I have as I wind my way down roads that are so familiar I could almost ride them blindfolded.   Each day I head a different direction, sometimes still finding my way impeded by ice patches where the trees have shielded the snow from the sun. Nowadays, I change course.  It is just good to be outside, on a bicycle, and to know that it looks as if God will probably grant me another spring, another chance to watch the earth give birth and paint the roadsides with color and new life.  Would I chose February as the worst month?  I don't know.  In February Christmas with its sparkle has passed and the winter seems to drag on as if it will never end.  And we no longer go to Hell Week so there is not that to look forward to.  Would we, I wonder, appreciate spring as much if there were no February?