The biking has been exceptional lately. The morning temperatures are nearly perfect. If I get on the road before sunrise, it’s in the sixties. If I finish within three or four hours, it’s still in the seventies. It doesn’t get much better than that. The breezes have been fairly moderate, too, and if I go out into the wind, then even if it strengthens, I get a tailwind on the way home.
I’ve been seeing plenty of wildlife too, which is always fun. On today’s ride, I saw about a hundred hawks, an antelope, a coyote, and a rattlesnake, amongst numerous other critters. I had a fair bit of human company today as well, which is unusual on most of the routes I ride.
I don’t always have a plan when I ride. I head into the wind and let my heart, legs, and lungs tell me what they want. As the season progresses, the mileage continues to climb. The heart and legs are still going strong after three hours of riding, so I raise the mileage each week.
“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin
I had a destination in mind today, the second-highest point in the county. It is the most prominent high point, with views of nearly 20 miles in all directions. I have some history with the place, so I was chasing my past a little. When I first came to this country over forty years ago, I was a Geophysical Surveyor, and there’s a Triangulation Station on the peak that I used to establish a control network.
I have ridden by the hill numerous times, but there is no main road that gets closer than two or three miles. When I made the trip years ago to the peak, it was in a lifted F250 4×4. My thought was perhaps I could coax Double Cross over the sand track to the summit, but it wasn’t to be. The sand was just two deep and soft. We made it to within a half mile, where the Smoky Hill River heads before we were rejected.
There was no sadness about not reaching the hilltop; in fact, the goal was a fun ride in the morning sunshine, and that was accomplished. On the way there, the roads were clear with no traffic, but by the time I made it back to the main road, the big gravel trucks were on the move, hauling their payloads to the cement plant for Cheyenne Ridge Phase II (another wind farm).
I watched a half dozen of the big diesel 18-wheelers fly by, blowing diesel exhaust and churning up a dust cloud that never seemed to settle. I tried to time it to make the mile I needed to the turn, but I wasn’t fast enough and got caught in a massive cloud of dust as a big rig barreled past, barely slowing. I don’t want to get sidetracked by my feelings about these giant windmills with their blinking red lights; I’ll leave that for another day.
The ride put the weekly total over a hundred miles and burned an entire day’s worth of calories. Here are a few scenes from recent rides.
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