~ 50 Miles from Emmett to New Plymouth ~

Because I am still catching up on my blog writing, I still have a backlog of stories to recount. This one centers around the longest bike ride of my entire life (but, hopefully will not remain such). On Saturday, Josh and I got up early and drove to the town of Emmett, which is not all that far away, but is on the other side of a big overpass which makes it seem like a completely different part of the state. We pulled into the parking lot of an Albertson's grocery mart and utilized their restrooms for our wardrobe changing. From there, we rode our bicycles along a meandering route via empty farming roads. It was pretty early in the day and the ride to New Plymouth was under a pleasant temperature. I felt as though I had so much energy and was just having the greatest time. When we arrived at New Plymouth, we located a market and purchased some food items, which we ate under the shade on the grass of a local religious establishment (apparently, they have no parks in New Plymouth). Having refueled, we set out for the ride back to Emmett. It had become early afternoon and the temperature was begining its ascent into the 90's. The ride back seemed to me much longer in duration than the first part. We basically rode a loop around the Emmett Valley. The second part of the loop, rather than going through farm lands and cattle pastures, took us through cherry orchards, which I found much more aesthetically appealing. It also had a lot more "rollercoaster" sorts of roads which, instead of being long and flat or steady mild inclines, went perpendicular to the rolling hills. I found it great fun. There was an unfortunate incident which we aren't talking about in which we were confronted by an angry dog. But since we aren't talking about it because we have agreed to disagree, I shan't say any more. By the time that we were riding into the Albertson's parking lot, I felt that my body could have ridden many more miles, but my butt was kinda tired of sitting on a bicycle seat. Plus, it was really mutherfucking hot out and my front tire had gotten some kind of flat. Here are a few photos of the trip. As always, there are more on my flickr thingie which you can access by depressing the link to the right. I would link it directly right here, but there is an issue with me accessing such things as flickr right now so I'll leave it up to your own internet prowess to figure it out for yourselves.

Posted by jennifer at 8:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)