Corner of Floating Feather & Linder
After spending over an hour at the bike shop yesterday morning procuring for myself some bike flat repair accessories & skills, I went on my longest solo road ride to date. Thusfar, I've only gone on short solo road rides, as I try to become accustomed to an entirely new bicycle riding experience. The bicycle is much different than anything I've ever ridden, that it's taken me about three rides to feel comfortable. Also, I'm still traumatised by Josh being hit by a truck on my first road biking experience, so I haven't felt confident about branching out very much. Josh is still out-of-service which has meant that I am alone on bicycling adventures. What is more, on Saturday, I went on a short mountain bike ride and broke off the derailer on my mountain bike. That was something of an adventure trying to test out my utter lack of mechanical abilities. At least I wasn't "very far" from home. Something that became apparent to me while I was walking my broken bicycle down the mountain and towards my home was how very very slow the act of walking compared to biking is. At the bottom of the mountain, a friendly mountain biker dude stopped to try to help me, but his efforts failed. I had a brilliant idea which I gained from perusing one of Josh's history of bicycles books...I used an arm warmer to tie the broken derailer against the frame (so that it wouldn't swing into the spokes), lowered my seat all of the way, clipped one foot into the peddle and held it away from the other leg, and utilized my free leg to push the bike along. This proved to be WAY faster than walking, and much less anoying. And even kinda fun, albeit very silly. SO, with that derailer broken, I had no choice but to go on a road ride yesterday to satiate my bicycling desires.
I'm not sure on how many miles I rode. I think it must have been between 25 and 30. And it was without any breaks and by the time that I was done, I felt that I could have kept riding. I road out Hill Road and then went up Old Horseshoe Bend Road to the end where it merged into a windy climb through some farm houses. When I got to the top of that, I road back down it and went out Floating Feather, past Highway 55, past Eagle Road, past Beacon Light, until I got to a road called Ballentine, which I took a right on and road all the way until Homer, then took Homer to Linder, and made a loop back to Floating Feather.
I was particularly aware of how much faster I was able to ride on my road bike. This is apparently an obvious feature of road bikes that everyone knew about except for me. What is more, I was able to spend the duration of the ride thinking about all of those important topics which have been on my mind recently. By contrast, with mountain biking, all of my energy is focused on mountain biking. Yet it was an almost meditative experience on the road bike. Plus, how satisfying to cover such distance! I also felt that my energy expenditure was streamlined and that my groove more balanced and grounded. I understand now the appeal of road biking...