Mission Complete!

Kohala Coast, HI. Well, the odometer reads 100 in my fiftieth state and, coincidentally, my 50th blog entry! I've completed circumnavigating the big island of Hawaii, and I celebrated with a swim in the Pacific Ocean -- my first. Our last day of riding in a week-long trip was along the Ironman course (but at a distance far short of the 112-mile monster). I chose to join a trip run by Backroads, an adventure travel company, which specializes in bicycle adventures around the world. Alaska was also accomplished on a Backroads tour.

I saw: black sand beaches, coffee plantations, rainbows, whales, an active volcano's glowing lava pool, the southernmost bakery in the United States, donkeys, huge macadamia nut farms, rain forests, miles of lava fields, mongoose, native temples, dugout canoes, and waterfalls.

Our group of twelve cyclists -- all strangers before -- representing all ages and skills quickly formed an amazingly warm connection. We laughed heartily and well throughout the day from the pre-cycling circle to the open air dinner. None of us wanted this to end! (Of course who would, given the fact that much of the US experienced an Arctic blast in our absence.)

As for the cycling in Hawaii, I must report that the state leaves a lot to be desired. While the views are spectacular, the roads have many flaws. There were several times that the safety margins disappeared and the risks grew much too great for my practiced eye. I would never lead a bike ride along some of the roads that we traveled this week. In addition, the surprisingly large amount of glass on the highway kept the Backroads pit crews busy changing tires. I had two flats myself.

The photographs, of course, represent those quiet moments on the relatively few backroads that could be found. In heavy traffic, with little shoulder on broken pavement one would never stop to take a picture!

But it's done! I'll be back for a project wrapup soon. And, yes, I realize I will have to be developing a set of links to the 2013 centuries. So much to do, and so little time until bicycling season!

Rounding Out 2012

Sebring, FL. It's a rainy Saturday evening as I just completed the long ride of the three-day Highlands Bicycle Festival. The local bike club puts on this festival every year in early December. It's a great opportunity for us Northerners to extend the season by a few weeks. Today's ride was a sunny 80 degrees with billowing clouds and light winds. Florida was reliably flat -- although the locals had some up-ramps that they call hills. This brings to a close my most successful cycling year, yet.

Mississippi River Trail, New Orleans, LA

But, let me update the project. Shortly after the No-Hill Hundred in early October in Nevada, I completed a century along the Mississippi River Trail in New Orleans. The levee makes a nice, quiet cycling environment, although it is somewhat lacking for shade. There are wonderful views of the shipping -- large and small -- moving along the Big Muddy. The trail ends in the western reaches of downtown New Orleans, so I had a chance to ride among the famous streetcars. The ride also provided a sampling of much of the heavy industry along the Mississippi shore, from grain elevators to oil refineries, and the rail lines that serve them. The small towns and plantation houses, many of which grew up as river landings before a levee separated them from the river, seem to cling to a tenuous existence.

And the immense hydraulic potential is evident just to the north of the trail, as the gigantic mile-wide Bonnet Carre Spillway stands ready to divert the Mississippi into Lake Pontchartrain. It strains the imagination to consider a river this large needing an additional river-size spillway to handle a flood. But, we're talking about all the precipitation from Pittsburgh to Denver and everything in between, so there's half a continent's worth of watershed to account for.

Thus, Louisiana became state number 48.

In late October, I enjoyed the second annual Longleaf Trace Century in Hattiesburg, MS. This 'trace' is an award-winning rail-trail that runs some 40 miles to the west of Hattiesburg. It is the crown jewel in a network of greenways in this university town. The Trace shares the same feature of most rail-trails: it is flat. But, to add enough miles to make the ride a century, the organizers added a little off-the-trail spice to the mix. So, while the trains of old enjoyed a well-graded right of way, the surrounding terrain undulates. This in-the-wild section was in the middle of the ride, so the beginning and end provided no surprises.

And, with Mississippi, I now have 49 states.

A Century On the Ground

Fallon, NV. (Oct. 6, 2012) Today, I finished the No Hill Hundred, a pretzel-shaped ride through the paved byways of the high Nevada desert. It was sponsored by the Churchill County Cyclists and the Churchill County Parks & Recreation. Fallon is the home of a Naval Air Station (famous for its Top Gun school), and deems itself the "Oasis of Nevada". It's located at the junction of US routes 95 and 50. As you can tell from the satellite image, they have a good nickname. This is anything but barren desert.

The terrain delivered as promised: there were truly no hills. Of course we did ride mile after mile in the same gear, but that was a small price to pay. The route was well-marked, and the rest stops well-stocked. This is their tenth year running a century in flat Fallon.

Fallon is at 4000 feet of altitude. I think that took a little edge of my riding pace. I found myself out of breath if I took too long a drink while riding. It's hard to get acclimatized when you fly in two days before!

October is a comfortable time of year to ride in northern Nevada. The temperature peaked in the 70s, but the ride began at about 40 degrees. The air was so dry, however, that you could ride with just a light covering. There is even some color-shifting foliage here. The brush turns yellow and the trees get some color. There is one plant that gives off a delicious smell, but I could never identify it. That's one of the benefits of riding a bike instead of driving a car.

Of course, being able to smell the environment can also be a disadvantage. Livestock stink. And, cattle seem to stink the worst. I remember pedaling a little faster to get out of the plume!

Horse farms abound. There were stables, horses, and trucks with horse trailers. What I never saw, however, was a single person riding a horse! As we rode past the corrals, the horses would watch us enviously.

This is Top Gun country. You are greeted by an A-7 (carrier-based attack aircraft, no longer in use) on a high pedestal. The course in fighter tactics, made famous by the Tom Cruise movie, was originally located in Miramar, California. It moved to Fallon Naval Air Station  in 1996 to become part of the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center. East of Fallon, the Navy operates an instrumented "range", where the airspace is digitally monitored. I think we passed several of the monitoring stations along the way. There are only four courses a year, so the chances of seeing any combat aircraft on an October Saturday are slim. In fact, even though we circumnavigated the Naval Air Station, we saw no activity at all.

On the day of the ride, Fallon becomes home to a completely different kind of  'gunslinger'. The Cowboy Fast Draw Association runs the World Championship - Fastest Gun Alive contest in Fallon on the same weekend as the century. So, the hotel lobby was an interesting mix of people dressed in old western gear (gunslingers need realistic townspeople in the background!) and colorful spandex-clad cyclists.

For those of you who have lost count (and who hasn't??), this is state number 47. Three more left to go!

I only put the best pictures on this blog. I will add to the Webshots archive of bike photos, including a picture of the rest stop under the A-7, the sluice gates for irrigation, the only hill in town, and the start and finish arch, later this week.

Blogging is Light When the Weather is Great

Springfield, VA. I just got back from a mid-day, mid-week bike ride through a nearby park. I enjoyed 32 miles of quiet park paths or neighborhood streets abandoned for the dungeons of work and school. It was a sunny 65 degrees with light winds. There is a hint of color in the foliage this first full week of fall. September is a great month to be retired!

Although I've acquired no states since my trip to Wisconsin, I've been able to ride a century for both of the past two weekends. On the 16th I drove up to Carlisle, PA to enjoy the Three Creek Century, an annual offering of the Harrisburg Bicycle Club. I must say, I took my time because the weather was so nice and the scenery was so pretty.

Last weekend was our own bicycle club's century. The Potomac Pedalers offers the Back Roads Century in Berryville, VA. I helped out with preparation on Saturday so that I could do the ride on Sunday. The day was a perfect copy of the previous week. Again, I lingered at the White Post rest stop, munching on the club's famous 'tomato sandwiches'. (I had loaded the pallets of said tomatoes onto the truck the previous day, so this was the fruit of my volunteer labor!)

Carlisle, PA

With all this nice weather it's becoming obvious why, years ago, the League of American Wheelmen, designated September "National Century Month". This was, of course, back when the LAW sanctioned, supported, and helped to organize centuries. Now there is no national century organization.

This is all prologue, however, to my upcoming frenzy of states. This coming weekend I'll hit state #47, Louisiana, with the Crescent City Century. The following weekend, I'm booked for state #48, Nevada -- the "No Hill Hundred". Somebody asked me if that was sarcasm, and if the ride had a lot of hills. I had not thought of that! I'm going to be checking the website and the map profiles.

And, on Saturday, October 27, I plan to collect state #49, Mississippi. The 'Longleaf Trace', a large rail-trail near Hattiesburg, offers their second annual century ride. That will color in the continental US red from sea to sea and border to border.

Hawaii will be left. I'm in the process of booking a Backroads bicycle tour of the big island in January. After that there's nothing to do but write the book!

100 Miles of Wisconsin Shoreline

Sturgeon Bay, WI. Door County is the peninsula to the northeast of Green Bay. It's a beautiful part of Wisconsin, rolling farmland, small coastal villages, and quiet roads. It sometimes bills itself as the "Cape Cod of the Midwest", but this is like Cape Cod of the 1950s -- before the tourism and development. The Door Country Century is an annual event with a long history. It moves north from Sturgeon Bay along the coast, visits several beautiful parks, beaches, and coastal overlooks. The century finishes with a 30-mile flat ride along the east coast.

It was a perfect day: temperatures in the mid-60s and winds from the north. Thus, for the latter half of the ride, we had the wind at our backs! The rest stops were superbly organized, and even near the end of the day everything was available. Each stop had its special feature: strawberry shortcake, cheery pie, or cheese curds. (It is Wisconsin, after all.)

So, the Burma Shave signs said:
   We love bikers!
   We cheer for riders!
   And the Packers!

South Dakota - Saving the Wind to the End

Watertown, SD. Today I completed 100 miles among the lakes and byways of northeastern South Dakota. It was a pleasant day for most of the ride: light winds, no hills, and good roads. But the fun was not to last. The final 20 miles were northbound into an uncharacteristic headwind. (Winds in these parts blow normally from the southwest.) I was on track to have made this one of my fastest centuries, but a quirky breeze held me back. I watched my average speed bleed slowly down to just normal.

The lakes that give Watertown its name were really quite pretty. As I traveled, numerous birds would launch themselves from the shoreline.The mirrored surface reflected the billowing clouds from the sky, which seemed to move along the lake surface as I ride.

The local club, the Watertown Bike Club, did a great job setting up the ride. The road markings were pretty easy to follow, and the SAG stops seemed to appear just as I needed them. Plus, the volunteers were friendly and cheerful, and all of us enjoyed the 70-degree sunshine. They had designed a route that would normally get a tailwind at the end, but Mother Nature decided not to cooperate.

I'll add more pictures and narrative in the days ahead, but right now I need my post-century beauty sleep!

Alaska - This Is Why We Bike

Valdez, AK. Today I completed 100 miles of bicycling in the Alaskan wilderness. I started in Copper Center, along the Copper River in central southern Alaska, and finished in the port of Valdez. It was a wet, windy ride, and we were swarmed by mosquitoes when we stopped. But, the scenery was amazing (along Alaska route 4, following the route of the Alaska pipeline). I'm in Alaska as a guest of a Backroads tour company bicycling trip. This is the "century day" on the trip.

Alaska was every inch as stunning as its reputation. Today's route began on a bluff overlooking the Copper River, with four massive volcanoes in the distance: Mts. Sanford, Drum, Wrangell and Blackburn. We crossed the green, glacier-fed Tiekel River twice, and moved up the valley of the Tsaina river. We had lunch at Mt. Billy Mitchell, which is an imposing, Matterhorn-like peak over route 4 that you can see for miles. The Worthington Glacier sat off to our right as we climbed Thompson Pass.

The day finished with a rainy 2300-foot descent to the coastal plain along the 'braided' Lowe River, which gushes into Prince William Sound. But, on the way down we see the magnificent Bridal Veil Falls and Horsetail Falls. I pulled into Valdez drenched but triumphant.

I posted many of my pictures to Webshots. The link will show you the whole album. We've had five days of bicycling in the Alaskan wilderness. This is not normally a part of Alaska that tourists see: the loop between Palmer and Valdez, connecting via ferry back to Whittier and Girdwood, and finally back to Anchorage.

Along the way there were points where cars could not pull over -- there was only a half-shoulder behind rumble strips. It was perfect, however, for a cyclist to stand and take a picture. Thus, many of the pictures in the Webshots album could only have been taken by bicycle.

As you may imagine, my century time was much delayed by the climbing, the headwind, the rain, and the large number of photo stops. I don't really treat a century as a race, however. This has been one of the most memorable -- both challenging and rewarding. This is why we bike!