My wife and I blew through our hometowns in Eastern Iowa this past weekend. This is always a great excuse for me to get a good gravel road ride in between our homesteads and always makes me appreciate this area of the world a little more. To most people this may not smack you as God's country, although as the old adage goes, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," or is it:"Is this Heaven? No it's Iowa."
I only got about about 2 hours of riding in on the rural gravel roads and they certainly were not in their best of shape due to the winter thaw, although it was a great ride and great weather given the time of year. Where I live in SE Wisconsin it is pretty tough to even find a gravel road, much less make a ride out of one. This ride was so good, I may even try a gravel grinder race this year, especially as these types of races continue to grow in popularity. A good one around these parts is the TIv6 - the annual Trans Iowa race every Spring.
I truly love to visit family and friends, but I really love to ride too and when you can combine the two... why not? Now if I can just remember which way was home???
1 comment:
Joe,
We use to have this race in Montana that was a two loop race 100 miles total with 16 miles of the worst dirt you could imagine. It was called the ecology center stage race and back in the day teams like Navigators would show up. All us MT guys new enough to run heavier tires. The first time the field hit the dirt it sounded like a firing squad with all the flats happening. All the MT guys made it through and a finished high. I love the dirt on a road bike, so much fun. Keep it up.
Evan
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