Gloves - IDK if they would be of interest to you, but I've been riding with fishing gloves for the past couple of summers. There's no pad, so perhaps not of use to you, but they keep the sun off, and are easy to remove. There would be some palm protection in case of a fall. They have fingers, but not finger tips. They really delay the season where I have to put on winter gloves. I am getting soft in my old age - I whine when it's cold enough for tights and long fingered gloves!

Dear one, I was a philosophy major in the mid-70s and yes all those bad boys were all the rage. And they made my eyes cross. My main professor was an authority - an authority! - on Martin Heidegger. All I remember about his stuff is the Monty Python Philospher’s Song: Heidegger Heidegger was a boozy beggar he could drink you under the table. Now that was my kind of philosopher, at the time. I decided to major in philosophy because I thought “tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life” was deep. I had no idea there were people like Heidegger.

G-2 is the philosopher we need today. Grind it out.

You're right, any weather is possible in a Minnesota November. It looks like a solution to the tire selection dilemma has been handed to me on a silver platter, though. We're looking at near-record high temperatures for the next couple days. It might even get up to 70-degrees. That's why I made the sudden decision to start this mini-tour on the very first day of the month.

Thanks for the Sartre quote. That great Existentialist will almost certainly play a part in this journal.

To paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, "G-2 is so deep he's unfathomable."

Yes, I did consider the demoralizing possibility of having to ride back on the same road a day later, and even worse, riding back and forth for a whole month and never getting more than 100 miles from home. It was a chance I was willing to take at the time, but now it's one of the reasons I just can't seem to pull the trigger on a tailwind tour.

Hi,
Bumpy is brilliant. But November is absurd, especially in Minnesota. I mean, how will you know which tires to use? It could be the nobby ones, or given the possibility of freezing temperatures, the spiked ones. And isn’t it time to put on the flat pedals so you can ride with boots on?
Sartre said the biggest decision of one’s life was to decide whether or not to keep on living. Go out there and live on your bicycle then, but don’t forget to write!
Cheers,
Keith

I love G2 new philosophy! However, the 50% bumpy wouldn’t work for me. I’ve been seeing way more bumpy road than I like and my body is screaming at me. I’m looking forward to following your new mini-tour so I can read about it without experiencing it myself.

Very deep!

Well, I think we can call G-2 a philosophy nerd! I look forward to seeing what bumpy stuff you come up with :-)

Normally, I think a tailwind ride would be demoralising when you had to just turn around one day and ride right back in the direction you came after a front came through and swapped the wind. However, on my current trip I'm pretty sure the amount of southerly and westerly winds, or some combo of them, would have us in the Pacific Ocean somewhere off QLD by now (if you could get there... probably too many closed roads between here and there!). Hope you have limp flags and good gravel for your ride.

Thanks Rocky. I try to convince myself I'm like a fine wine, but it's a tough sell. In your case, however, it's definitely true.

You’re like a fine wine, getting better with age! At least that’s what I tell myself.

I got behind on your journal. What a great ride with great photos!

To be honest, I don't know how rigidly I'm going to stick to that four-hour plan and I'm not exactly sure why I wrote about it except, maybe, to make excuses for the relatively short days of 30-35 miles. I really have been feeling a little bored toward the end of my days lately, but that could be due to the fact these mini-tours are all so close to home. Perhaps that will change when I get back to a longer tour in a less familiar part of the country.

Anyway, I do sit most of the time these days. A couple of years ago, I just kind of naturally stopped getting up off my saddle and tucking into the racing position on those big downhills. And (HORRORS!) sometimes I even feather the brakes a little bit when I get up to, like 35-mph. Another symptom of aging, I suspect.

Thanks for asking about Chef G. It's been a busy summer, so I took some time off from my food blog. I do plan to get back to it soon though. I even have a couple of ideas for future posts, including the camp cooking recipe I promised many months ago. Here's the link.

https://chefgcooks.blogspot.com/

Finally, I hope things are going well for you on your big cycling adventure. I look forward to your first update.

Hmmm, that's interesting. I guess I don't sit all the time so I don't mind riding for long periods. Like I sit when climbing a long hill, but then I stnad when I fly down the other side. Or a lot of gravel roads demand some stnading or change of position. And I'm always trying to read the landscape, so I don't get bored. Or, when I do sit for a long time, it's because I'm riding somewhere flat and boring and don't mind riding longer just to get through that bit. I suppose 6 hours often gets broken up by stopping to look at things, too. We'll see what I say when I get to 64!

So is Chef G cooking up a storm? Could you post a link to his site as I had it bookmarked on my old computer but don't have it on my tablet and feel I may have missed some yummy stuff.

I've noticed the same thing. Even when I have aches and pains that hurt while walking, sitting, standing or sleeping, they never seem to hurt while cycling--and they usually get better.

One year, I tweaked my back by twisting awkwardly while carrying a heavy box. The next day I was to begin my first RAGBRAI. I rode all seven days with no problem, but when off the bike, the pain caused me to hobble around like a Frankenstein monster.