Day 15: Huntington, IN to Rochester, IN

July 8, 2023

In which I expect to get wet, but don't

When I looked out the window at 7am it was pouring. Cats & dogs. Great!

Weather Underground to the rescue. It showed a band of yellow (pretty bad) storms right over Huntington, but by 10am it would shift to green, and by 11 stop raining.

At 9:45 it stopped raining. So I left.

It ended up being a gray, cloudy day. There were a few moments of sunshine, mid-morning, but otherwise cloudy. It only sprinkled a few times, so I considered that a win.

Then I hit a several-mile stretch of one of my least favorite road surfaces. I think it's called chipseal, although this seemed less "sealed" than others I've seen. This surface looks pretty smooth, right?

But get down to surface-level, and it's quite rough for bike tires. This particular variant (being less sealed - meaning less asphalt I think) was also kind of loose. There is a sort of "sweet spot" a couple feet from the right edge where I imagine most car tires going my direction have tamped it down a bit, but drift out of that, and it's loose and not comfortable. My average MPH drops by at least one on these roads. Today I had about 6 miles of it.

Umm...why? We're at least .5 miles from the nearest house.

Actually this gave me some Monty Python vibes...

A boy and his dog. With a girl and her pig...

More wildflowers (although I'm not sure the first is wild):

You can't tell from this pic but there's a person dangling on the end of the line below the helicopter. I have no idea what he was doing, but doing it that close to power lines doesn't seem like the best idea. There were some people pulled over in this area watching from their vehicles, so it must have been out of the norm.

This is the 3rd one of these I've run into. The first I had to backtrack, but had missed the sign, so it was on me. The second didn't affect me as I was turning anyway. This one would have meant going back 3 miles and then a different way, adding about 8 miles to my trip. Arrgh!

I investigated further, and found it was passable. With 6-7 minutes of slowly navigating the banks and with the cost of one wet foot in the stream, I made it through. It was worth it not to bike 8 more miles!

Not the one I'm from...

Denver revealed a suprise - a beautiful 20-mile long trail that would take me to the end of my ride! This was the Nickel Plate Trail.

I should start being less surprised by these and more expecting. I know trail networks have been slowly building all over the country, and it may not be too long before bicycles can go great distances on non-car infrastructure. I hadn't looked hard at my map for today and assumed this was another country road, but it was such a nice surprise to finish on a really nice bike trail!

I counted this as a rest day as the terrain was not challenging and the distance not great. I think that was accurate. Tomorrow brings a longer ride (70) to Valparaiso, but it shouldn't be a tough one. The wind today was a non-factor and I'm hoping for the same tomorrow.

Today's ride: 50 miles (80 km)
Total: 835 miles (1,344 km)

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