Discontinued

All done here.

Grand Finale of the the Farm Tour

For your enjoyment......






It only seems appropriate. Maybe in your head you can insert the words biking for walking and plains or flatland for mountain to customize it to life in West Lafayette

Fog and Foals

This morning I got out early for my ride right at dawn. The first three miles were great, but once I hit the country I rode into a pretty intense fog. I've decided that riding a bike in the fog is scarier than driving in fog. The biggest problem I had was that my glasses don't come equiped with mini windshield wipers. I ended up taking them off, and cutting my ride short since I couldn't ride very fast, I coulnd't see far ahead, and what I could see was a little distorted.

When you ride through a cloud some fun things do happen though. Each one of those little arm hairs everyone has becomes its own rain drop. You don't sweat as much since you can just evaporate the cloud that settles on you, and I don't think that if a man ran across the rode carrying a chain saw and screamed bloody murder it would seem all that strange. It might even make sense in the context of an early morning cloud. (THIS DID NOT HAPPEN)

If that last one had happened, I would have certainly had a better title for this post.

The far animal of the day is the foal. For those who don't yet know much about foals, a foal is a horse less than a year old. According to wiki, male foals are colts and a filly is a female foal. I didn't know that till today either. Anyway I saw two of them with their respective parents. I think that baby cows are way more cute that foals. Foals look so awkward to me. It's amazing that they actually grow into things that don't look like they are actively falling over. There is also this kind of cool white speckled horse that I have seen a few times now, but he doesn't pay much attention to me.

I'm at 264 miles for the month. This post also concludes Nathan's bike tour of West Lafayette farm animals

Worked the kinks out

I got up at 5:30 this morning to say bye to Liz as she was leaving for the hospital. Usually, after she leaves I plop back in bed, but today I managed to stay awake. The trick was to just keep eating. I had two pieces of toast (with home-made black raspberry jam thanks to Liz and mimi) and two small bowls of applesauce. I was out the door on my bike at 6:40! AMAZING!!! there are very few cars on the road at that time so it was pretty easy to get out of town to the country side.

The ride was pretty good. My directions kept me on track for once. I was almost cloudy but really more of a haze. It made the sun look kind of fun, and I think it helped keep the temp cool. I did part of the metric century (100km or 65 miles) route that I'm hoping to do in October. It was flat that roads were pretty nice. I went 23 miles which is pretty good for me. I realized how slow I usually go though. I worked pretty hard just to go 18mph on average.

Once home and cooled off, I went back to bed for 45 minutes. It was glorious.


There were some cute baby cows in a field that I passed. The mom cow would have been cute expect for the drool coming out of her mouth. West Lafayette must have some tasty grass in order to make even the cows drool. The cows all stopped eating and watched me as I went past. I've decided that cows are my best spectators (as in only).



Cows look like this. If you look in their eyes, you can tell what they are thinking. Today's cows were pondering if they could escape from their field and eat my bike.





hmmmmm....tasty bike

Hopelessly Lost

This morning I had a brilliant idea. I wrote the directions of my new route down on a little paper and taped it to my handle bars. Honestly, I haven't been the best at being able to remember my routes from memory, so I figured this would be a sure fix.



fast forward.......





So I ended up a town over and realized that I was the most lost I have ever been. I missed the first turn and never recovered. I new I was in trouble when I crossed over interstate 65 into the town of Battle Ground. This town was nowhere near my original route. I turned around and tried to make a loop back to West Lafayette, but as it turns out I was still a little disoriented. Apparently I continued to ride away from West Lafayette instead of going back towards it. Then God smiled because I pulled of the road into a very small church on a corner for a rest and some water. When I looked at the corner street sign it was actually part of the original route that I had planned, so then I followed my route home. All said and done I added 5 or so miles to my original route, but that's ok because it was an adventure in the truest sense.



Now I'm at 193 miles for the month. I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll make it to 300 without any huge problems.



I think that I'll take tomorrow off so that I'm fresh for Friday and Saturday.

Tuesday is llama day

Went for a bike ride this morning. It was a perfect 64 degrees. Anything less than 60 degrees starts feeling really cold. It was a pretty boring ride without too much excitement. I went a block further on one of my routes to get an extra two miles. I went over a creek and past a pond.

Today's farm animal of note is the llama. I saw three of them walking around. At first I thought they were billy goats, but then one of them raised up their head and exposed their long neck. Don't worry I never got within spitting range. While riding I wrote a llama poem, but have since forgotten it. I can tell you it was funny and I got a good chuckle out of it.

It would be horrible to not reference this given that it is llama day: the llama song (it just keeps retpeating so don't worry if you stop it after the song starts over, but if youa re like me you won't be able to resist listening to it over and over).

Halfway

It's been a pretty good day. I didn't go for a bike ride this morning, but I got at 2:30 after work. I went 19.3 miles (in part because of a wrong turn). This brings my total miles for the month up to 150!!! Halfway done, with half the month to go.

I decided to tilt my seat back 1/8th of a degree. I couldn't believe how much better it felt. I don't feel like I'm always sliding forward on the seat. Also I think it takes a little of the pressure off of my wrists. Such a small change, yet such a huge relief.

During the ride I saw some happy cows. There were standing in a creek bed in the shade. They looked blissful.

Well, that's all for today. Liz and I are going out on the town to celebrate one year of good times.