Daniel enjoyed the egg hunt and also enjoyed "eating" chocolate in the backseat of the car on the way home. One Hershey Kiss can cover a large surface area in the hands of a 20 month old little boy.
Melts in your hands, and around your mouth.
On the way home from the egg hunt we passed a handful of guys making it back to town on the Saturday morning ride with the Parlor group. Given the forecast for the afternoon it was better to ride in the morning today, it you didn't have the entertainment of watching a bunch of little kids chase around for plastic eggs.
Thirty minutes after arriving home I was out the driveway with the bike on the back of the car, headed for Ryan's house. The forecast for the day called increasing winds from the south. By mid afternoon, 25mph wind was expected. Yikes. Last night I mapped a route before reading the forecast. Thankfully the route had us riding south on the way out and a clockwise loop before coming back. So I got lucky and had made a good route for the wind direction.
On the road and heading south we got our first taste of strong wind gusts. Before long we had left Wayne County and, appropriately enough, entered Holmes County on a gravel road. We had been on the same road a couple weeks ago but this time we turned west instead of east.
Quick stop for a picture, shortly after entering Holmes County.
We found some more gravel roads and made our way south of Holmesville. Just before crossing SR83 to continue west, and after coming down a gravel strewn descent, I started thinking the road was feeling pretty rough all of a sudden. We stopped at SR83 and reached back to discover my rear tire was holding steady at zero psi. Ryan and I agreed that in all our miles of riding together neither of us had experienced a flat tire until today. Come to think of it, in my seven years of riding I can only recall three flat tires, including the one today.
No, it's not someone's driveway. This gravel, Holmes County
road passed within inches of the shed on the right.
Having crossed over the state route we turned north and here a new fun began. The wind was really cranked up by now and it was thankfully at our backs. At one point Ryan yelled out "this is crazy we are going 30 miles per hour on an uphill and hardly pedaling!" I remember a flat to slightly downhill section were I could just feel myself being pushed along by the wind. Sometimes a gust would hit us from behind and I'd actually spin out a gear because of the wind's boost.
An unfortunate aspect of the wind was the dust and dirt blowing around. It stung our legs and my freshly cleaned bike was being peppered with debris.
We met Wayne County on County Line Road and made the legs work as we climbed Harrison Road up and over to Fredericksburg. I thought my legs were going to crack on the final climb on Harrison but things held together. From there it was back to Ryan's via the gradual climb on Cutter.
The wind continued to blast well after our ride but now it's calm as can be. For not having a long ride we enjoyed some remote roads. Gravel roads always add to the charm of road ride. As Ryan said, it was an adventurous route.
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