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On our ride on Saturday, we were climbing out of the Terrell Creek Valley and Pam commented, “Wow!  This hill is worse than that monster hill at Ozark.”  Unfortunately, I didn’t recognize what hill she was talking about, so she had to describe it to me and when she did, I knew she was talking about the Smyrna Road hill just before you get to Linden.  Yesterday, we rode again, and it just so happened that the route I chose included that “monster hill”.  I didn’t mention it until we were long past it, and found that she hadn’t recognized where we were at because we came down Cottonwood Road instead of crossing the river at Riverside (the bridge is out).  I presume that hill must not be all that bad (actually, it probably is)!  Mike is just at the base of it in the picture above, and it goes on quite a ways after it curves to the right. 

We had another hot, windy ride, but it was a pretty fun one.  We left from the Evans Road c-store, looped down to Smyrna Road, back to Rogersville, and almost over to Turners for a total of nearly 35 miles. 

As we were coming up out of Linden, Mike did it again.  As always, he was in front of us on the hill and for the second ride in a row, missed our turn.  No amount of yelling could get his attention, so we just let him go.  We knew our routes would eventually intersect at Highway U, so we hoped he would wait for us there or figure out his mistake and catch us.  When we got to U, he wasn’t there, so we pulled over in the shade and started to try to call him.  As we did, we caught sight of him coming up behind us.   

We also had some comic relief at Hardee’s in Rogersville.  It was pretty warm in the sun, so Mike and Pam put the umbrella up for shade.  What they didn’t count on was that it wasn’t anchored at the bottom.  The wind caught it and pretty much jerked it straight up.  Mike managed to catch it with one hand, but there for a minute, we thought we were going to have a Mary Poppins moment!  He barely held on!

As we got out on the flats west of Rogersville, we noticed that the ponds are getting pretty dry looking already, and the wheat looks like it’s getting close to harvesting.  I said it in the last post, but it’s way too early for that around here.   I’m afraid it’s going to be a long, dry summer.

As we made our way back toward Evans Road, we passed what we call the “horse farm”.  We hadn’t ridden down that road in a while, and that place just keeps getting bigger and bigger!  It looks like their guest house is probably way bigger than our humble abode. 

As we finished our ride, I noted that we finished it with just a little faster average speed than Saturday’s 42 miles.  I think the wind was just as bad, and it was a little bit hotter, so I was very happy with the effort.  I think both of us benefited from taking a rest day on Sunday…and it probably didn’t help that we consumed a bunch of calories at the Sunday evening barbeque!

God bless…

TW