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We didn’t intend for it to happen, but it just kind of fell into place this morning.  It started as we were lazily lounging in bed this morning.  Pam asked, “Are we going to go eat breakfast before we ride”?  I answered “Sure.  Do you want to go to Panera’s, then come back, or do you just want to ride there?”

She chose to ride there, so our planned ride to Fair Grove started at Panera Bread where we claimed our free bagel for being such frequent customers.

After breakfast, we were leaving the Southern Hills Center parking lot and passed by the little barbeque stand in the center.  I commented that we should try that place one of these days, and Pam immediately suggested that today be the day.  Done deal.

As we headed to Fair Grove, we encountered a little bit of a headwind, but not much to be concerned with.  This was our first trip out there in a long while, so we were content to just take our time and enjoy the slow amble through the country side.  We hadn’t gotten very far north when we discovered wet patches on the roads from the early morning thunder we heard.  Unfortunately, the little speck of a storm missed our yard completely, but we followed it’s path for a while.

We enjoy the Fair Grove ride because once you get north of I-44, there is rarely any traffic, especially after you turn north on FR215.  We had the road to ourselves all the way to the edge of town, before we encountered our first car.  Unfortunately, it was a truck that nearly pulled out in front of us as he was coming off a side road.  My yell got his attention and scared the daylights out of Pam, but it served it’s purpose.  He stopped.

As we passed by Odd-Fellows Café, we noticed several bikes parked outside, including one tandem.  I commented that it looked like Joe and Sue’s, but we didn’t stop as our destination was the c-store at the bottom of the hill.

While we were there, we enjoyed a Snickers bar while Pam browsed for a  movie for later.

Before we could leave, a pickup pulled in and a man and his young son climbed out.  The kid was the cutest little red-headed farm boy I’ve seen in a while, and he was in awe of our bicycle.  I would have liked to grab his picture, but I got distracted by a phone call and didn’t get the chance before his dad led him inside. 

As we climbed the hill heading out of town, the group of cyclists was leaving the café, and it was Joe and Sue, along with a couple of other folks we know.  We stopped to chat, and rode with them a little ways out of town.  It looked like they were a bunch of very strong riders that we may have been challenged to keep up with for very long.

They were heading for Strafford, so our paths had to diverge before too long, leaving us to suffer up the Three Ugly Sisters hill on our own. 

Interestingly, even though we haven’t ridden a lot of hills on the tandem this year, we didn’t seem to have much trouble with the sisters today.  We had to go to granny low, but it was manageable.

After cresting the sisters, it wasn’t long before we found ourselves headed back into Springfield, and we decided to grab lunch at the barbeque stand before heading for home.  I think it’s called “Hog and Sauce”, and was pretty decent barbeque. 

As we finished lunch, we decided that a Tour de Eats wouldn’t be complete without dessert, so we loaded up again and headed to one of our new favorite spots.  It’s called PeachWave, and is one of the new yogurt places in town where you get lots of flavor options and lots of topping options, and they charge you by the ounce.  You can see below that I probably didn’t end up with a calorie deficit today!

By the time we made it home, we had 47.9 miles on the bike.  That’s the longest tandem ride we’ve had this year. 

Here is the GPS track from this morning’s adventure.

God bless…

TW

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This entry was posted on June 11, 2011 at 8:45 pm and is filed under bicycle, Cycling, Fair Grove, Fitness, tandem. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

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