SpringfieldCyclist.com

Wow!  What a nice day!  Pam and I headed out fairly early this morning with Mike for a 50 miler to Fair Grove, where Mike was anticipating a 2nd breakfast at Odd Fellows Café.

At right around 60 degrees when we left, it was kind of hard to determine how we should dress.  Suffice it to say, we left the house, slightly over-dressed, and ended up shedding most of it along the way. 

Our ride this morning took us north to Danforth Cemetery up on Old Wire Road, then we looped back to cross the interstate at 744 and headed west.  We got busy talking and ended up missing one of our turns completely.  Since it was at least a mile before I realized it, I made the executive decision to modify our route a bit and swing by Valley Water Mill before looping back to Fellows Lake.   Had I just kept my mouth shut, neither Pam or Mike would have known we were off our intended route.  As it was, that just added a couple of miles to our day.

Since we were off route anyway, I decided to swing around the dam at Fellows Lake instead of looping around the eastern end of it as we usually do.  The eastern end has a few hills, but none as massive as the screaming downhill just south of the dam and the long grinding climb on the north.  We call that  hill south of the dam “The wall”, and for a good reason!

As we headed north, the thing that struck us was the amount of pasture land that is absolutely dry.  You can see how brown it is in the picture above.  It almost looks as if it’s been plowed, but that is pasture that should be green.  We’re hurting around here for water.

It’s only about 10 miles between Fellows and Fair Grove, and part of it is a nice downhill that runs for a mile and a half, so it didn’t take us long to pull into OddFellows.  Since it was only 9:00, we all ordered “second breakfast”. 

I think Mike and I could have made a meal of the toast and blueberry preserves we started with, but the rest of the meal was just as tasty.  If you’re local, you really should go try the place.  If you’re local and a guy, you really need to take your wife.  She’ll like it.  (Mike, that’s a hint for you!).  The only disclaimer I have about the place is that they’re a small, family run business in a small town, and they do sometimes run out of stuff.  You’ve been warned.  Get there early!

From Fair Grove, we headed home via out standard route, which unfortunately includes the Three Ugly Sisters.  If you look closely in the picture below, the dot is Mike about to take on the first one.

I tell you, those hills are a testament to how slowly we can actually ride that tandem.  Sometimes it feels like we could be walking faster than we’re moving, but I’ll be darned if we’re gonna get off and walk!

After a leg-searing race with Mike up Sunshine, we pulled into our driveway with 54.65 miles on the bike, and every one of them was enjoyable!  Here’s the GPS track for the day.  Lap 1 was from home to Fair Grove.  Lap 2 is obviously Fair Grove to the house.  I found it interesting that we managed nearly the same average speed for the two segments.

Hope your Saturday morning was as enjoyable as ours!

God bless…

TW

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This entry was posted on September 10, 2011 at 2:18 pm and is filed under bicycle, Cycling, Fair Grove, Fellows Lake, Fitness, Odd Fellows Cafe, tandem. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Cycling, Fair Grove, Fellows Lake, Fitness, Odd Fellows Cafe, tandem

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