Willow Pond

Willow Pond is not Walden Pond.  It is pretty, but small and buggy, so we didn’t linger.

It is good occasionally to follow the signs that lead you off-trail to such local features.  These offshoots are the blue highways of the outdoors.

I am a slow bicyclist.  Heard of the slow living movement?  Well, I’m in the slow bicycling movement.  I ride for transportation, exercise, and fun.  There are so many trails in the Midwest that it is possible to take long, slow, safe bike rides without going on the roads.  And I am so accustomed to trails that I was apprehensive yesterday to find myself wobbling on the gravel shoulder of the road while a truck shot by as we rode into a small town looking for a place to get a cold drink.

We rode 28 miles yesterday.  While my friend Janet prepares to ride a six-day 468-mile cross-state bicycle ride, I take 20-30-mile rides. Longest ride ever:  11 days, no idea how many miles, but more than 600 miles.  Longest ride this summer:  40 miles.

I do not like organized group bike rides, so I have been sympathetic and amused by Janet’s plight:  she signed up for the ride last spring, but didn’t buy a bike till this weekend, let alone train.  But she’ll be all right on the ride.   Apparently there is a lot of partying:  some riders drink beer and eat pie along the way.

Until yesterday I was convinced I could easily ride one day of the big organized bike ride.  (You can buy a day pass.)

But yesterday it was so hot that I had to take a long break lying down on top of a picnic table.  No, I will not ride even one day of the long ride.

We decided this was the town.

Country trails can be tough.  This trail starts in a small town we couldn’t actually find.  Where was the town?  We saw a grain elevator and a rough limestone trail overgrown with grass.

A rough beginning.

We got out of the car.   My husband called encouraging things while I simply stared and thought how  unbeautiful it was.

So we got on our bikes and rode.  Corn fields, soybean fields, prairie grass.   Very, very green.  The sun looked white.  It was that kind of hot day.

It is very, very quiet in the country.  No traffic.

We rode past animal confinement facilities and I felt stricken.  Twenty million hogs living indoors in metal buildings on concrete slats over a pit of their own manure.   The smell clung to our clothes and hair.  I hate the smell, but felt worse about the animals.  At the State Fair we have seen the intelligence in hogs’ eyes (“Human eyes,” we muttered).  After our trip to the State Fair, we stopped eating pork.

Perhaps real farms will come back someday: some corporations are saying no to the animal confinement facilities.  For instance,  Marriott International plans to stop purchasing  pork raised in animal confinement facilities by 2018, and to stop buying eggs from  animal confinement suppliers by 2015.

But then we stopped thinking about animals and just rode.

We approached the Crooked Creek Bridge.

Then we crossed the bridge.

Crooked Creek Bridge

We stopped in a small town, where everything was closed except McDonald’s and Subway, and got a cold drink at a McDonald’s, but it wasn’t what we needed..

Without Gatorade to replace electrolytes, I cannot do these rides.  On the way back, I crashed on a picnic table in a shelter in the middle of nowhere.  I got up and finished the ride, but I had a headache from the sun.  Back in civilization, we bought a massive bottle of Gatorade and pretzels at a convenience store back, and I recovered.   Salt and electrolytes!  You need them.

Did I do any reading on this trip?  Very little.  My book?  Cathleen Schine’s Fin and Lady.  I bought an uncorrected proof for 25 cents, but McDonald’s and lying down on a picnic table are unconducive to reading.