Date: Oct 5 Sun
Weather: 60-75F sunny
Mileage: 57
October mileage: 97
Year to date: 2264
My title might be a bit strong, but it partially symbolizes the first half of today's excellent ride through Oldham Co. This route takes in many LBC roads that were mainstays of club riding some 15yrs ago. Back in the dawn of time, before the metastasizing rate of subdivision growth in eastern Jefferson Co in the Prospect area, rides would leave
Prospect Point for miles and miles of empty farm roads. This area now feels more like a Disney movie set. These folks want to think of their humble abodes (well, not so humble) set amid the bucolic scenes of rural America. What they really have are pretend farms and ranchettes with heaps of new construction set to gobble the countryside. This area is like Garrison Keiller's Lake Wobegon, "everyone is above average". Everyone is white, upper-middle class, has an SUV and hoards their school space like the Vatican does with church property. It's just all too unctious for me. Right now many of these roads are still rideable, but less so than 15 yrs ago and they certainly have a finite shelf life in the years to come. That's "progress". Let's hope they farmer Johns and Janes enjoy their divided highways and McDonalds when they arrive.
I assumed this was around 40m of riding; what I instead found was a 57m route, one which gave me tired legs in the last 15m. I started with arm warmers, sock inside my Keens and long-fingered gloves. Around halfway in the route I removed all three warmers b/c the temps were approaching 80F. I traveled across Indian Hills to River Road and took that all the way to Prospect. River Rd. is another local flashpoint, one I've griped about before. The 'out' trip proved relatively empty and trouble-free. I made only one stop at Avish Ln. This is listed as a private drive, but there was a "for sale" sign out front, so I thought to pretend to be a potential buyer of a surely million $$ dwelling. Avish Ln.'s claim to fame is to be the dwelling place of
Owsley Frazier Brown, a scion of local culture and one whose fame all came from booze, Bourbon originally and now from a bit of everything. I took the opportunity to explore Avish Ln. a bit more b/c it seems to have become a bit more of a multi-dwelling road instead of someone's driveway. I kept turning discreet corners until crossing a creek and coasting uphill into an obviously stunning setting, mowed lawns, trees, an estate of impeccable quality. Out of the corner of my right eye I caught the movement of 3 dogs, big black dogs. It was, perhaps, going to be an interesting moment. Then, behind the dogs I spied 2 people on their horses, out for their morning jaunt. I really would've liked to speak with them. We both were on our mounts enjoying a perfect Fall day. The prob, of course, was that I was trespassing on their yard. I waved, didn't wait for a response and turned heel and the hell out of there.
Avish Lane north, an amiable country lane.
"The Avish", the Brown estate. Boy would that be a groovy house to check out.
From there I continued out River Rd. and 42 and took Rose Island Rd along the river. I would imagine not many years ago RIR was a completely empty, rural farm road. One local point of interest is/was
Henry's Ark, the pet project of Henry Wallace, who was a long-time leftist firebrand of both KY and of the US. The "ark" has had a variety of animals: bison, zebra, ostrich, antelope, etc. Henry died a few years ago, so his ark is slowely deteriorating.
I found this charming pile of shit on Rose Island. It's "The Reserve..."
And this pile of shit faces "The Reserve". Gotta love folks who dig up the land for their McMansion, and all the while justifying it with a pond out back for their environmental contribution. Grrrr!
From there I continued on RIR until my first turnoff. This is where googlemaps is giving me problems. As I've found moreso recently, googlemaps is great with the big roads, but it flat out makes mistakes with smaller ones. Googlemaps shows that "River Bluff" climbs the hill and continues to 42 (I tried to cut and paste the portion but to no avail). It also shows that Mayo Lane does
not climb down the river bluff. In fact, there is no "River Bluff" reaching Rose Island and Mayo certainly connects RIR with 42, b/c I've done that before. At Mayo Ln. I did the short steep climp up and continued on Mayo, which may be rural riding at its best barring the McMansions sprouting here and there. I crossed 42 to Locke Ln. to find a sign stating that Locke would be closed to through traffic starting in July. I went anyway. What I found, but didn't snap, was a former country lane- I had been on it 8 or 9 yrs ago- that had been paved and had received concrete drainage gutters. It looks like a road just crying out for subdivisions to be added at any moment. By this time I was grumpy with the subdivided Aryan nation and didn't have real good legs to boot, plus the rear wheel of the Bleriot developed a wobble that made the back end hop a bit. I turned left on Covered Bridged and climbed the 3m climb out of the Harrod's Creek valley. It's not a 3m climb like would be an alpine climb. It's probably 1.5 of steady climbing and the rest "acclivity". I wasn't feeling fresh at this point and was a little grumpy although I had gorgeous weather and relatively empty roads. I made it to the turn off at 1694 and at this point was on the far end of my loop. The fam has good experiences of 1694 b/c this is the road we took to take 'Z' and somtimes 'L' to their horse riding lessons back in the day. The good wife loved to be out on the farm, but neither boy was super enthused about continuing their riding, but those are good memories. 1694 drops down to Harrod's Creek again and back out. For some reason, my attitude on the climb out changed. My mood just improved for no particular reason. Perhaps it was the good memories of those sessions. Perhaps it was the horse returning home to the stable. I found that the entrance road to the farm had been moved and improved a bit. The previous road is below. Or, as it were, the not road. It appears to be crops now save the driveway of a house to the right.
One part of the ride that I wasn't looking forward to was 42. This is a "major" road through this area and can be heavily trafficked. Instead, I found it to be pretty empty and a pleasure today. Again, my mood was improving. I turned right on Goshen Lane and headed back towards RIR. At the bottom of the river bluff (previously climbed up on Mayo), I witnessed another googlemap mystery. It lists Rose Island Rd. as continuing north past Goshen Ln. What I instead found- and I wasn't really traveling in this direction- was a gate. From the pic below you can tell that it would be a fantastic mixed terrain jaunt, but instead of being a "road" it's a farm road or driveway. It was tempting to jump the fence, but that's outside my purview, and 2 chains give the impression that it's a private road. Oh well.
Does that look inviting or what? The mysterious Rose Island Rd. extension.
At the end of RIR I stopped at a gas station to buy a Coke and some Swiss Cake Rolls. While they offer no nutritional value, those SCRs sure are good when you're out of gas, which I certainly was today. They didn't have Swiss Cake, so I bought Ho Hos instead. I like the SCRs more. By the time I stopped at the station, my head was swimming a bit. After the snack, I returned via River Rd. and today used Glenview Ave. to climb up out of the river valley. I have done enough Indian Hills and Mockingbird that I needed a change of pace. I came home via Rudy Ln., which makes it 2 days in a row of exploring the St.Matthews/Brownsboro corridor. I came home tired but satisfied that I put in a full day, half of which was on pretty, empty roads. Although I wanted to take more pics, I didn't, and that's fine. It's a good start to October.
