Hayden MT South

And now for the rest of our story...

As you may (not) remember, Dave and I had just escaped not the meth House, but the meth TrailerPark. We rolled past an uneventful Brush Creek FWA and turned south towards Muscutatuck. Now, however weird the MethPark was, Muscutatuck was that much stranger for me. Sources described that it was the former farm for Indiana reta...er...mentally handicapped youth. They closed it down and at some point the Indiana Nat'l Guard took over. Now is an Urban Training Center, which means that there are a lot of shot out cars and weird buildings where you can get your mercenary on. We even had to pass through a guard station on a marked standards state road. They waved us through very nicely. I was much more spooked, with images of white-supremacy-meets-'Red Dawn', but Dave is better adjusted than I, so we moved on, . Dave took a couple pics, but I declined for fear of pending attack.

What was nice is that the road leaving- N.Cr.300E- was pleasant gravel followed part of the Muscutatuck River. It made for a nice bike stroll.

Exiting Muscutatuck Urban Training Center

After our gravel foray we bit the wind again into N.Vernon for out store stop. We considered eating a full lunch, but as Dave knows, I just don't sit down for lunch very well on rides. We stopped by a gas station to fill up the reservoirs and left town to the SW, into more wind.

Colorful N.Vernon

N.Vernon to the west. If you enlarge you can take in a large group of bikers. Funnily enough, they were in front of a biker bar.

Our pictures disappeared for a while at this juncture. The land south of the river was quite lumpy- not really hilly, mind you- so we rode the lumps..and the headwind.

We finally turned north at the Muscutatuck yet again to find a swollen, muddy mess. We were expectantly excited to turn out of the wind and found some flat terrain to recover a bit. A passing sign said, "Road closed", but there didn't seem to be any problems. Shortly afterward, though.

The gravel road going straight-W.CR.500S- was mired in high waters. It was even a bit challenging pedaling up to take a pic. Glad our route didn't take us that way.

We took our road, S.CR.700W, and shortly saw a car or two with rooster tails coming off either side; the road was rather under water. I've personally never ridden in such a situation, but we knew as long as it didn't sink the hubs or BB, we would be fine, so after allowing some cars to go by so as to not be deluged, we ventured through the "flood", a solid .25m of it.

I found it to be a fun adventure. We took another turn, into the wind and up a hill, and then finally another right turn north again, find lonely, empty gravel roads and a tailwind. Heaven.

hard to see, but uphill into the wind again

Our last leg was a mixed of short road and medium gravel sections. I also included the road below, one we encountered on the Muscutatuck NWF ride Michael led in February. We were both quite interested back in February and Dave and I got the opportunity to tour this section, and what a great section it was. Inspired again by the same day Paris-Roubaix, about a 3rd of the way in I put the hammer down on Dave and took off on a surprise "break-away". As Dave said, I was feeling a bit saucy. It was a good 1.5 section. Towards the end I felt/heard something and stopped to find that the front fender had loosed and dropped on top of the tire. Dave shortly caught up and I commenced adjusting it. It took long enough that a family in a red jeep saw us coming and going and inquired if we needed help. The mom seems very perplexed that we would like gravel. We finished with a bit of downhill racing fun and then back to Hayden for a relaxing, spirited, and windy 60-miler, my longest ride since the BigSouthFork trip from October, '10.

S.CR.800W from February. I should have stopped for the same pic, but I was ready to hit the gravel with and take advantage of the tailwind.

As ever, sometimes you have to have a good dose of Vitamin G.