Sawyer East

I'm sort of giddy. Must have created a good endorphin buzz on the ride this morning. Big One had cross country practice at Sawyer, so I planned a ride during practice and invited Dave for some Saturday morning miles. I've only done a few rides in that area so I charted a course that, for me, had several new roads, really mostly new roads. I knew that we would face some suburban traffic, but all-in-all it was a very pleasant route with very few critical traffic issues.

The entirety of the route was bucolic and still riding that "country/'burb" fence, but Johnson Rd./1531 was particularly nice as it skirted the steep hillsides above the creek. We enjoyed a thrilling dive down to the creek before climbing to US60. The short segment of Poplar Ln., with a sign for No Trucks, was also a nice, empty diversion. In the course of our ride we saw cyclists on almost all the roads we encountered, although never en mass. I had an original route going through Middletown, but using the "bike route" button on ridewithgps I found that Avoca Rd. was dashed with green, meaning a bike route, lane or something. The first part of that stretch was lined with quarries and heavy industry, hardly a bike route. Once it crossed Old Henry signs pointed to a local route with no through-traffic. At the train crossing guardrails had been positioned to allow bikes and walkers but no cars. Honestly it was all a bit odd, but for that short mile stretch we found cool shade devoid of cars. Nice.

Once back in Anchorage I mentioned to Dave that I wanted to maintain a total pace above 14, as we had been above 15mph for most of the ride and then slowed. He pushed it a bit and I pushed it some more, finished with 14.8mph for the day. Dave did great too, first riding the 12m there and then the 29m with me. A great day and a great precursor for tomorrow(RCCS message here), our 70m out of Orleans, IN. If you're interested, see you in Orleans at 9.00EST.

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