The butt-puckering ride from Peru

We took our next Passport trip on Sunday, May 25. This time we were headed southwest, through Madison County to the town of Peru. (Actually, East Peru.)

The thing about this is, although these towns share the names of famous cities, the names are often pronounced differently. In Spain they call the city muh-DRID, whereas in Iowa it’s pronounced MAD-rid. Peru, in Iowa, is pronounced PEE-roo, which I cannot say or hear without giggling.

Anyway, on Sunday the 25th we again gathered up Hollie, Kristin, Howard, Garry, Shirley, and new pals Austin & Shanon and Nate & Kate. We took off down Highway 28 through Norwalk and Martensdale, then headed west on Highway 92.

It had been my intention to then head south on County Road R35, which should have been an intersection in the town of Bevington. We missed the turn, though – in fact, never even saw the sign for it – so we headed west along 92 til we came to Winterset. Attempts to read and interpret Austin’s GPS device were frustrating, but Garry thought he knew how to get there and finally a local resident stopped to admire our bikes and gave us clear directions to what he called “PEE-roo Road,” which of course made me laugh. (You know how even familiar words can sometimes sound strange if you repeat them over and over? That’s what I found myself doing – repeating “PEE-roo, PEE-roo, Pee-roo” all the way down the highway.)

We headed south through Winterset on the main road, County Road P71. Having maternal ancestors from this area, I know that tucked deep back in Winterset City Park, there is a stone structure called the Clark Tower. You can climb to the top and look out over much of Madison County. It’s quite a stunning view. On the bikes, heading south out of Winterset, it struck me that we were “riding the view” from Clark Tower, and that it was just as beautiful from the ground as it was from the tower. (Really, Madison County offers some incredible riding, especially if you think that Iowa is flat.)

Howard took some great scenic pictures from his bike along the way – the shot at the top of this post is my favorite from all of last summer.

We turned off P71 at G68 and took that into East PEE-Roo (*snicker*), again a tiny town with a tiny post office and perfect photo opp for our passports.

After a short break to celebrate our serendipitous “missing of the turn” that had led us to the road just traveled, we reviewed the map and determined that we could actually pick up our missed road, R35, outside of Truro – and take it north into Bevington as part of the ride home.

We left PEE-roo and cruised east on G68, finally intersecting at the elusive R35. Heading North, the last part of R35 turned out to be the stuff of day-ride legends.

There was a point where the main road curved off to the east, but R35 itself actually went straight North – across the oncoming traffic of the curve, without benefit of traffic control devices.

Leading the pack, I made the switch off to the straight road with no problem – but in doing so, I noted two things: 1). Austin, a few bikes behind me, had missed the straight road and taken the curve instead… I hoped he’d catch up with us; and 2). Around the curve to the east a quarter-mile or so, there was a white mini-van approaching from the opposite direction. Someone in our group was going to meet them at the switch-off – I prayed the van would see us and slow down.

Add to these anxieties the condition of R35 itself, and you have one butt-puckering stretch of road.

To its credit, R35 here was still paved – at least I think it was paved, it was kind of hard to tell. The posted speed limit was 35, but you could catch some pretty good air coming out of the ruts and craters if you went that fast. And you didn’t dare slow down too promptly because of all the loose bits of pavement and “under-gravel” that had come to the surface through the craters. (Later, most of us reported Knievel-style landings before each having found the proper speed. Shirley reported the predicted near-miss with the white van. And, Austin had thankfully rejoined the group.)

Finally, after a few miles, we mercifully came to rest at the intersection of R35 and Highway 92 at Bevington – the turn we’d missed earlier in the day. And it was no wonder we’d missed it: Not only was it not marked at all, it was also completely unrecognizable as a viable intersection. Even if I’d seen it, I would’ve assumed it was an interior town road and wouldn’t have taken it.

Thankfully, the rest of the ride home was uneventful, but this little stop was the kind of moment that makes you stare blankly at one another in disbelief and check each other for broken ribs.

Unfortunately, this would end up being our last passport ride of the season – in the coming days, my dad would become gravely ill and flood warnings would become increasingly dire, and the rest of our summer was consumed with the aftermath of those developments.

I did find our “passports” the other day while going through some rescued flood stuff – that’s what prompted me to finally write up these two rides. I think maybe we’ll hang onto the passports and use them for destination ideas this spring. We can still take the rides, even if we missed out on the prizes.

Though it seems like we should get something for surviving the butt-puckering ride to PEE-roo.

Jamaica? No, she wouldn’t let me

With temperatures below freezing around here for the foreseeable future, it seems as good a time as any to do a little “wishful remembering” about a couple of nice rides we took last season.

Our local Harley dealership, Big Barn Harley Davidson, had put together a riding challenge wherein they created a passport booklet containing a list of cities that you could ride to, document the rides, and then submit all your documentation at the end of the season for a chance to win prizes. The cities on the list were all named for famous places around the world. (I feel compelled to point out that I’d had a similar idea several years ago, only I just made mine a one-day adventure called the World Tour.)

It was our intention to complete as much of the passport as possible over the course of the riding season, but we had barely got started when our summer went to hell. We did, however, get in a couple of nice rides toward the end of May that I really enjoyed.

The first of them took us to Madrid and Jamaica, both small towns to the northwest of Des Moines. It made for a nice little day-ride, and in each town our “assignment” was to simply snap a photo of each person with their bike and passport in front of something that identified the town.

The ride to and from Madrid is actually one of our favorite shorter rides – it’s the trip we take when we only have a couple hours but really want to ride. We took the slower-paced “scenic route” past Saylorville Lake and Big Creek State Park, and once in Madrid we used the city’s landscaped welcome sign as our marker for documentation purposes.

We then headed west out of town on Highway 210, which T’d at 141. We took 141 to Jamaica, which turned out to be probably the quietest little town I’d ever passed through.

Once in Jamaica we didn’t have to ride more than a couple blocks before we found the post office, just off the main street and next to a little pocket park that contained a well-kept community garden. Easy to imagine that this intersection, with the community center on the opposite corner, was probably the social hub of the town.

We lined the bikes up in front of the post office and snapped our photos. Steve and Howard had traded bikes for the trip over from Madrid, so they compared notes about Steve’s HD Heritage Softail Classic and Howard’s Kawasaki Vulcan Nomad 1500.

The ride home was peaceful and took us through Panora, down P28 and then east on scenic F59 and F60, into Adel and then east on Highway 6 for the final leg into Des Moines. When we got home we noted that, prizes aside, the passport would provide an easy answer throughout the summer each time we’d want to ride but didn’t have a particular destination in mind. 

Next report: our trip to Peru.

Update: Someone who went on this ride, please chime in! Is this the one where Kristin & Hollie peeled off in Adel for dinner? Or is it the one where we actually took the lonnnnggg way home  and had our last stop in Altoona? My mind is playing tricks on me… guess I should write these up while my memory is still good! LOL

Toy Run 2008

Well as you know it has been a long and difficult summer for this biker chick – but, we did make sure to take part in the 2008 Toys for Tots Toy Run sponsored by ABATE District 4 here in Des Moines. The ride was held October 12.

Last year, cold/rainy weather kept a lot of folks away from this event – but this year, it was a beautiful if slightly overcast Sunday. I keep saying I’m not a good judge when it comes to estimating crowds, but there HAD to be 2,000 bikes at this thing. At one point when the group was traveling down E. 14th St., there were three entire columns – two in the left lane and one in the right – as far ahead and behind me as I could see.

We traveled from the State Capitol down E. 14th to Army Post Road, then simply turned into the Eagles Lodge just south of Army Post. It was an easy ride – the hardest part is always at the beginning, when the entire group leaves the Capitol and tries to get into formation.

The neatest thing about the ride, other than the sheer size of it, is that it’s escorted by the Des Moines Police Department – they block every stoplight intersection along the route to allow the column to remain intact for the duration of the ride. And of course, the donation of a toy to the Toys for Tots program created by the US Marine Corps makes you feel like you’re riding for a good reason.

As for me, it was great to be out on the bike again. This wasn’t the kind of cruise that clears your head – too big a crowd for that – but it was great to meet up with folks we hadn’t seen for most of the summer. Our daughter even went along for the ride, and she’s almost 15 – much too cool to be hanging out with her parents, so we were honored that she joined us!

Ride to Eat, Eat to Ride

Well we did not take our bikes down to East Village – we decided to go there and drink instead. (Hey sometimes you need one kind of therapy, sometimes you need another!) We did have fun, we sat and talked to the karaoke DJ Michael, who is so worried about us and the house… and later on Steve’s nephew Ben stopped in and we closed the place down chatting with Ben and his friends.

Saturday was another story – it was a little cloudy but we decided to try to find a place for lunch that was not too far, but a nice ride. I recalled that the local HOG members ride to Baxter fairly often, so I figured there must be food there… I did a little Googling and discovered a place called OKelley’s Steak & Pub, so we gathered up Kristin, Hollie, Jenn and Amy (lucky Steve, the only boy) and went for a mid-afternoon lunch.

This is a less-than-an-hour ride along one of my favorite roads – F48 in eastern Polk County. Only trouble was when we got there, OKelley’s was closed (except for the bar) because they were waiting for a big group of bikers to arrive for the ending of a charity ride. (Must’ve been the one we heard about Friday night.) We asked the bartender for a recommendation in another town not too far away and she said there was a nice little bar and grille in Kellogg, Iowa – we took Highway 17 out of Baxter and 224 south to Kellogg, where we found Desperado’s. We almost didn’t get to eat there, either – they shut down the grill for a time between lunch and dinner hours, but they fired it back up for us and we had a great little lunch with ribeye sandwiches, chicken strips, fried mushrooms and other goodies.

Another large group of bikers came in just as we were leaving, so we asked one of them to snap our picture before we took off. (Thanks, friend!) Although we thought for a time we were going to get rained on, it actually cleared up and was sunny by the time we were on our way home. We headed south out of Kellogg just down to Highway 6, which has beautiful new paving, then east into Newton. We crossed Highway 14 and 6 became F48 again, which took us all the way home. Our route, now that I see it in the picture, looks a lot like the Big Dipper!

Only other ride this weekend was the shorty Steve and I took to breakfast on Sunday. It’s raining pretty hard as I write this, and I’m thinking about my Dangerous Curves gals and hoping they are okay.

House update: as I mentioned in my other post, the City keeps asking us to wait for them to gather some resources that might be helpful. We are thinking that perhaps they will have a plan in place early this coming week, so maybe by the end of the week we will know whether we are staying or going. Meanwhile, ‘nother few nights in the camper won’t hurt.

Screw It, Let’s Ride.

Harley Davidson couldn’t have picked a better promotional campaign for the summer of 2008, as far as I’m concerned. Our lives have pretty much been on hold since June 14, while we’ve been waiting to determine whether we should move away from our flooded home or rebuild. Finally, after five weeks of waiting and no real information on which to base a decision (during which, by the way, we’ve been living in a camper in our driveway), we just said, “Screw it, let’s ride.”

So we did! On Sunday we got the bikes out of storage and took a 60-mile-or-so ride up past Saylorville Lake and on up to Madrid, Iowa, then over to Sheldahl and back down to Des Moines through Polk City. It was an absolutely perfect day, and wonderful to be out on the bike again. (Kristin and Hollie, whose home was also flooded, and Howard, who has been a God-send in the amount of help he provided during the clean-up, joined us.) One of those rides that really helps you clear your head, and reminds you why you took up riding in the first place.

Unfortunately we didn’t think to take any pictures – but, I have some shots from a couple of rides from earlier this summer that I am eager to share, so hopefully I will get those posted soon.

 

Ok, sometimes it IS the destination!

Whoever said “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey” never rode a Sportster on a four-lane highway in 30 mph cross-winds. It sure seemed like a beautiful day when we were standing in the driveway… there really didn’t seem to be any wind, the temperature was around 70 with a clear blue sky.

Our original plan was to collect Garry and Shirley in Carlisle and then make a loop to the southeast and then back up to Newton and home on old highway 6. When we got to Carlisle with Howard and Brenda, Garry & Shirley suggested that we go a little farther on to Pella, where the annual Tulip Festival had just concluded. Since I’m not as familiar with that area, we had Garry take the lead to get us there.

We rode south on Highway 5 out of Carlisle, and I was really noticing the cross-wind pushing me around on the road. We turned left onto Marion Co. highway G40 at Pleasantville and took that to Lake Red Rock. G40 ends at highway 14, just shy of the entrance to the Mile Bridge going over the lake. We crossed the bridge and turned southeast onto G28, which we took into Pella. This was a really scenic ride that took us past Cordova State Park, where the water tower-turned-observation-tower is located. (Lake Red Rock is an Army Corps of Engineers lake farther downstream but part of the same system as Polk County’s Saylorville Lake.)

We parked on the square in Pella and took a little time to walk around and look at the tulips in bloom. The Pella Tulip Festival is a long-standing Iowa tradition. The town has a distinctly Dutch heritage, and every year they build a community festival around the thousands of tulips planted around the square and in a variety of gardens around town. Although we missed the official festival by waiting til Sunday to ride down, the tulips were still beautiful – a few were fully bloomed and blown, and some will peak in a few more days. Most, however, were in full regalia and it really was a lovely time to visit. (Full photo album here.)

We decided to take the faster, less scenic route home – we took Highway 163 from Pella into Des Moines, and this was where I really got sick of the cross-wind. I swear I have never been pushed around so much as I was on this 40-mile stretch. (Even our first day of riding home from Sturgis in 2006 wasn’t this bad!)

One of the most annoying things for me is that I seem to have a problem with my jacket ballooning up from the wind. I don’t know if it’s the fact that my sleeves don’t fit snug, or that the jacket’s not vented… it doesn’t even matter which jacket I’m wearing, I always have this problem in strong wind. So I was battling the balloon, and had to keep my jacket zipped all the way up to my chin – only to find that this caused the little fabric zipper pull to whip me repeatedly on the chin and mouth. My solution was to clench the fabric pull between my teeth. I must’ve looked like a dog pulling on his chew-rope. At least it kept me from getting whipped in the face. (Turns out, Garry had a whipping problem too – the radio antenna on his ‘Glide kept catching him on the back of the head and ear!)

In all we rode a hundred miles – and I am FINALLY sporting that “sun-burned from the forehead, down” look you get from wearing a do-rag and sunglasses!

… And finally, a REAL ride!

We took a 60-mile ride on Sunday from Des Moines down to Carlisle, over to Martensdale and then back up to Des Moines. It was chilly, but it was so great to get out and ride that we didn’t really notice til the very end. Well, most of us didn’t.

Six of us – Steve, Kristin, Hollie, Howard, Cassie and myself – left Des Moines around 2 p.m. My car had told me it was 53 degrees at 1 p.m., so we figured it might hit 55 even though it was overcast and clammy.

We rode down to Carlisle where we collected Garry and Shirley, then the 8 of us took off down Highway 5 to County Road S23, south down S23 to Highway 92, west on 92 to Martensdale at Highway 28, then north on 28 back into Norwalk and then Des Moines. This is a really nice loop, one we have done a few times before as an alternative to riding “up around the lake.” Our only stop, once we met up with Garry and Shirley in Carlisle, was a Casey’s in Norwalk. By the time we got there, everyone was noticing the chill a little – especially Shirley, who wasn’t wearing gloves. (Okay, it’s really not enough to say she was “noticing the chill a little.” Her comment was that she was glad she didn’t have to do any sudden maneuvering of the clutch or brake levers, because her poor hands couldn’t have managed it. We need to get that girl some proper handwear!)

We milled around Casey’s for a half hour or so, got warmed up, and then headed home. By the time we pulled into our driveway, we were all feeling the cold a bit. I mentioned to all that it felt like the temperature had dropped five degrees in the time since we’d left Norwalk. As it turns out, I was pretty much right: I looked up the 24-hour temperature history on Accuweather.com and it showed that at 2 p.m. the temp was 50. That means it had already dropped 3 degrees from the day’s high of 53 before we even left home! And at 5 p.m., when we pulled into our driveway, it said 45 degrees! Now eight degrees might not feel like a significant difference when you’re talking sub-zero. (Does minus-28 really feel all that much different from minus-20?) But when you’re talking 53 vs. 45, it’s HUGE – especially when it’s cloudy.

Despite the chill, it was great to finally get out and ride. WOOHOO!! Riding season is here!

Last ride of 2007 season, November 4

We took probably our last ride of the season over the weekend – Sunday was beautiful, sunny with a high in the mid-60’s… so we took a scenic ride with Kristin, Hollie, Howard, Brenda and Cassie down to Indianola and Lake Ahquabi just a few miles south. Fall colors are nearly done (there are still a few really amazing trees here in town, though), and it’s getting dark pretty early what with Daylight Savings Time over… plus it’s the height of lust-crazed deer season and that always makes things interesting – but we had a great day riding with no troubles.

I’ve got a little over 13,000 miles on my bike now – it had 4900 when I bought it. I put the saddlebags back on recently and I’ve got some thoughts for things to do/add over the winter, so we’ll see what the PB looks like come spring.

So what’s in store for the off-season? Oh the usual shopping for chrome, leather, etc. LOL But also, I’ve put my name in the hat to be an officer in the local HOG chapter (new member ambassador – does that sound like me or what??) so I’m looking forward to see if that comes to pass.

I also have lots of blogging fun in store so hang in there with me, just because it’s too cold to ride doesn’t mean the blog goes quiet!

More soon!

Face down in the Guthrie County mud

As it turns out, there’s one more thing The Picky Bitch is picky about: road surface! She likes paved highways, and she will tolerate fine, hard-packed gravel as long as it’s dry. But she will throw herself to the ground in a temper tantrum (and take me with her) if she’s forced to slough through the kind of slimy mud we encountered on Saturday.

We debated going out at all – chance of rain was 50-50, it was cloudy and cool. We didn’t particularly want to ride in the rain, but decided to chance it. The plan was to ride over toward Panora with Howard, Brenda, Hollie and Kristin, where we were going to look at a possible new bike for Brenda at Jackie’s house.

We put on full leathers and I chose not to wear my brand new jacket because I didn’t want it to get wet. I’d later be thankful for that decision. We headed out Hickman Road in Des Moines, which is old Highway 6, and took that all the way to Adel. We then proceeded west on F60 to Redfield, F59 to P28, and then north on P28 toward Panora. This is a really pretty ride, and was a road we’d taken a couple times before – once on our way to see Albert the Bull with Garry and Shirley, and once last summer when Coyote and I traveled to LeMars.

At some point just south of Panora, we turned onto the road that led down to Jackie’s house. It was gravel… fine hard-packed, clay-based gravel, and it was wet. We had to travel on it about a quarter-mile, but it was a downhill ride with a curve. The first couple hundred feet were okay – I’d loosened my grip and slowed way down. But toward the bottom of the hill, where the curve set in, there was a spot where I could see that the gravel was actually mostly mud. Slimey, rutted clay-based mud. As I started through it, going probably less than 5 mph, I thought, wow I could drop the bike pretty easily through here, better be careful. The next moment, I was splatted on the ground face down, arms out-stretched ahead of me and the Picky Bitch laying on my @#$ foot.

I wasn’t hurt, but I couldn’t pull my foot out from under the bike. I looked up the road behind me to see my fellow riders all trying to safely get whoa’d on the mud-slimey hill (THANKS, everyone for not running over me! I still have no idea how they all managed to get stopped in that mess without going over)… Steve came running up asking if I was okay and I said, “I’m alright, just get the bike off my foot…” so he and Howard pulled the Bitch up and then helped me up. My gloves, my jacket, and my chaps were covered in mud slime – my knee and ankle were a little sore, but no serious damage to me.

As for the poor Bitch – totally destroyed front turn signal (not just the lens and housing, but also the post that mounts it to the triple-tree), broken back brake linkage rod and dangling/bent brake pedal (cobbled back together for the ride home), and – !@#$- bent my brand new ape hanger handle bars!!

We got the bike down to the garage at Jackie’s house, she and her family helped me get cleaned up a bit and the guys managed to get the bike put back together enough that I could ride it home (THANK YOU!!). Brenda did make that bike trade, so she got to ride home on her new-to-her Honda Shadow Aero 750… and yes, I rode The Picky Bitch back through the slime up the hill to the road and home.

A few things I’m thankful for:

1. I’m thankful I was dressed for the fall. I have a burn mark on my chaps (they’re branded!) where the hot pipes were laying across my leg and pinning my foot; my gloves protected my hands from serious harm; and my poor right boot (yep, my red cowyboy boot) has another battle scar.
2. As noted, I’m thankful I wore my old jacket and I’m thankful that Steve had just put the saddlebags back on the Bitch on Friday – they probably protected the back end of the bike from serious damage.
3. I’m thankful, obviously, that I wasn’t hurt and that none of my friends were hurt trying to get to me – this could have turned into one big pile of broken bikes.
4. I’m thankful for Jackie’s hospitality.
5. I’m thankful for the friends who were with me and eager to help.

All of this is why I missed the 2007 Toy Run; I need to get the bike back together in time for the benefit ride next weekend.

Indianola Bike Night, more Wild Hogs, and a nice ride around central Iowa

Friday night was Indianola Bike Night – we rode down with Kristin and Hollie (Hollie got her bike fixed!) but along the way noticed a person waiting with a bike on the side of the rode… realized as we rode by it was SUSAN (Coyote)!! So I stopped and waited with her while she waited for Paul to return with tools to fix the problem… they then rode home to switch bikes and I went on down to Indianola. Got there just as Steve, Garry and Shirley were getting off their bikes… Susan and Paul arrived a short time later. Did our usual pass around the square and had dinner at the One Stop Cafe.

Normally I hate the ride home from Indianola – it’s always in the dark and I always feel like it’s a deer gauntlet… this week, though, the ride home was pleasant. I happened to hit the highway behind a guy riding a bike with a sidecar rig, and he maintained a speed of about 50 mph the whole way home. I was able to rely somewhat on his headlight beam to light the road ahead of me, so I felt like I had a good “advance view” of any animals that might be lurking.

Saturday night we went up the HD dealership and enjoyed a free showing of “Wild Hogs” with about 100 other club members. We really liked that movie the first time we saw it in the theater, but it was even more fun in a room full of bikers.

Then today (Sunday) we went to breakfast at a local diner with Garry & Shirley and then went on an afternoon ride to the east. We traveled Old Highway 6 east through Mitchellville, Colfax and Lambs Grove, then south on Highway 14 down to Monroe where we hit a little rain. We had intended to go a little farther east to Pella, but we could see the wall of rain off in that direction so we changed plans and just took 14 on south out of Monroe, over the Mile Bridge over Lake Red Rock. We turned to the west on County Road G-40 into Pleasantville, then north on Highway 5 back into Carlisle where Garry & Shirley live.

I did try something  new today – instead of wearing my usual HD boots, I tried riding in my new red Ariat cowboy boots (I got mine on eBay for $30!!). The only issue I had was that the upper is a lot thinner on these than it is on the HD boots, so I could feel the shifter through the top of the boot as I pushed it upward. I did find a comfortable way to accomplish the shift, and these seemed to have a decent grip sole so I might ride with them a few more times until I can get a good deal on the brown HD Laredo harness-style boots I want.

In all a good weekend on the bikes… summer is winding down but I think we might try to get one more over-nighter in. 

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