Saturday
Aug202011
Tour de Iron Butt
Saturday, August 20, 2011 at 5:41PM A very jovial crowd of about 20 cyclists converged at High Point Coffee for the 2011 World's Largest Cedar Bucket ride and 1st Annual Naughty Sock ride. The group stayed together until the turn off to CR-325 on CR-313.
Rich and Eric sent some info earlier about their rides as you can read below. Our slightly less speedy posse of Kate, Claude, and I had an equally good ride as the Rocket Riders who were no telling how far ahead of us. I'm sure we did a whole lot more talking and I know we did a whole lot more resting. We stopped at the Sand Springs Presb Church for water, and since there were some painters there, we got to use the potties. We also got to take a peek inside the church so that Kate and Claude could see the quaint, original pews with the divider running down the middle of the church. When this church was built in 1854, it was for both blacks and whites, thus the divider and separate entrance doors.
We bypassed the BP at US-51 and Eureka Road, opting instead to ride up US-51 to MS-6 to the BP there. Then we cut over to the Batesville town square and got back on the route. When we got to Sardis, it was getting hot, so we decided to mosey up to the MS-315 and interstate interchange and treated ourselves to slushies at Sonic. Mine gave me an immediate ice cream headache ... I can't remember the last time I had one, but I certainly had forgotten how painful they are! I actually thought that taking my helmet off would help it feel better ... NOT! Got back on the route again and experienced the "Butt Burner" that is Spring Port Road ... up and down, up and down, up and down!!! Having done all that up and down, I decided that it was time for another slushie when we got to the Crossroads store. Having never had a slushie on a hot day of cycling, I decided that slushies would forevermore be my drink of choice. It really cooled my core.
Stopped to take pictures at the World's Largest Cedar Bucket. By this time, we could tell that rain was on its way, so since we had gotten 4 extra miles on our Sardis slushie run, we thought it was best to cut across from CR-105 to the Wellesgate construction entrance and head back to town via Anderson Road. I kid you not, there were WHITE CAPS on the lake that were crashing and splashing over the bulkhead as we rode around it! As we rounded the south end of the lake and got a view of the storm that was heading across the lake towards us and all the scary lightening that was with it, I told Kate and Claude that we needed to stop and hole up on the porch of someone's house and wait it out. The wind was blowing so hard that I doubt we could have remained upright. And I was worried that there might be hail. There was a house that looked like it was still under construction, so we quickly helped ourselves to its back porch ... and the house itself acted like a buffer between the coming storm and us. Claude called his wife to come get us because his bike rack can carry four bikes. Karen Mogridge texted me to find out our whereabouts and discovered our dilemma. She offered to come get us ... THANK YOU KAREN! The ride was over for us at that point. We ended up with 80 miles for the day.
You can see the pictures here!