LONG bike ride

Saturday afternoon Jason and I were going to go on a long bike ride. I wanted to go on somewhere between 20-25. He mentioned he had a great 30 mile route picked out. So I prepared for the ride and decided to go along. The weather was windy and at times really windy, but the temperature was seriously perfect for riding.

Since we had a while to ride and all of our children were busy with either school, working or with their friends, we had extra time to spend on this ride and I would stop and take pictures because of things I thought were funny or picture worthy.

About 27 miles into the ride we were NO WHERE near home. This worried me greatly and Jason realized he really didn't know how far our loop was. We had taken Dubuque street North, then turned on Linder Drive East, then Prairie Du Chein North until we came to Newport Rd. East until we came to Hwy 1 and turned South. We should have headed home from here, but instead we turned on Morse Rd. East towards West Branch. It was a very LONG hilly Rd.  which I hated.  Then we turned on Baker Rd. which I then hoped would bring us home, but instead it brought us to West Branch and we had hit almost 28 miles by this point and I knew we were in trouble and were going to ride a whole lot further than I had planned on.  Thank goodness there was a gas station in West Branch and I filled my two water bottles up with ice.  We then proceeded on Herbert Hoover Rd. towards home, but that ended up being the hilliest road of them all.  I really thought I'd die by mile 33 and my tailbone was hurting.

When we finally saw civilization again it was 36 miles and I was grateful that my pain was almost over.  This was going to be the longest ride I had ever been on.  Which would have been GREAT had I worked up to it better.  The last long ride was 36 miles and that was almost a couple months ago, since then I've done a lot of 6-10 milers, but nothing of significance since.  I was in pain.

When my odometer on my bike turned 40 miles I was on our street and grateful to be home.  Everything hurt.  Here are some pictures from the day.

A brown cow.  I did witness this, although he wasn't entirely brown.  I knew
they existed.

This sign is hilarious and I had to have a picture of it.  I have seen
it many times before so this time I grabbed a picture.

Someone's awesome mailbox.

This is what 30 miles looks like to Jason.

After the ride, glad to be home.

Jason and his hot bike legs!

Me so grateful to be done riding for a couple days.