Life On A B-I7

Route

• Wolf Point to Circle

Metrics

• Miles: 53
• Average Speed: 8.93 mph
• Ride Time: 5 hours 55 minutes
• Climbing: 1,357 vertical feet

I’m trying out a new way to summarize the day’s ride. It provides more information. (The HTML is simpler too.) To me, the most interesting piece of information above is the “Climbing.” As I suspected, the climbing reported by my other apps has been less the actual amount. I’m glad to now have a handle on this stat. I used Cyclemeter for this data. The data Cyclemeter generates is as good as a that provides by a Garmin.

A word about Average Speed. I’m not unhappy with just under 9. I think the gold standard for humans carrying 35 pounds of gear is probably 13. A younger man, by that I mean 30 or so years younger, would probably be in the 10 to 11 range. I’ll take 8.9 every day. I’m going to continue using Cyclemeter the rest of the way, so over time that number will tell an interesting story. (Ya, I’m kind of a data guy at heart.)

I wasn’t out of town this morning before I had to put my rain jacket on. About 5 miles out of town I crossed over the Missouri river. I’m now heading south on State roads. I’m no longer riding on U.S. Highway 2.

The rain came down for the first 10 miles and then miraculously stopped. The forecast for today was for much worse. Another 20 miles down the road I was able to take my raincoat off. You know things are going to be OK when you can hear the birds chirping. I saw two pair of deer, I scared a bunny rabbit out of its wits, and I flushed numerous birds out of the grass alongside the road. It seems I would make a good hunting dog.

Two miles outside the town of Circle, I stopped to look at the sky. There was a dark bank of clouds spewing thunder and lightning. The storm front appeared to be just over the town. I watched for a few minutes, but couldn’t tell which way the front was moving so I pressed on. I arrived in town, checked into the motel, and just as I was opening the door to my room hail and rain started coming down in buckets. I guess you could say today was my lucky day. In the time it took to write this post, the storm completely moved on. I can hear birds chirping. The birds are telling me the rest of the day will be just fine.

Sunnyside School. 1923 to 1968.

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