Here in Northern Illinois the harvest season is well underway. This means multiple changes to the landscape - both figuratively and literally - from a cycling perspective.
Country backroads are a boon to cycling because they are typically quiet thoroughfares with minimal traffic. As a bonus, in my area at least, they are mostly paved, and so offer that solitude of cycling without having to contend with the evil of gravel. But when the corn and beans start to come down things change. These once quiet byways become busy, occupied with trucks and machinery as farmers go about plying their trade.
And when I say trucks and machinery, the and is somewhat important. On most days out my way you’ll perhaps occupy road space with a full-size pickup or the occasional box truck (think UPS or FedEx). But this time of year you may also encounter a variety of farm implements - combines and tractors pulling grain wagons, along with the grain trucks themselves - that are not typically present the rest of the year.
If you think you feel tiny cycling by a full-size pickup, a couple of minutes riding side-by-side with a combine or tractor with wagons in tow is a real eye-opener. And I say “a couple of minutes” because they aren’t fast-moving vehicles. When they pass you it takes a while. It pays dividends to simply slow down and let it go by more quickly.
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The composition of the roadways changes too, in a way. The process of harvesting produces a lot of botanical detritus that often ends up scattering across the roadways. Mostly this is in the form of portions of corn cobs, husks, and stalk that eventually just blow away in our prevalent prairie wind. This year, however, it’s been unusually wet - both rain and our early snow for the year - and so the detritus mixes with the prodigious amounts of mud pulled up and then dropped from the treads of machine tires. This makes for some new challenges...
Each time I come up to one of these sections I am very pleased to have fenders.
The rest of the changes are in the literal landscape. What has been a world of roadways walled with corn interspersed with breaks of pasture and beans and occasional houses is now mostly open rolling and flat. For a brief period of time the cornfields, in particular, look to display the aftermath of some great battle (which, in a way, I suppose they do). The world is now open and, from some angles, virtually endless off to the horizon.
These changes also change the nature of the wind patterns. For a substantial portion of the summer and early autumn you can count on the stands of stalks to function as a windbreak from some angles, and as a channel from others. Now, as they get cut away, the wind is increasingly diffuse and ever-present.
One of my favorite parts, visually speaking, is the in-between time. As the combine starts cutting its way through there are suddenly openings, apparent pathways through the corn that, however, briefly, give the impression of new worlds to find if one were just to follow down them.
(One does not, of course, because one does not wish to become a farming accident. It’s interesting and momentarily a little romantic, but you gotta live in the real world...).
These patterns of change are part of the joy of riding out in rural roadways here in the midwest. Every time of year has something to offer, something to see.
Now - time to ride and see what’s different today...