Nope - it’s not my birthday.
But I’ve been working my way up to a “birthday ride” over the past couple of months. This is sort of a double-goal achievement sort of thing, because the ride, and my impending number of years on the planet both tally up to a half a century.
But I’m improving with age, like a fine wine. Or at least, that’s what MLW says.
Right Honey?
...Honey??
...
Well, anyway, I’ve been building my way up to longer distance rides while the daylight holds up. Over the last several years, my longest ride has been attained in the one group event that I participate in - the Farmondo - which typically happens right about this time of year - falling on the Sunday after Labor Day, give or take. Unfortunately, in a time of pandemic, the Farmondo is not happening.
This meant that I needed to add distance on my own. I’ve started doing that by adopting lengthened routes. My goal was to build up to a 50 mile ride by late September or Early October. This gets more challenging as the days get shorter - aside from the weekends I typically ride after work, and declining daylight means shorter rides. I mean, I do have lights on my trike, but I still prefer riding in the daylight. Besides, as move towards autumn, it gets chillier as the sun goes down.
Given that, I decided to use the Labor Day holiday to escalate things a bit. I laid out a route that covered some new, and some old territory. The important part of it was that it came out to right around 47 miles. This would be the longest ride I’ve taken - the route on the Farmondo that I ride is about 43 miles. I figured if I could manage 47, I could probably get up to 50 by the end of the month.
The Labor Day ride took me through the town of Amboy, IL. I’ve skirted the border of Amboy before on the trike, but have never ridden through it. I could have simply added distance by tacking a few miles on to an existing longer route, but I also wanted to add some visual novelty to my rides. I set course so I would end up going through the downtown area, and exit southwesterly on Rocky Ford Road. I’ve driven through the town of Amboy many times before, both in my youth and as an adult, but I’m not sure I’ve ever gone thru the town past the downtown area, so this was truly new to me.
I wanted to set up the ride so it went past a couple of features that I was interested in seeing. The first is a graveyard called Mormon Cemetery. This is a thing I’ve been doing over the past several years - both because I have been engaged in intermittent genealogical research, and because the serene nature of old cemeteries is something that I like.
The second was Amboy Marsh Sanctuary. This is a site that I was unaware of - that turns out to be because it’s relatively new, having been founding in 2012. And it happened to be right down the same road as Mormon Cemetery.
Those two sites would essentially put me on my return course, briefly crossing Route 52 - a fairly busy, and winding two-lane highway that I don’t otherwise want to spend much time on - to begin my ride home.
As I entered Amboy from the West on Shaw road I was reminded - rather intimately - that the eastern portion of the town still has some areas with the old brick streets in them. These are visually lovely - growing up, sections of my own home town still had brick streets and sidewalks and, I believe, the bricks are still there under the asphalt.
When you hit the brick pavement on a solid-frame aluminum trike you quickly understand why folks might choose to lay ugly asphalt atop the beautiful brick. Suddenly my entire mesh seat was the equivalent of a bad magic fingers machine in a $5 motel. But it’s a brief section of road, so I persevered on and through.
Rocky Ford Road takes you out past St. Patrick Cemetery and the town’s water treatment plant (no detectable odor, thankfully). It also took me past Riverview Road, which appears to follow Green River to the west, suggesting a future route option.
But it was in the opposite direction of my course for today. Shortly following that, I took a left down Mormon Road, and shortly found my way to Mormon Cemetery.
Mormon Road is a quiet, tree lined lane. It would be easy to ride right past Mormon Cemetery - the only initial hint is that it’s a slightly open area to the side, and the grass in the clearing is cut.
The difficulty in recognizing it is in part because there is very little to see. As is sometimes the case with these very old sites, few stones remain standing, and the space between them is open. Fortunately, there is one remaining stone close to the entrance to signal that this is a graveyard.
I paused here to walk around the space and see what else remained, and also took the opportunity for a quick snack. The very few stones that remain above the soil line are virtually unreadable - you’d have to arrive with materials to do rubbings if you wanted to glean much from them. But these sites always provide for a few moments of rest and quiet reverence. And the portion of the site that is overgrown - where open space suggests gravestones that have long-since been swallowed by the earth, with no one remaining to maintain and prevent that from occurring - also speaks quietly to the history of Mormons in Illinois.
After my brief reverie I continued eastward, past Green River Saddle Club, crossing Dry Gulch Road along the way. I slowed to take a long look in each direction - Dry Gulch Road looks to be a rising and falling affair that will definitely be incorporated into a future route. Then I continued along to find the entrance to Amboy Marsh Sanctuary.
The guidelines were more or less what I’d hoped for, and I started to pedal my way in. As I rode past a shed and building with a seating area outside I could see that there was someone going into the building. I waved and rode past.
The road into the sanctuary is a gravel affair, and just beyond the building was a relatively steep rise. Steep enough, in fact, that the rear wheel on the trike started to slip, and then completed lost traction in the loose rock (this is a limitation on trikes due to the weight distribution). I got off and started to walk the trike up the hill.
As I was walking up the hill the man who had been walking into the building drove up behind me and rolled down his window as he pulled up alongside.
He: “We don’t allow wheeled vehicles in here”
We’ll ignore the fact that he was in a truck.
Me: “The sign says no motor vehicles. I figured I was fine.”
He: “Well... I’m also about to leave and close the gate. You’d be locked in and have to lift that thing over the fence.”
Me: ... “I’ll turn around, but that wouldn’t be an issue. It’s not that heavy to lift.”
Now, the sign that does not prohibit “wheeled vehicles” also says the sanctuary is open from sunrise to sunset, so my best guess is that he hadn’t planned to open the sanctuary at all on the holiday, but had to stop in to do something really quick; and that I just happened by when he did, and he didn’t want to stay to wait for me to do whatever it was that I was doing.
I was bummed - I was looking forward to enjoying a bit of nature ride and seeing a place I hadn’t been before. But a lawyerly negotiation seemed unlikely to be successful, and I was only going to lose a mile or so - the map shows the road in the sanctuary to be about a half-mile one way.
What came next was... frustrating. I mentioned above that I was going to have to cross a bit of Route 52. Google Maps showed this as a need to ride for less than a quarter mile - 0.153, to be precise - along the highway. That would be from Mormon Road to Senn Road, which would then connect me to Searles Road.
Unfortunately, google maps appears to have been imagining the existence of most of Senn Road. As I approached it there was a sign at its beginning indicating “dead end”. Looking at the satellite view makes it clear that most of the road is simply not there.
Of course, I was pot committed at the point that I encountered the sign - I was already on Route 52, so I was not in a good spot to turn around. I knew that Searles Road also joined the highway further down - tho I wasn’t sure exactly how far - so I gritted my teeth and rode on.
Searles turned out to join 52 another mile down the road. I was fortunate that traffic was light, and I got there without incident. As I rode up Searles road I could see the point where Senn Road would have met Searles, if it existed. It was simply not there. Maybe it had been once - a private road that was returned to farmland -
This was my own fault, on multiple fronts. I usually drive the routes before I ride them, and I could have - should have - looked at the satellite when I laid out the route. But I drive thru this area frequently, so I thought I had it sorted.
I didn’t. In retrospect, I should have known the road was nonexistent. I’ve driven by the dead-end sign literally hundreds of times, but I didn’t connect the sign with the road on the map. What I get for being overconfident, I guess.
It did mean that the route - the route, not the ride - was spoiled. I’m not going to repeat a route that takes me for over a mile along a major highway. But this also inserted a bit of freedom.
As I hit a point that should have put me about eight miles from home - a little over 40 miles into the ride - I realized I wasn’t really all that tired. Since the route was spoiled anyway, I made an executive decision and re-routed to add the additional three miles or so that would round the ride up to a full 50.
Part of this adventure in additional miles did involve a mile or two of unintentional gravel. Since I was now in exploration mode I figured I’d try out a new road or two along the way. We don’t have a lot of continuous gravel out here any more, but we still do have several sections of pavement that will suddenly, unexpectedly turn to gravel for a mile or two.
In this case, unlike the connecting road debacle, I got lucky. It was old gravel, or what folks sometimes call “hero gravel” - more dirt than rock. It went by fairly easily. And the last six miles or so were on solid asphalt.
So I ended up with an accidental half-century, an accidental birthday ride a month or so ahead of time. This sort of ride - with the spontaneous changes - is atypical for me. This one turned out pretty good, all things considered.