Rut Revisited
I hit a point last summer where I realized I was in a riding rut. I’d done what turned out to be an uncomfortable analysis that showed that all but two of my rides for the past month had been essentially to the same location.
I’m not quite there this year - I’m riding a handful of routes instead of the same one over and over again - but the feeling is similar. I’m covering similar territory in slightly different ways. I love cycling - it’s essentially truism that a bad day riding is still better than a good day at work. But there are points at which it becomes pat and repetitive - the same scenery, the same roads, etc. When you ride down a road and realize that you’ve seen the same bolt in the same part of the road multiple times - and you realize that wondering exactly what type of farm equipment it must have come off of and whether or not it was important is now a part of what you are thinking about on your ride - maybe things have gotten a little too routine
So it’s time to sit down with Google Maps and begin to identify some alternate routes and areas to explore. One of the challenges in my area is first finding potential routes and second scouting them out to make sure they include no - or at least minimal - gravel. Roads in our region are mostly paved, but as I’ve learned through exploration, it’s very possible to suddenly discover, after eight to ten miles of pavement, that a road commissioner decided that the next three miles needed to be of the rocky sort.
Seriously tho - what is up with that guy?