This isn’t Stipps Hill Road, but it’s not far off. We ride Vanetta Hollow and Sanes Creek, tracing a familiar route having hills that test our legs and our will. Along the way we pass roads with names made familiar during our years of covering Fayette and Franklin counties. There’s Elm Tree, Quarry, and Johnson [...]
Posts Tagged ‘bicycle’
Murder on a nearby road
Posted in road bike, tagged bicycle, bike, Cycling, Indiana, Murder on October 5, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
A knee to the gut
Posted in road bike, Running, tagged bicycle, Cycling, Indiana, Marathon, road bike, running on October 2, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
The postcard lies on a counter in my office. Purchased as inspiration, it’s now a reminder of something lost. I didn’t run the Wabash Heritage Trail Marathon today. Pain and instability in my left knee — proof that no good deed goes unpunished — made running that distance impractical. Then again, for the past several [...]
Of snowdrifts and rooster tails
Posted in road bike, tagged bicycle, Cycling, Indiana on February 16, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
It’s not spring. Far from it. But for a day we ride as if a season has turned. In fact, we are somewhere between seasons — between the trainer and the road. Finding ourselves on dry pavement and in snow melt, throwing grit into our gears and rooster tails onto our backs. Keeping wheels on [...]
The next set
Posted in Trainer, tagged bicycle, bike, dreams, Trainer on January 12, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Xero sleeps on the couch. Leroy chews on a towel in his hutch. I’m turning the cranks, but going nowhere. At least for now. It’s winter in Indiana, with nearly half a foot of snow on the ground and a stinging wind in the air. Even if the single-digit wind chill wasn’t a deterrent, a [...]
Riding again
Posted in road bike, tagged bicycle, Cycling, Indiana on December 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
More like April than December. We return to the bikes, to the roads and to our thoughts. Although the temperature is unseasonably warm, the cold still penetrates layers of clothing, and we ride with our heads down, our focus six feet away, on the pavement directly ahead. I dreamed of Coach Decker last night. We [...]
I have the legs for that
Posted in road bike, tagged bicycle, Cycling, Indiana, Marathon, running on November 3, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The dreams begin. I’m on my last long training run, a 26-miler that’s interrupted by a stop at my parents’ house. Except it’s not their house, not their rooms, not their possessions. None of that bothers me. But as I walk through the front yard — the one I recall from years ago, when the [...]
Friendship and the Hilly Hundred
Posted in road bike, tagged bicycle, Cycling, Hilly Hundred, Indiana, Relationships on October 10, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
It ends on a smooth strip of blacktop beside a grassy slope. Not just a ride, a season concludes here — in near-record temperatures that speak more of summer days than a mid-October afternoon. We stop where we began yesterday, three friends posing for a photo before taking to the road. Miles and hours [...]
Chimes
Posted in road bike, tagged bicycle, Cycling, Indiana, Nature, road bike on September 15, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
These days left are few. I’m sitting in my bed, eight hours after today’s ride, the weather warm enough to leave open a window that transmits a live concert of insect song. If I could, I would turn out the light and write in the dark, in the comfort of their world. But tonight I [...]
Of pumpkins and bean fields
Posted in road bike, tagged bicycle, Cycling, Indiana on September 1, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
A single pumpkin remains on the vine in the side yard, its dark-green shell tinged with orange, as if dipped in dye from one end, the colors in stark contrast to the dirty-white that leaches once-vibrant leaves of a plant now turned too old. We harvested yesterday, Hope and I, pulling two pumpkins from that solitary patch, [...]
Things untold
Posted in road bike, tagged bicycle, Cycling, Indiana, road bike on August 14, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Too many things left unsaid. A small cemetery skirts the southern edge of Willow Branch. White marble slabs face west, waiting for the sun to set, while a carved limestone monument in the shape of a tall tree stump glances at the county road, a stone’s throw from a small grain elevator. I’m looking at [...]
