Belated birthday ride

     My 72nd birthday was Thursday and came with two days of steady rain, but the weekend lived up to it's promise of beautiful weather so I took a belated birthday ride.  Clear blue skies led me through 60-70 degree temperatures over the Kal-Haven  trail on a test ride of the Yves Gomez.

I wanted to see how the new creation felt on a longer ride and South Haven is a nice 50 mile ride from home.  The rail trail eliminates any steep climbs, but not the wind and it was a relentless 20-25mph in my face the whole day.  It was one of those times when the only choice was to gear DOWN into a comfortable cadence and be patient. 

     The trail is in great shape for the spring.  The eastern half is hard packed and ready to ride.  I was concerned over the tires which are city slicks that measure about 33mm wide.  They were fine on the eastern end of the trai, the western half has been resurfaced and is, technically, still closed.   It looks to me that most work is done, a nice 15 foot surface has been laid and rickety wooden bridges replaced with new steel ones.

There's still a little work to be done

and the surface is really soft.  

     I found, not only deer, but even deep raccoon tracks.  I hope the DNR plans to compact this before it's officially open. Given the soft surface swallowing my narrow slick tires, I bailed out to the county roads where I only had the wind wrestling with me.  The bike was fine and comfortable all day but the wind was exhausting all afternoon.   It made for one tired rider who did not feel like anything but a dip in the pool and microwave whatever to eat while I vegged out in front of the tube. 

     In the morning I was blessed with even stronger winds and knowing the trail was not fun I stuck to the roads.  Phoenix St. in South Haven becomes CR 388 and leads all the way to Alamo outside Kzoo. I jumped all over that with the wind sailing me down the road.

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The sky was so bright even small lakes took on a brilliant blue

and I had a brisk and relaxing ramble through springtime. 

    It was a good couple days in the saddle.  The bike was comfortable through it all,  I made a minor adjustment to the handlebars but that's it.  The ride home with the wind took 2 hours and 1500 calories less than the ride against the wind.