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Road biking, dirt road riding on Frankenbike, tandem riding, group riding, time trialing, randonneuring - I love to ride, and I love to write. As I've traveled along on two wheels, I've learned one thing: Expect Adventure. Join me on the journey!

Betty Jean Jordan

Monday, November 29, 2021

Peach Peloton - Dirt Edition

Peach Peloton started on November 6, but this past Saturday was my first one for the year.  I did the Stuckey’s Bird Dog 100 race on November 6, the Journey Ride for Autism on November 13, and the Sasquatch Ride on November 20-21.  It was great to be back with my Peach Peloton peeps!  And this time we did a dirt edition – very fun!

Last year Robert led a Peach Peloton on mostly this same route, which includes some dirt roads near Culloden and Musella that I had never ridden.  Last year I missed the ride because I had a brevet.  I’m so glad I got to experience these roads this year.

The 10 of us were a bigger group than most of us expected.  It was very cold at the start, but we knew it would get more comfortable later on.

It’s a lot harder to draft on dirt roads, and so I really had to work to keep up with the guys.  On the dirt sections, I pretended I was racing in the Bird Dog 100 again.  The paved sections gave me some respite as I got to draft again.

I laughed to myself because about the only time I got to look at the scenery before the store stop was when I took a nature break.  Here’s a pretty view from my first one:

At my second nature break spot I saw some raccoon tracks.  I love their handprints:

The store stop was at about mile 47, more than halfway into our 71-mile ride.  The guys dropped me about two miles before the store stop.  You’d think it wouldn’t bother me after all these years, but I was kind of irked at their testosterone-driven egos.  I rolled up while most of them were inside.  I had enough water probably to get me through the rest of the ride, and so I stopped only long enough to open a Clif Bar.

Continuing the next few miles by myself, I was still kind of mad.  That evaporated when I got to an unusual dirt road through some peach orchards.  Robert had mentioned some peach orchards, but I figured they would be the usual type, visible from the road.  This was so different.  Although it was a named road, it was really a farm road.  In some places it wasn’t even much of a road, just some ditches.  It was adventurous, almost magical.

Peach season is still a ways away.

These peach trees belong to Dickey Farms in Musella, the iconic destination for peach ice cream.

Now in a better frame of mind, I continued riding.  I reminded myself that I know the guys are always going to ride hard, and it’s great training.  I played a game with myself, trying to make it all the way back before the guys caught me.  I made it by two minutes.

When I’m riding hard, often I get a snippet of song stuck in my head.  I don’t choose it; it just happens.  This time it was from REM and was particularly appropriate:

Driver 8, take a break
We can reach our destination
But we’re still a ways away, but it’s still a ways away

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