Even after Saturday’s trip to King’s Island with Priscilla, I woke up on Sunday feeling well rested and motivated to go for a bike ride. It seems like something one shouldn’t fight when it happens, so I started looking at my maps. I didn’t want to go back to the route that I’d [failed on last time](http://davidernst.net/blog/2006/05/07/unsuccessful-bike-ride/), I wanted something new. I’d been wondering recently if I’m just used to all of the reasonable ways to exit Bloomington on a bike. Then I remembered that the collection of trips that I bought from the Bloomington Bicycle Club includes a sheet called “The ins and outs of Bloomington”. So, I studied that. The answer is yes, I am pretty used to all of them, but it’s nice to have a list before you so that you can remember ones you haven’t done in a while and think about where they might go that’s different than places you’ve been before. And so it was that I decided to head north on the West side of Highway 37 (which is sort of the great divide of biking around Bloomington). It looked like I might be able to make it to the White River if I was feeling good, and that sounded like a fun adventure.

Read on for more of the adventure, and more [unbelievably cool stuff one can do with GPS data in this day and age](http://www.bloomington.in.us/~drernst/gmaps/20060521-maple-bottom.html).



Sunday's route overlayed on a USGS topo map

Unfortunately, while I was packing things up, I got a phone call from a co-worker informing me that the problem that we had been working on was not in fact resolved. I’m not going to go into the details, but I had to open a trouble ticket with AT&T, which was definitely not what I was in the mood to do while I was getting ready for an aerobic adventure on a beautiful Spring day. Ugh. Well, I did it, and in fact got a call back from an engineer before I had even left. He said exactly what I told the first person he’d say, which is fine because part of that is “we’ll have to open this other kind of ticket for this.” But you can’t open that second kind of ticket without the first one, even if you know that’s what the first people will say. Wait, I’m not getting in to the details…

Ok, so, after a fair amount of futzing with bike gear, I finally headed out. I left at about 11:50. Oh, the GPS tells me it was 11:48:22. OK, GPS. Anyway I gave myself the goal of being back by 3pm. I figured I’d head towards the river and see how close I got.

I like the route that I plotted (which moves clockwise as you look at the map). Low traffic, relatively direct, interesting, pretty… yeah, good. Seeing the [elevation profile](http://www.bloomington.in.us/~drernst/gmaps/maple-bottom-elev.png) in retrospect is comforting, because it’s nice to see that that hill that was giving me trouble about 8 miles into the trip was substantial (250 feet climb in about a mile, maybe less… if it’s in a mile, that’s about a 5% grade on average, nothing to sneeze at).

Well, after cruising down that hill, I crossed a bridge over Indian Creek (as I always say “the water is downhill from here”, so when you coast across a bridge, you usually know you’re not going to be coasting for much longer). I saw a sign marking a trailhead on some land owned by [the Sycamore Land Trust](http://www.bloomington.in.us/~sycamore/). This turns out to be the [Beanblossom Bottoms Nature Preserve](http://www.bloomington.in.us/~sycamore/bbbnp.html) (BBBNP), but I didn’t know that at the time. Part of it is a National Wildlife Refuge, which was pretty clearly a small wetland area and almost certainly the wildlife they are offering refuge to are migratory birds. Anyway, didn’t even know that was there. Cool!

I thought maybe I’d investigate, but instead I realized that I had missed a call on my cell phone. I had a cell phone signal, so I checked my voicemail, and it was the phone company. As so often happens, part of my description was lost in the transfer process from person to person, so… Wait, I’m not going into the details. Suffice to say that I spent at least a half hour on the phone with them discussing what might be going on. I cannot deny getting a kick out of discussing things like the nitty-gritty functionality of high-end telecommunications equipment and services while standing on the edge of a nature preserve with nothing but my feet or my bicycle to take me anywhere and nobody else around except for the very occassional car that drives by (leaving a cloud of dust behind them from the gravel road). But, having said that, this is *not* what I wanted to be doing right then.

After all the time on the phone, we basically had two possibilities of what was causing the problem: one would be our problem to fix, the other the phone company’s problem. This may be surprising, but I actually prefer it when it’s our problem, because it’s usually actually easier to fix something than to navigate the bureaucratic maze of phone numbers and the people who answer them to find someone who can fix their problem. But, I’m getting dangerously close to getting into the details of it. What I had before me was 10+ miles to bike to get to our machine room and see if the latest hypothesis might be correct.

And, so it was, that I made the difficult decision that I would not bike all the way to the White River that day. Looking at the maps, I think I was within 5-6 miles of it, which seems pretty close, but going there could have turned this into a 40 mile ride instead of 27. And besides, now I had work to do. So, I took the first road back towards Bloomington.

Cindy told me years ago that Bottom Road was so named because it followed Indian Creek in the bottom of the valley that it flows through. In other words, it’s the lowest road around in elevation terms. That’s not obvious when you’re on it, but looking again at that elevation profile, I realize that I had about 7 miles of relatively flat riding. No wonder it went by so quickly. The topo map confirms that this was easy riding.

Eventually, though, I had to climb up the hill to be at Upper Cascades’ elevation. This climb was hard, I was low on energy. I decided that even though I was almost back in Bloomington, I’d stop in Cascades Park and eat some of the Girl Scout Cookies that I’d packed. That was a good idea, but I should have eaten them long before that. I really have to remember to eat before I feel like I need it when I’m on long bike rides. Anyway, I felt only a little funny sitting tired and sweaty on the grass and savoring my little bag of cookies while around me large families were gathered together feasting on sausages and beer. It was hard to remember that I was in the middle of a rugged outdoor experience.

I made the possibly foolish decision to take Dunn Street into town. It’s just a route I don’t usually go, so I thought it’d be a nice change of pace. Indeed it was. But, woah, the first 100 feet of the climb next to the dam that makes Lake Griffy is *grueling*. Very steep. I mean, I’ve got to climb to get from Lower Cascades to the Library, there’s no way around that. But I suspect this was more challenging than most of the alternatives.

Anyway, I realized when I got to the library that I couldn’t leave all my gear sitting with my locked bike, because the gear wouldn’t be locked! So, I carryied it all inside with me, which wasn’t so bad. But, yeah, I felt a bit funny walking towards the machine room sweaty, exhausted, and carrying a couple bags of bike gear. The good news was that it was our problem, and knowing now what it was, I was able to get it fixed pretty quickly. I ran a few tests to confirm it, but just a few minutes later I got back on the bike and rode the very easy and familiar 0.87 of a mile home. Where I promptly took a bath and proceeded to not do very much for the rest of the day. I was much more wiped out than I should have been. I think I’m out of shape. I guess the winter will do that to you.