“Dirty Metric # 10. This was my first ride since Dirty Kanza. I added two more water bottle cages on the Fargo, because I wanted to see how far 5 water bottles would last me on a hot day. The weather was perfect, but I didn’t realize how intense the sun was until I got home and assessed the sunburn on my shoulders, legs and feet.

I was wearing my Keen Commuters and they leave a distinctive sandal tan/burn. I headed North through the Denver Hills and followed the east side of the Cedar River where I crossed over at Plainfield. This are has had a lot of rain in the past week and I had to turn around and reroute at one point because there was water over the road for as far as I could see. There were several flooded fields, and I could see where the county had repaired the roads damaged by the high water. A German Shephard barked and ran out onto the road, but it was getting pretty hot and he didn’t chase me very far. A few miles down the road, another GSD barked, but he never left his spot in the shade. There was also an old Pit Bull that met me on the road, but he just wanted to say, “Hi!”.

 I turned South and paralleled Hwy 218 down to Hwy 3. I had missed my turn at the last intersection, so I rode the gravel shoulder of the highway into Shell Rock. I knew there were a couple of gravel roads out of Shell Rock that would take me towards home, so I found one and followed it for a few miles until I was back on a road that I recognized. This road followed the Shell Rock River towards Janesville where I crossed back over the Cedar River on the pedestrian bridge. I turned South on Big Woods Road and stopped to take a picture of an old barn. It was in pretty good shape, and it still had wood shingles instead of asphalt or steel roofing.

I was within 2 miles of home when I drank the last of my 5 water bottles. The temperature was about 90 degrees and the sun was very intense. The wind had been at my back since Plainfield, so it didn’t have a lot of cooling effect during the hottest part of the day. By the time I got home, I had a little over 67 miles on the Garmin.”

-Tony M.