Rainy Rooster Tail Ride Home

Sometimes my bike commute gets boring.  I like to ride familiar routes for several reasons.  Riding the same route allows me to before a fixture to the other vehicles on the road.  Drivers see me every day as they commute so they "expect" me to be there.

I have verified this fact when folks come up to me in stores and tell me that they see me and they like my bright lights and jerseys.  Getting this feedback has allowed me to verify what i have felt so I know that there are motorist out on the roads that really care about cyclist safety.

So back to the intentionally boring cycling routes.  Well by riding the same route I can really get to know everything on the route.  I memorize when the delivery trucks pass by like FedEx and UPS. I notice all of the bumps and pot holes in the road.  I watch the decay of the road kill from day to day. There is one UPS driver that waves to me as I am heading west on Leary road on my way home and they are driving east towards Albany.  I like to tell what time it is by referencing the vehicles that I see and the changing daylight as I ride.  Another aspect of riding the same route is watching the seasonal changing of all of the vegetation and agricultural growth as it changes.

So on this ride home I decided to stop and take a picture of the name sake of Lily Pond Road.

I pass this pond twice a day and I thought today that the one time that I want to stop and take a picture of the blooming lilies they will be gone, so today I stopped.

I figured out a way to prop my bike up using a soda bottle and kept it from rolling by placing my water bottle under the tire.

I know that my camera phone cannot so up close the blooms that are on the lilies just past my bike, but at least here is yet another picture of a cyclist bike posted on the Internet..

Tonight as I was approaching Mud Creek Road it started to sprinkle.  The temperature was about 80 degrees and as the rain hit the pavement the humidity started to get thick.  I was hoping that the rain would get heaver so that the road would get completely wet and the temperature would cool off.  I got my wish as the rain got stronger as I headed up Mud Creek.  The temperature dropped 10 degrees in about a mile of riding after the rain started.

This s a short video that I took at the entrance to a wildlife management tract of land.  I wanted to get our of the rain under the awning to record the rain.

On Mud Creek in the pasture just past the bridge I saw six wild turkeys.  This is another reason why I want to get some sort of helmet camera.  I have spotted turkeys in the field several times and I will never get them in a photo without having a camera always taking pictures.


As I turned to ride west off Tallahassee Road onto Old Dawson Road I had the benefit of riding east with a tailwind.  I rode west into the headwind on Leary Road that was bringing in the storm clouds.  I had a tail wind to push me home just ahead of the increasing rainfall.  I have experienced this phenomenon before and I like doing it.  I like to ride and chase, or be chased by storms.  What I have discovered in this part of the country is that I can ride right at the edge of the rain clouds as they move about.  This is really cool for me as when I am riding the rain will seem to stop, then start again as I ride in and out of the edge of the storm cloud.  One of the best things about my bike is that it is rain ready.  My bike has no parts that will rust and the disc brakes allow me to ride through puddles of water and still stop on a dime if I have to.

Here is my ride route