If you said, "Queen, 1980," you get 15 bonus points. If you asked, "Did those road construction bastards mess up another of your favorite roads?" you are right on, but no bonus points.
I went out for a solo ride relatively early today - it is supposed to be a hot one (92º). It was 61º when I got up this morning... delightful! I took Rufus for a walk and the big furry boy enjoyed it. When I got back, I went for a bicycle ride; back from that, Joan had smoothies for us on the patio... a darn fine morning.
She asked if I was going for a motorcycle ride... "I didn't have a plan, but that sounds good; I'll get out while it's still reasonably cool."
I altered from my "short route," because of the various road construction happening on the nearby favorites. So, some highway riding to get to the good curvy stuff. And when I turned off Hwy 40 onto Playhouse Road... yep, the chip-seal road construction in progress, with loose gravel on this fun road. Well, it was fun before the gravel. Even keeping the speed down, the back-end slipped a time or twelve. This bike does not have traction control. I held my breath when I got to Iron Mountain Road... no road construction!
Instead, there is a bicycle ride/race of some sort happening... I had to slow down coming into corners, just in case there were bicyclists in that blind corner. And there were. Several times. And one where the man and woman were riding side-by-side... fortunately, there was no vehicle in the on-coming lane, since I had to cross the double yellow line to get around them.
Other than that, the traffic was pretty light. Until I got to Keystone on the way home - at 10:00 in the morning, town was hopping. I'm guessing people who were planning to get an early start on Mt Rushmore.
So, I'll take Playhouse Road off the list for a week or so; let someone else pack down the gravel for 'em. I'm not saying where I'm planning to ride next, because I think the construction people are reading this blog... can't be coincidence that so many of these fun roads came due for a chip-seal at the same time.
;-)
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Joan had put Outback in my head before I left for my ride, so I was focused on that. We had some running to do in Rapid City, but our second stop was at Outback Steakhouse... we were OK that there was only one other table occupied at 12:50. I think our waiter was also the person seating people, the bartender, and the cook - he seemed to be a very busy fellow. The food was good.
On with our other running; we do try to be efficient with our car trips into town, but gas prices have gone down almost 20¢ a gallon since we got here (I just saw that nationally, gas prices are down almost 40¢ per gallon in the last month). Sam's Club, two different grocery stores, and PetSmart. I don't usually go to the store with Joan, but she had to tell me several times, "Don't even look at the prices." Goodness, things are more expensive here than at home in south Texas.
By the time we came out of the last store, the sky was looking a bit ugly. Better by the time we were a few miles south of town at Hart Ranch. But, right now...
The weasels are saying we won't see anything severe with this. Hope they're right.
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