Tours/Races that I am following:
The Tour Divide While a number of riders remain on the course, Matthew Lee has finished the race in a time of 17 days, 15 hours and 13 minutes in which he covered 2745 miles. He is the winner of the 2010 Tour Divide. Our “Mountain Turtle” is safely home again after experiencing equipment failure such that the wisest decision was to pack it in and head back to Issaquah. He is posting numerous images of his experience on his blog at KentsBikeBlog.
(Photo credit: Kent “Mountain Turtle” Peterson
Click the image to see the story!)
My cycling experiences on tour, with Fargo.
Also coming to a close is Jim Artis’s field testing, as it turns out, of Fargo. After several days in Ashford, CT and consultation with Fargo builder Ashley, it was agreed that there was nothing else to be gained from further field testing. Information has been gathered for the necessary modifications to enhance Fargo as a touring HPV supreme. Jim has procured a rental truck this morning and is awaiting delivery of a couple of packages at his “home away from home”, the Ashford Motel, on Ashford Motel Rd., in Ashford, CT. I’ll bet UPS won’t have any trouble finding him.
Jim has an approximate 12 hour drive to get home. We’ll be looking forward to his many stories of his adventure in the northeast as he has settles back in at home. He will be shipping out parts of Fargo back to Utah Trikes for in-house review and modification. We’ll look forward to more Fargo adventures down the road!
Some thoughts on local matters…
Over the course of this blog, I’ve written numerous times about the Pigeon River Valley and my rides around it. I’ve posted images of the fields ready for planting, planted, and harvested. To a large degree, my stories have been based upon sitting above the fields on either NC 110 or NC 215 as I looked down on the field. The two roads are the boundaries of an incredibly fertile valley.
Last night, I had the opportunity to get more in-depth knowledge about local efforts to protect the water tables and the land from pollution in this area. I visited 3 spots: Bethel Middle School, Bethel Elementary School, and Cold Mountain Nursery. Each of these are doing some outstanding work at handling run-off water from storms in ways that recycle the water reducing demand upon the areas water table, actually treating the run-off before it enters the streams, and reusing the water in irrigation efforts to reduce overall water use in the nursery business.
By now you may be saying, “Hey, this is a cycling blog. What’s up with water talk?” For me, cycling and reducing our carbon footprint goes hand-in-hand with treating the land better and being better stewards of our natural resources. It was very impressive to me when I saw the work done by David Curtis at Bethel Elementary in developing a rain barrel system with his students. He spoke of how this had brought science and math together to solve common issues in environmental issues. Or to have seen the massive work done at the new elementary school were water gardens and a massive water catch basin have been installed to collect storm runoff and actually TREAT THE WATER before it ever leaves the property making it’s way to the nearby Pigeon River. Finally, to see the integrated network of ditches and ponds used by Cold Mountain Nursery to reuse their non-heribicdal infused water, was outstanding.
Oh yeah, at least two of the guys presenting and responsible for lots of this work are cyclists…
Until later,
- Zeke
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