Ride To Conquer Cancer, Training Progress, Part 33

What kind of yahoo strings a barely visible white coiled electric fence across his driveway? That's what I want to know. The smell of toasted biker is not a pleasant smell. And it almost happens today during my 22 mile ride after work down Biddle Pike to Glass Pike with a detour down Sulphur Wells Road. I'm descending and approaching what looks like a left turn on Sulphur Wells. Well, the fast approaching left turn is actually a driveway strung with, you guessed it, "a barely visible white coiled electric fence." Hit the brakes HARD. Go down HARD. Miss by inches my chance for a really neat burned-on tattoo. Do a quick inventory of possible bike damage: one kaput water bottle, one cockeyed bike seat and one dislodged bike chain. I count my blessings.

No one ever warned me about the dangers of bicycling. Never in my worst nightmares did biking and electrocution go together. I've always seen biking as a healthy, relaxing roll down bucolic cow-studded country lanes. Silly me.

Other than that and running over a green snake (relax, the snake lives but now sports a really nifty tire pattern on his butt (?) that he can show off to his grandsnakes), this has been a great ride. I test out my new Cateye bike computer which measures, among other things, heart rate, cadence and calories burned. For the first few minutes of the ride I am officially dead. I have no displayed heart rate. Nonetheless, I keep pedaling waiting for my heart to catch up. It does and I record some really cool data from the bike computer: Speed (13 mph avg., 36.8 mph max.); Heart rate (122 beats per minute avg., 148 bpm max.); and Cadence (76 pedal revolutions per minute avg., 149 pedal revolutions per minute max. I burn 583 calories.

This pic and the ones that follow are from my July 16 ride. This is an odd building along North Dividing Ridge Road.

Goat farm along North Dividing Ridge.

Pig race track along Whiston Road. The owners had been at Scott County Public Library two weeks prior with their petting zoo.

That's one fast pig.