Randy's Ramble - May 4, 2010 LifeTrek.Eroe.com

A great ride out to Freeman, Missouri and back with fellow Kansas Cyclist Podcast partner, Randy Rasa.  Weather was absolutely beautiful with temperatures at the start in the high 50's going up into the 60's by the ride end.  Only issue is that wind from the SSW picked up to 20-15 MPH which created some nasty crosswinds coming back west as our route went southwest from Overland Park and Olathe, Kansas.  The nice thing is that going downwind was delightful.  The picture was taken on a bridge northwest of Freeman over the South Grand River.

Randy, as I have said in other posts, always has some interesting rides as he likes to map them out in advance and have stops for places which might be historical, scenic, or just interesting and this ramble was no exception.  Since I have a road bike we kept the gravel road sections to a minimum although I did get my second flat in a week with a puncture to my back tire and tube.  Fortunately we had it fixed up in no time but it required a visit later in the day to our local Trek store to purchase more tubes and CO2 cartridges.

Randy had done parts of this ride back February 2010 so I will not duplicate some of the sites we visited and instead refer you to his blog called Dirt Bum which provides some scenic pictures and explanations of a civil war site, a cemetery, a very interesting Baptist Church, and one of the most interesting fields of art using bowling balls.  The picture on Randy's blog shows a few more of the balls since there was not as much vegetation in February compared to the as one I took to the left.

When we ride we usually meet up at the corner of Switzer Road and 179th Street since it is about equal distance from our houses in Olathe and Overland Park.  The GPS upload of the ride to and from my house can be found at my Garmin Connect Account.  Each of us rode about 65 miles and my exact mileage was 65.54 miles at an average speed of 14.7 MPH which is actually a bit fast for a ramble but we were booking coming north with the wind.

All in all a nice ride and great to have some beautiful crystal clear spring days to go out and bicycle in!  Picture to the left is of a typical scene here in eastern Kansas and western Missouri.  I liked this one with the water tower and moon above.