Hope Ride

Here are the pictures from the Hope Ride that we did with Annie and Jim on Saturday. The ride started and finished in Hope, IN, a small town about 35 miles south-east of Indianapolis. It is true Indiana farmland around there, flat, with the only hills coming from the small river valleys that dot the landscape.

The ride left early (although we did not leave until an hour after the ride "officially" started), so it was nice and cool for the first few miles. The route wound its way around Bartholomew Co (where Columbus is), sticking mostly to small, very rural roads that were not much more than single lanes. Annie and Jim had several friends who they ride with from Bloomington, so we all started out together.


After a while the group started to drift apart as we all started to ride at different paces. At the first SAG stop, Kate and I waited to the others got there before heading out again. There were lots of soy bean fields that normally would have been bright yellow, but were mostly just dull tan, because the weather has been so dry this summer.

We did the fifty mile route, which took us through several small towns and lots of farm land. We passed a nature reserve that would have had an amazing waterfall in it, but the creek was completely dry. The day turned out to be quite hot, so the last 20 miles or so were a little less comfortable than the morning had been.

They certainly took care of us on this ride: we got breakfast, 3 sag stops, lunch, and root beer floats at the end. One of the nice things about the organization of the ride was that it seemed that the whole town got together to put it on.

It was a really nice day, but our legs were tired by the end of it all.