Had a bit of an oddity last weekend and ended up not having any planned rides or any plans at all really. Had plans for Saturday morning that kept us from the usual Saturday ride but at the last minute those didn't pan out and things opened wide up. Slept in a little bit on Saturday and then headed down to Marysville and some single track out at Alcove Springs. With the recent rains the "falls" were flowing on Saturday, not something you get to see all the time since the springs for which the area gets it's name are actually below the level of the falls so they don't contribute at all to them.
Sunday was forecast to be a near perfect day for riding so we got up and at 'em a little bit earlier and plotted out a route that would take us through parts of Jefferson, Gage and Saline counties. Wanting to keep the ride at a reasonable distance we opted to drive over to Plymouth to start things out.
We rolled east and north for a bit before getting into De Witt at around mile 10, De Witt like most rural communities have been declining in population since the railroads that made the towns pulled out. De Witt has managed to be one of them though that has been able to convince people to stay for the most part, it's only down about 200 people from it's heyday in 1890. Having a manufacturing business helps these small towns and De Witt has one of the better stories when it comes to that. De Witt is the home of THE original Vise-Grip pliers where William Petersen invented and started selling them in 1924 and continued to do so until 2008 when Rubbermaid, who bought the company in 2002, closed the plant in De Witt and moved production to China after which some say the quality of the tool dropped dramatically. That's not the end of the story though, some of this is fact and some is rumor and speculation but somewhere in the middle is the truth I suppose. When the company was sold and moved overseas the original die used to make the tools were supposed to have been destroyed but rumor has it that this never occurred, instead the die were squirreled away somewhere and kept secret. In 2018 Malco Tools purchased the old De Witt plant and began making a locking plier under the name of Eagle Grip. I'm not saying that the old dies were "discovered" again but look at an old pair of Vise-Grip locking pliers next to a pair of Eagle Grip locking pliers and you might just notice a few similarities. Vise or Eagle, which ever grip you prefer in your locking pliers one thing is for certain, that plant has helped to keep the town more prosperous than many town of their size.
We were a bit early to De Witt and the bar wasn't yet opened so we pushed on to Wilber at around mile 20.
Wilber has been a long standing ride with the group in August when they have their annual Czech Festival, this year will be their 62nd annual running of the event. There weren't any Kolache to be had on Sunday but a quick stop at Casey's for a slice solved the hunger issues. It was a little weird coming into Wilber from the wrong side, in August we have always approached town from the Lincoln side of things so coming at it from the opposite direction was a bit different. Not seeing the hoards of people, vendors and music was also a bit off-putting but all that will be back soon enough and we may just use this same route then for our Wilber ride.
Some pretty decent MMRs out that way coming from the other direction, never met a dry MMR I didn't like.
Sunday was the first really warm day so far this spring with temps nearing 90° and there wasn't much of a breeze to be had for a change so it was nice to run across a center pivot just outside of Plymouth that was trying to get the road to grow by watering it. That water was super cold and felt great on our sun baked skin, a little redneck A/C you might say. You do what you can to keep cool when the days get hot I suppose. Looks like rain most of this week so the riding will be down, hopefully next week we will be back to business as usual.
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