Open Weekend Wandering

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.

Kind of a sucker for the old wind mills, this one has been meticulously maintained.. if you look closely just to the left of the top bar of the swinging portion of the gate you can see another little wind mill hiding there between two fence posts. A rare double wind mill!



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.

 

The other Syracuse

If you're not from around here and someone mentioned Syracuse you'd probably think of the city in New York, it's fifth most populous city, and not the tiny village in Nebraska. However biking from Lincoln to that Syracuse is 1,240 miles further and would take me way more time than I had to ride today, so that other Syracuse was the choice. It was pretty windy again so east/west was definitely going to be less of a struggle and since I had a pending birthday/pool party/BBQ to get to later I got my stupid ass up at 5:15. Not exactly sleeping in on a Saturday but the sun amongst the clouds at dawn's early light more than made up for it.

 





First time I'd been out this way when not surrounded by two tons of metal, glass and rubber, it definitely has more than it's share of roller coaster hills and small towns along the way.


Not sure is there is more to Palmyra than the Caseys but it's a nice Caseys if not.

Unadilla, population 294... give or take, depending on if the U-haul is coming or going.


Getting closer, might have to attempt a Lincoln to Nebraska City and back ride one of these days, you know when I have an hour or two to kill.

Stopped at the "Nutcracker" Cenex station in Syracuse to refuel before heading back to Lincoln. The clouds looked pretty threatening but it never did more that spit a few times the whole ride, even though the weather app said 0% chance of rain, fuckin app.


They do have cats that get their own water though, which actually is pretty amazing, without thumbs and all that.

There was also this barn/shop/house thing, probably misses the farm that used to be here.


Tried to chat up the local, get the lowdown on where the hotspots are and what people do for fun out here. This guy wasn't much of a talker but man was he a good listener, which is good, it's a lot harder to find someone willing to listen and not blather on and on about themselves. I bid adieu to Syracuse, thanked the Nutcracker for listening and headed back to Lincoln.

Somewhere near the edge of Lincoln I managed to run over that looked like a single strand of steel belt from a radial and developed a slow leak in my rear tire. I of course had everything I needed, except the wrench to remove the wheel from the bike. Used to carry one all the time but when I switched over to Chris King hubs with fun bolts I took the tool out, might be time to repack that sucker. So I filled the tire, rode a few miles, stopped to fill the tire, road a few miles; this went on until I made it back to The Bike Rack and was able to borrow their maintenance stand and the much needed wrench.

Didn't even realize that they had a stand and tools in the main area of the shop for just such purposes but it's a great idea. I do feel sorta bad, they had a sale on so the place was full of people and I smelled like the hind  end of a wildebeest... hope I didn't make anyone change their minds about wanting to take up biking after smelling the results. 20 minutes later I was back on the bike, thankfully nothing else of interest happened on the rest of the ride. I'm kind of digging these longer rides but you really have to have some time and an iron ass, even with padded shorts, I spent 4 hours and 47 minutes in saddle for a total of 70.05 miles. Personal best for me as far as single ride mileage goes... not sure where the next ride will be to only time will tell.