MY FAVORITE GRAVEL ROADS
The gravel roads were dry and fast with intermittent coarse areas. Most often there were great lines to follow but occasionally there is the need to drift over and find a new line as they tend to end and hopefully reappear. The hills were very fast but dry, so caution going down was generally a rule, patches of loose gravel were not so easy to locate visually unless the lighting was right. Going up hills especially at steeper grades riding seated in the saddle was necessary as the gravel offered very little traction Corners were often difficult as they were often at changes of grade and so gravel collects in these spots, gravel is often dumped more abundantly at intersections to account for the extra wear from driving. The roads had a nice lightness in color; the same color can be seen on local quarry walls of limestone.
Before heading down to Spring Valley, Minnesota’s Almanzo 100 Gentlemen’s Ride I promised in a previous post to take some snapshots of the roads we would travel. The ride is a 100-mile gravel road cycling event that courses through picturesque fields and valleys in southern Minnesota. Each May an individual race takes place; in September a more jovial and relaxed ride happens - teams of four get together to navigate the same gravel roads in a completely different spirit.
Before leaving the Relax Inn on the edge of Stewartville the morning of the race I chatted with a man who was driving an acquaintance out to Wyoming that day. I asked him when he would arrive and he said about four o’clock. I told him that we would finish our ride at about the same time; I then asked his friend if he had his cowboy hat, he said no but that he would be seated at a bar at the end of his journey. I was happy that I would be on my bike all day not behind the wheel, and happy also that we had beers in a cooler awaiting our ride’s end.
The day could not have offered better riding weather, and the sky and landscape were just as good for looking at. The first ten or so miles we encountered recurring flat tires until we finally realized a torn sidewall as the source to our problem; this issue made time for kicking a lot of gravel, and watching the other teams cruise by us was a bit disheartening. Once the tire issue was in the background we coursed on and eventually found our groove. Now knowing top placement was out of the question, we focused in on the true intent of the ride: to have as much fun as possible and enjoy great bicycle riding. With the pressure of riding fast now off I turned my camera on and tuned into the Almanzo 100 experience to capture one team’s journey in the world’s best gravel road race. We finished shortly after six o’clock pedaling a little over seven hours. In all, I took over 100 photos; these here are some of the best - I altered the photos to reference Robert Kinmont’s beautiful photographic series My Favorite Dirt Roads, 1969.
Thank you Chris Skogen for making such an amazing cycling event happen. Minnesota cyclists are the luckiest.
