I love riding through the countryside - the majority of my time cycling is done on rural thoroughfares, viewing the grass (yes - and corn and hay and soybeans) of the open prairie. But there is one part of rural riding that I simply cannot bring myself to love:
Gravel.
When I was young many of the roads out here in northern Illinois were gravel, including the one upon which our homestead currently sits. As time has gone on, however, gravel has progressively moved aside in favor of tar and chip, resulting in fewer rocks thrown, fewer dusty cars, and fewer bikes disappearing out from under you due to an errant stone.
It’s that last part that has always been the primary problem with riding on gravel for me. As a kid I had a friend who lived about three miles away by gravel, and the challenge was always getting myself to mentally work past the fear of struggling with the treacherous rock surface in order to get there. Most of the parcels are about a mile square, so after a while I solved this by riding the other way around the block to his house (hey, I was a kid - give me a break!). It was technically further by about a quarter mile or so each way, paved, and so far more comfortable, and likely faster, because picking your way around the rocks is usually very slow going.
As an adult I’m riding longer distances and can, with some recon and the help of mapping software, lay out routes that avoid the gnarly substrate. And typically this is exactly what I do. About the only time of year that I routinely embrace the gravel roads is in the winter, when their evil has been rendered impotent by dint of a layer of fine white powder. But there are times, on a few routes, when brief bits of gravel figure in and I have to weather my way through the stone. I typically avoid those routes, but it’s nice to add in the variety from time to time.
The challenge of gravel was somewhat tamed with my transition to primarily riding recumbent trikes. One of the primary difficulties - the sudden vanishing of the machine - is eliminated with this change. And that does make it more pleasant. While the ride is still rough, and the going is slower, a route with a mile or two of gravel connecting one point to another is often workable.
But there is one exception. Not far from my home is a mile or so of gravel that is, quite possibly, the most hateful bit of pathway in the tri-county area. This mile of jagged rock and stone is the Sauron to the simple orcs of the other chipped stone byways.
Yup - that’s an actual picture of the road right there.
Ok - so no, not really. This is an actual pic of it:
There are two factors that make this road stand out. The first is that the surface seems to be made up of unusually large and rough stone. I don’t know if this is just the first surface they treat and so it gets the extra-large substrate off the top, or whether this is just so lightly traveled they don’t think anyone will notice.
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The second factor is the hill. There are a couple of them on the road, but the one at the East end, just before it rejoins the pavement and the twentieth century, is relatively steep. Now it’s not that I mind climbing a hill or two when I’m riding - this generally just adds to the challenge, as any cyclist knows. But the combination of the angle and the very loose gravel means that it’s extremely challenging to maintain purchase with the rear wheel. This would be a problem on an upright bike, where your back end would be slipping sideways out from under you, risking a topple. It’s a slightly different issue on the trike. The couple of times I’ve ridden this road on the Pocket what I’ve found on this hill is that I end up sitting there in first gear, functionally immobile while my rear wheel spins free in the rock. Sometimes the rear wheel throws away enough stone that it gains purchase for a move forward of, say, six inches, before then repeating the sequence over again. Each time I’ve tackled this on the Pocket I’ve ended up getting off and taking the ignominious step of walking the trike up the hill.
So, you might ask, if you hate it so much why would you ride on it again? And I would say that’s an excellent question, and one that could probably be answered by the simple admission that I’m a bit of an idiot. However, not wanting to make that admission, let me now try, perhaps a little to hard, to suggest that there are reasons:
First, taking this road alters two of my favorite routes by cutting the longer one shorter, and adding distance to the shorter - it makes for a 25-mile ride while going longer would be 29, and shorter would be 20; and sometimes 25 miles is the distance you want.
Second, the quality of gravel roads changes with time and wear, and I was wondering if this road had perhaps now been used enough to make it less hateful.
Third, while this mile or so of stone demon had been a severe struggle on the Pocket, I’m now riding my Expedition, which has a longer wheelbase, wider track, and bigger wheels. I wanted to see how the new trike tackled it.
Ok, if I’m being honest, it’s 98% the third option there, and 2% of just throwing in the other two so that I could make a list and seem a little less dumb. The Expedition is a different machine. I’ve ridden it on less severe gravel roads and gotten through just fine - I wanted to see how it managed this... thing.
This section of the highway to hell essentially constitutes mile 23 of the 25-mile ride I have laid out. That means I’ve already expended a fair amount of energy once I get to it. I could reverse the route and tackle this very early into the ride, but that erases the challenge of the hill at the east end, and that was part of what I wanted to learn about for the new trike, so there we were.
The first thing that I realized when I pulled on to it is that it hasn’t worn down since the last time I saw it.
It’s still full of large, blocky stone, with very little by way of tire ruts to offer softer purchase. There are only two houses on this stretch of road, and one of them is just off the pavement, so I suspect there’s just very little traffic here to make for that wear and tear. Good for the road crews, but no so much for me. I did briefly wonder, just as when I was a kid, how bad, really, I wanted to do this, and considered whether just going another four miles or so around it wouldn't be better. But no, dammit, this is what I’d come to do.
The fIrst clear impression I got from it was that it was just going to be painfully slow going. The resistance from the rock and tire slippage, along with the jarring nature of the ride, meant that I was going to need to pick my along in low gear even on flatter portion of the road. And that lack of wear and tear meant that, although you could see evidence of automotive travel within the stone, tire ruts were very shallow, and still mostly covered in rock. They helped where they were present but not, you know, a lot.
And slow it was. On Cyclemeter’s speed graph you can see the portion where I seem to have slipped into a pool of molasses:
The slow pace really does a fine job of prolonging the agony and allowing a person to reconsider their choices in life. Not just the choice to take this section of road, mind you, but all of their choices. Because it took me three and a half weeks to traverse this mile of roadway. Three and a half weeks! Or about 15 minutes, but I swear it sure felt like a lot longer than that.
I’d like to tell the hero’s tale of how I persevered through grit and determination here, but mostly I just felt sorry for myself as I pressed on, working my way up to that stupid hill so I could see if the difference in layout would make a difference in climbing up it. And more than once it occurred to me that I could have approached from the other side, just ridden down the hill, and then ridden back up it to answer the question. I didn’t have to ride the whole distance.
Of course, it occurred to me in the middle of the ride down that road. Because I’m an intrepid explorer. Or an idiot.
But here’s the deal: when I got to that hill, I was all prepared to find myself needing to dismount and shamefully walk my trike up over the rise.
But I didn’t.
The Expedition, in its lowest gear, crawled its way up that slippery hill and crested the summit. (Yes, it’s still northern Illinois and no, there aren’t really any summits, but come on - it was a lot of work - allow me some creative license here).
I was pretty pleased and duly impressed. The difference in geometry, and maybe the fact that the pannier bags are directly over the rear wheel as opposed to in the frame like they are on the Pocket, seems to have made the difference.
So what this means in practice, I guess, is that I don’t have to have quite so much trepidation about approaching the average gravel road. If the Expedition can pick it’s way successfully along this detestable behemoth of a “road”, it should be able to handle the other, far less problematic sections that I encounter on my other routes. I’d already seen a bit of that, of course, but until this I couldn’t be sure about the more problematic surfaces in the area.
Gravel riding is a thing, now, and some people just love it. Gravel bikes are out there, and there are various ways to fit out machines to make them more suitable for tackling the rocks. For myself, having mostly moved on to machines of the three-wheeled persuasion, there are fat trikes out there and many brands of trike can have their wheelsets converted to allow for this. For my part, I encounter gravel infrequently, and so I’d rather not deal with the trade offs - heavier wheels, slower machines - that come with specializing in gravel. Instead, I prefer - and am pleased to find - that my primary machine be suited to the road, but be able to manage the rocks on rare occasion. Fortunately, as this otherwise painful ride has shown, it seems to be up to it.
Okay - Time to ride...