Baking and biking

In addition to checking pocket gopher traps and watering trees & part of my garden, I did something different today. I baked zucchini bread and muffins and made an apple pie, including the pie crust. With all these apples I need to do something with them. I don't have an apple press to make cider, and I didn't feel like making apple butter at this time. So a pie it was.

I also fed a full bag of apples to the cattle this evening. Some were so desperate and/or greedy for the apples they strained against the fence to get all they could. When I heard my fence posts start to crack I moved elsewhere.

I went for an 18 mile bicycle ride tonight. And I mean tonight as it was dark by the time I was halfway into my ride. I rode a few miles along the highway. The highway has a wide shoulder to make riding safer. However debris is on the shoulder. In the dark I hit something big and hard and my entire bicycle and I went up in the air. My feet came out of the toe clips but I was somehow able to get my feet back onto the pedals before I landed. I didn't crash, nor did my tire blow. My tires are fully inflated so I didn't get a flat tire due to a rim pinch. However the force of striking the object appears to have made a flat spot on my wheel's rim. I can feel it as I ride. Darn.

The odd thing was that just prior to hitting the road debris tonight I was thinking about the time I crashed north of Las Vegas during a bicycle tour from North Dakota to California to see the 1984 Olympics. I was riding after midnight to beat the heat as it was near 107 F during the day while I waited in the shade at St. George, Utah. With little traffic on the interstate that night I often rode in the right lane's right wheel track. Still I hit a 4x4 board that lay across the road's shoulder and part of the right lane. With a fully loaded bicycle I wasn't able to stay upright and ended up was a bad case of road rash that left a couple scars.