Saturday, July 25, 2009

Post Mont Vetoux Ride

After watching the Mont Ventoux stage of the Tour de France, I decided to get out and ride myself. Wow, what a stage! Lance can still ride with the best! What a great ending to the Tour!

I was so jazzed up after watching the stage that I headed up to the Spencerville covered bridge across the St. Joe River. It was built 10 years before the house we live in was built.


Halfway across is a window.


The bridge was built with native timber, which is still all here.


On the way back home, I crossed the Van Zile bridge over the St. Joe River.




This is my favorite bridge around.



I climbed a hill on my way home - it rises 200 feet over 1 mile - a 1% slope. Mont Ventoux averages 7.6% for 13 miles. Those TdeF racers are amazing!

Happy riding!

8 comments:

jeff said...

Lance can still ride with the best of them. It will be fun to see if he trains for a year to lead his own team what he will be capable of.

Rat Trap Press said...

I was impressed with Lance's performance. I was really surprised to see Wiggins new climbing ability.

I have never personally seen a covered bridge. Are there many of them in your area?

Mike J said...

those are some cool bridges. Makes for great photography.

Big Oak said...

RTP - No, the Spencerville bridge is the only covered bridge left within 60 miles or so. Parke County, in west central Indiana is the covered bridge capital in Indiana with something like 30 covered bridges still in use.

Jeff - I really enjoyed the tour this year with so many talented riders. That makes Lance's return and good showing so incredible.

rlove2bike said...

Nice bridges...very cool. It seems when atheletes come out of retirement, it is usally not good. It was nice to see Lance be an exception.

Big Oak said...

rlove - yea, like Bret Favre? He's a Viking now! Arggggh!

Apertome said...

Cool bridges! There are a few covered bridges in southern Indiana (bloomington area) where I'm from.

Jon said...

I love the old iron bridges. You can see the engineering built into them, unlike the boring prestressed concrete spans we build today.