Distance: 68.3 miles
Total time: 6 hours 8 minutes
Riding time: 5 hours
Today's ride was a lark in the park. Riding 68 miles after the long and hilly rides of the past week seemed almost like a day off. Plus, we broke it up with some fun side trips, to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and to the Velodrome.
Much of the day was spent on the rural roads of Indiana, with little traffic, moderate temperatures, and a great atmosphere among the riders. A lot of today's cycling was on roads like this one.
Since it was a short and easy day, nobody was in a particular hurry and we tended to bunch together more than usual. Here you see most of the group waiting for a light to turn green. Today was a designated "Jersey Day". No we didn't listen to The Boss on tape, or to Chris Christie's greatest speeches, or even to Sinatra. It means we all wore our America by Bicycle jerseys instead of our own jerseys of choice.
When we ride together, Michael never misses an opportunity to get a picture of Americans riding in front of Brits. Here the Brits are in the rear of the pace line, but only temporarily.
On most days we have two SAG stops. Today being a short day, there was only one. That means cramming a lot of water and calories into the one stop. Here Jamie guards the resting bicycles while others eat and drink.
It was an optional side trip to go see the Old Brickyard, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the Indianapolis 500. I'd never been so opted to cycle out of my way to see it. A very friendly security guard took this photo of the Three Amigos in front of the Raceway headquarters.
I had no idea how big the track is - 2.5 miles around. The stadium is vast and seats 250,000. You get an idea of the scale from this picture.
And this one. You can see the track itself on the far side of the fence.
After spending some time at the Speedway we cycled over to the Major Taylor Velodrome, one of the few bicycle race tracks in the United States. The track is named for a famous and fascinating African-American bike racer - Major Taylor - who was born in Indianapolis and who competed at the turn of the 20th century. You can read about him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Taylor
The folks who run the Velodrome were kind enough to give us the run of the place, so we had great fun riding around. There were even a a couple of informal races. The Velodrome looks like this.
I was scared to go high up the sloped surface at first, so took a couple of laps down low to get a feel for it.
Eventually I got up the courage to ride high up on the slope. You have to get up a lot of speed to maintain the height. Jamie took this picture as I came back down towards the flat part of the track.
Tomorrow is a well-earned rest day here in Indianapolis. I'll follow the usual off-day agenda: Laundry, clean the bike, visit a bike shop for some necessities, and a pharmacy as well. And maybe we'll explore a little bit of Indianapolis. We've got over 2700 miles behind us and 1100 to go. The next segment, the penultimate, is just six riding days and will take us to Buffalo. From there, just a couple of puny New England states and some mountains between me and the Atlantic Ocean.
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