Ten Miles the Other Direction

Today's Tracking after I Poked Around

Jacque and I had driven the Highway 27 on the other side of Spring City  all the way to Rockwood a few days ago.  So, for a variation in ride routing, I decided to ride that marked "Bike Path" shoulder a ways. 
It's an odd bike path arrangement:  No announced start point or parking lot from which to "officially" begin riding.  The first wide shoulder and green "Bike Route" sign occur a quarter-mile or so outside the northern limits of Spring City.  There was a Dollar General parking lot nearby so that's where I parked the Ford Exploder and unloaded the trike to ride.
We had noticed before that these road shoulders were quite cluttered with wood and bark bits and pieces, no doubt because of the Huber Woods Plant about 4 miles from Spring City and the resultant parade of logging trucks coming and going from its entrance.  The loads they haul are impressive only for their size.  The felled logs are roughly trimmed, normally with small limbs and shards of bark and wood tissue poking out higgley-piggley, almost as if the trees were felled by throwing in a hand grenade and then piling the junk onto the log trailer.  I encountered all shapes and sizes of "fallout" wood products:  Limbs, stubs, bark bits and slabs, and one actual solid sound log 10 feet long!

On my way North, I at first began my usual slowing down and snatching up junk and throwing it off the road shoulder.  After I got to my desired turnaround point, however, the junkpiles were even more plentiful and I finally just gave up and dodged around the garbage as best I could.  The highway crews mow weeds and grass every other week or so, but I have not seen any evidence any shoulder cleaning or sweeping ever occurs.  BAH

BTW, ever hear of Kudzu?  Here in Tennessee (and evidently most of the South) the stuff is covering almost everything.  The hillsides and forests appear leafy and green, quite pleasant until you realized what you are seeing is the broad leaves of Kudzu, covering almost everything.  The stuff overgrows trees, power lines, vacant and untended houses, and actually brings down thousands of trees and power lines every year.  A mild example:

That's about 60 feet of guy line on the power pole being overwhelmed by Kudzu.  The shorter brown cluster to the right is a power pole with the Kudzu completely enveloping it clear up to and around the insulators.  On narrower roads the kudzu crowds right up to the road shoulders, drooping off  trees and power lines that cost tons of money for cutting back and control.  Kudzu evidently is a decent cattle and even human food source but no one seems to be able to consume enough of it to keep it under control.

Ride Started:  9:23 AM    Ride Ended:  11:26 AM
Beginning Battery Voltage:   12.7 Ending Voltage: 12.7  Lowest:  12.7
Beginning Blood Glucose:  91     Ending BG: 133  
(Ate 1 banana before riding;   insulin pump basal rate set to 75% for the ride)
Lowest Temp  75 F      Highest Temp: 78 F   
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  10.41
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed  
5.3 MPH                                  7.3 MPH                     18.7 MPH 
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time 
1 hour 57 mins                       1 hour 25 mins            32 minutes