Eureka! Overdid it Today

Today's Extensive Tracking courtesy of Tennessee Ham Radio

I ALMOST took a day off riding today, but Jacque decided to ride and I can't let her go do her own thing, right?  So we both rode.  Rode hard and put away wet, to coin a phrase....
The Athens Eureka Trail is a project in process, with about 4 miles of completed rail-to-trail accomplished with a fine gravel surface.  A few years ago when I first rode it solo, the trail was very rough, with weeds growing high straight through the 2-3" rock gravel surface.  I rode a couple miles of it then and gave up.
A week ago I rode a few miles of it again, long enough to lose my cell phone, and happily recovered it when Jacque and I returned to look for it and encountered a lovely couple who had it in hand and were frantically calling every number in it trying to track us down.
Where we are now encamped with our RV it is only a few miles of country road to the Eureka trailhead so we decided to ride all the way instead of trucking the trikes and then riding them.
The ensuing mileage turned out to be a bit more than we  had bargained for, and we wound up wishing we HAD trucked the trikes  so we could end the ride, cool off, and replenish our consumed carbs.  But we had ridden out  thus far and thus..... had to ride all the way back again.
We started out innocently enough, along a low traffic road, but then we encountered TN 307, which turned out to have a LOT of fairly high speed traffic on it, with no shoulders or bike lane.  Howsomever, the drivers we encountered coming up behind us were unfailingly courteous, several times creeping along behind us while we chugged up hills with no room for them to pass.  In New Mexico I have encountered several near-disasters where impatient drivers passed us at high speed with ONCOMING traffic and nowhere to dodge each other, but here in backwoods TN drivers seem to be able to tolerate mild delays and they bunched up behind us, never honking or giving any one-finger salutes, and passing only when sufficient room was encountered.  I pulled off at all possible places where I had a solid surface to stop the trike off the road, but still blocked traffic for quite a ways.  When we finally arrived at the trailhead, we had gone almost 5 miles up hill and down dale and likely should have just turned around and called it a good 10 mile ride.  But we wanted to ride on the Real Eureka Trail, so we did.
Now, as noted before, it has been lengthened and upgraded, with a crusher-fine sandy road surface, few weeds, lots of big tree leaves, but quite level and shaded much of the route.  It runs from Athens TN toward Englewood TN along an old rail line.  The only remaining traces of railway are a few rotted railroad ties strewn among the trees along the path, a few concrete rail mile markers, and a sign or two:

Here at "Mashburn Station", the only evidence of a rail station I could see was the sign itself.  There's a home here next to an old falling-down barn familiar to much of backwoods Tennessee, but nothing resembling railroad stuff.  Whatever, at this point the end of the trail is only a bit over a mile away.  Eventually the trail is to be extended "Clear to Englewood", but that is only a couple more miles of trail.  Hopefully more of the abandoned railway will eventually be converted to TTT (Tennessee Triking Trail).
One of the nicest things about this trail - and many of the midwest trail projects - is the number of God's Air Conditioners (Tall trees providing wonderful shade) along the way.
Jacque turned around about 2 miles short of the end of the trail, but I wanted to finally actually ride the entire length, though short.    So I kept going and, as a result, Jacque got miles ahead of me on the return ride "home".
There's a few rather steep hills just as you get close to the Sherwood Estate, and we both had to stop a few extra times for breathers even though we were very close to the "finish line".
Almost 20 miles today, with Jacque making at least 16.  She's getting stronger already and isn't as easy to catch up to and pass any more.  Hopefully her newly repaired shoulder will get just as strong soon.

Ride Started:  9:19 AM    Ride Ended:  1:23 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage:   12.9 Ending Voltage: 12.9  Lowest:  12.2
Beginning Blood Glucose:  140     Ending BG: 48  
(No Breakfast before riding;   insulin pump basal rate 50% for this ride)
Lowest Temp  71 F      Highest Temp: 84 F   
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  19.56
Distance Walked: .8 miles 
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed  
4.8 MPH                                  6.3 MPH                     26.6 MPH 
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time 
4 hours 5 mins                      3 hours 5 mins            59 minutes