Everyday, I update the Dream Tour Location and the Dream Tour Next Stop information on the home page of www.thedreamtour.org. Well, yesterday it said that we’re headed for Forsyth today. Unfortunately, I was a bit optimistic on the routing. In reality, Forsyth ended up being close to a hundred miles from Plains. For a one-day ride, I needed something a bit closer. So, we’re in Macon right now. At 87 miles, it turned out to be still a bit further than I really wanted to go.

I only took one photo today. It was taken early in the day, probably ten miles north of Plains. I think I was distracted by the strong west wind today and also the annoying squeaking from the cleats on my cycling shoes. I use the Look ARC cleats and if you’re a cyclist, you know that these things tend to start squeaking when they get worn and/or dirty. Well, I put on new cleats about 500 miles ago and I usually find that a set of cleats will last at least a couple thousand miles. What made these start squeaking so soon? I think it’s the Mississippi/Alabama/Georgia sand.

During a ride, I usually stop at least every hour, if for no other reason than to take in the scenery and to test blood sugar. Usually, I’ll do this at a shaded intersection with a side road. The roads I’m riding on tend to have intersections with unpaved roads and in this part of the country that means lots of sand. A very fined-grained, sometimes yellow and sometimes bright red sand (see photo to the right). So, when I stop and unclip from my pedal, I put my foot down into sand and it gives my cleat a nice coating of the stuff. No matter how much you try to wipe it all off, there’s always some left. I think it’s that sand that has worn out my cleats prematurely and caused the squeaking. I suppose it didn’t help matters when I tried to make the squeaking go away a couple days ago by applying a bit of spray lubricant. It made the squeaking go away (for a while), but it attracted a lot more sand too.

Tonight, after dinner, I put on a new set of cleats and resolved to be more careful about where I put my foot down.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 18th, 2006 at 6:26 pm and is filed under The Dream Tour, Bicycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.