steelbikeguy

Today's ride was a little excursion across the Illinois river, largely following a MUP that services the area. There is one spot near a cornfield* where some old bikes have been spray painted and tied up to fence posts. They have been fitted with flags, presumably to celebrate the 4th of July, so I felt compelled to stop and join the parade!







Steve in Peoria
* it could be argued that everything around here is near a cornfield

steelbikeguy

summer in the midwest, with hot, humid volatile weather. Storm cells pop up while you are on the bike and seem to chase you around the countryside.
Setting out on today's ride, I saw this storm cell lurking off to the northwest...



I dodged it for a while, but then the raindrops started to hit me. With some more strategic route planning, I got out of the storm's path and back into the sunlight. Naturally, it was time to stop and take a couple of pictures.






Steve in Peoria

noglider 

I took some visiting friends on my new route which combines roads and a trail. Challenging hills. Here are the GPS breadcrumbs.

It started with a sighting of a giant caterpillar on my barn door. He stood there for hours and might still be there.



There is a field of these sculptures on a lawn, and the artist erected a sign saying no climbing, but clearly he doesn't mind us visiting his yard. The sculptures are from redwoods from the west coast.



More pictures on the breadcrumbs page.

merziac

Yep, if you're gonna use a fit-all, it better be a good one.

jbchybridrider 

Pre war Super Elliott. Elliott's did make high end race bikes but not sure where this fitted in the range. It is much lighter than my bike.

jbchybridrider 

Interesting bike racks in a small town. They were everywhere throughout the town, hard to imagine they will ever be used up.

noglider 

Redwood sculptures in the Hudson Valley, New York.

Lascauxcaveman 

"Of course it is; it doesn't have any of those annoying and useless gear shifters and brakes and all that other worthless junk."

[/annoying fixie evangelist voice].

steelbikeguy

from this morning's ride....

some C&V tractors...



and a sign that humid summer days are back.
plus... the roads look so straight on the map.


the low temperature for this morning was the low 70's and the high was forecast to be low 90's. This would be nice if I was still in Yuma, AZ, but the humidity here takes a toll on you.

Steve in Peoria (IL, not AZ)

jonwvara 

Nice! I think that's a Case SC on the left, with the narrow front end. My wife and I almost bought one during our vegetable-growing days in the early 80s. We ended up instead with a 1954 (I think it was a 54) Ford NAA. It turned out to be a pretty good and reliable tractor.

steelbikeguy

good eye! Here's a close-up....




Steve in Peoria, where C&V tractors are a lot more common than C&V bikes.

Sir_Name 

This photo’s a few weeks old, but I still saw this stuff

steelbikeguy

the name of this thread is "ride a bike, see clouds", right??

It's summer in the midwest, which means hot and humid (95F and humid enough to soak your Brooks with butt-sweat after 30 minutes).
Still.... the clouds can be a nice distraction from the seasonal discomfort.
A bit before 6pm, when I was going to meet a friend for a ride.....



and near sunset, after a nice ride down to the Illinois river and back up the bluffs....



this was the same group of clouds, just transmogrified a bit over the course of a couple of hours. While I was just happy that it didn't dump rain on us, the colorful mutation was also greatly appreciated!

Steve in Peoria

scarlson 

I agree! I used to operate a '53 Ford NAA to brush hog and do minor loading and unloading work. Started right up every time. Only things lacking were a low range, power steering, and a live PTO, all of which I think could be added as aftermarket kits that bolted up somewhere in the middle between the transmission and dif/hitch housing. What a good little machine!

Here's what I saw on my ride today. Wish I had a tractor along, I could make short work of all this! I guess some storms came through. This was definitely not there last week.

I managed to clear all the small brush, but maybe have to come back with a bucksaw if it stays there much longer. Lifting my bike over it is kind of a pain, not because lifting the bike is hard, but because the mosquitoes catch up to me when I'm stopped!

jonwvara 

The only issue we really had with our NAA was that the carb float used to stick sometimes--I could never figure out why. You're right about the gearing--first gear was much too high, which made it unnerving to cultivate with. If I remember right, the add-on was called the Sherman transmission--gave you a high range and a low range in addition to direct gearing. One drawback was that it slowed down or sped up the PTO as well as the running gear. Our next tractor, a Massey-Ferguson 65, had a much lower low gear and more horsepower, but I never really liked it as much.

scarlson 

Yeah there were a whole bunch of aftermarket low and high range gearboxes for the NAA. Sherman, Hupp, Everett... The Everett didn't change the PTO speed, but the rest did. I really wanted to buy and install one, but it wasn't my tractor. I used a later Ford with low range, live PTO, and power steering, and while everything was much easier, the tractor did not have as much soul or personality.

jonwvara 

You just need lower gearing on your bike--then you could pull trees out of the way without a tractor, albeit very slowly.

Thanks for jogging my memory. Our NAA was also a 1954--they only made it in 53 and 54, and only the 53 year had that cool "Golden Jubilee" nose badge.

I myself am a 1954, so I probably wouldn't have remembered those details on my own. I had to look it up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_NAA_tractor

djkashuba 

Sonoma Coast by djk762, on Flickr

Cheseldine

This picture is from 3 days ago - about an hour from my house in Glacier National Park on Going to the Sun Road - no cars are allowed to drive up it yet, so bikes have it all to themselves. I'm heading up to ride it again after work today. You can see the road snaking along the far mountainside in the distance.

stardognine

Lucky pic, those darn deer don’t usually hold still for pics. 😁😉 And fitting right in with the rolling conversation, a tractor. 😎

WGB 

WGB 

A bit weirder - "Teddy bears who fail children shall be punished swiftly and ruthlessly"

jbchybridrider 

Wow! Brutal like Vlad the impaler.

Drillium Dude 

You want tractors? There's even a pink one



DD

billnuke1 

Whoa! That scared the carp outta me!