I decided today to ride from my house. Normally, when I ride, I load up the bike and drive to a park or something. I decided to brave the country roads around here. I had a mile of narrow two lane winding road before I got to hwy 30. From a car, hwy 30 looks like it's got lots of gravel shoulders. From a bike perspective, it only has gravel shoulders sometimes. It varies from no shoulder to gravel to washed out debris littered rocks and holes. Invariably, the hills were loose gravel and debris. The traffic was non stop. There are no cyclists around here, apparently they know something I didn't. I got off hwy 30 as quickly as I could, and took another narrow two lane road back to my house, only about 6 miles total. The hills were killing me, I've got to get better at hills. But the bike handled the rough shoulders and hopping on and off the asphalt. I was lucky I didn't have a flat.
vickie