With the help of a few rainy days, a thick, lush layer of grass now covers the ground. Farmers have begun to let their cows out to the pastures to graze. This makes me very happy indeed because a herd of Holsteins, grazing peacefully in a green field is one of my favorite things to see.
This morning, during my ride, I stopped at such a field to take a few pictures. I don’t know what it is about black and white bovine calmly munching green grass, but this common scene never fails to tug at my soul. All the cows were spread out evenly throughout the field, but none were close by the fence so I started trying to coax them towards me.
“C’mon babes. Just come a little closer.”
They stopped eating and turned to stare at me but remained motionless. For a few minutes we just stared at each other and I was about to move along when one brave bovine started to trot towards me.
Herd mentality can be a glorious thing. Soon every single cow was moving across the pasture to the place where I was standing. We are all friends now.
Not long after my little cattle encounter, my ride took a turn for the serious. A giant tractor swung into the road behind me and suddenly it was game time.
I read blog posts about various cyclists out on a ride and often they mention being passed or passing other cyclists. That never seems to happen to me. On the rare occasion that I do see someone out on their bike, they are always headed in the opposite direction. I can smile and wave at them, but I can’t test my pace against theirs.
But living in a rural area does have an upside: I get to race farm vehicles. Whether it is a pickup truck pulling a swaying wagon of hay, a manure spreader or a tractor pulling various farm implements, my duty in life is to stay ahead of them.
So instantly when I heard the roar of the tractor’s engine, my legs went into overdrive. As I came up to each farm along the road, I would think, “Okay, the tractor will probably turn into this farmyard.” But no, it kept chugged steadily right behind me. Horrors, was it gaining on me? I pounded the pedals for all I was worth. Surely the tractor would turn off the road before the next hill came up! But at the bottom of the incline I could still hear the engine rumbling in the background. So I raced with all of my might to the top of that hill and then-blessed silence. I showed that tractor who owns this road!
It turned out to be a very agriculturally-oriented ride.
Got milk?
Thank you for a little chuckle this evening. I’ve never heard of a cyclist racing a tractor before. It must be nice working so close to home to be able to ride to and from on a bike.
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Haha, it is so much fun to go down the road with a gigantic tractor at your heels, great motivation to keep those pedals going!
Commuting back and forth to work on my bike has, no lie, changed my life. Yesterday, I had the day off though, this ride was just a jaunt across the countryside 🙂
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SEE!!! Bovimoolexia! It works. Wait…… you didn’t moo at them!?!? What kind of a “farm” girl are you anyway!?
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A very poor one I’m afraid. I think I need you to give me lessons on proper cow-pasture-passing technique.
Although…I still got them to come over (eventually) by talking to them. Maybe I am more Dr. Dolittle than farm girl 😀
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Tractor racing is AWESOME! We got passed last evening at 25 mph by one of those huge three-wheelers, he must have been going 35 mph, it was crazy!
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That’s what makes tractor racing so exciting. Sometimes you can’t tell whether you have a fighting chance or if the tractor is gonna blast by and leave you in the dust so you just have to go for it!
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I’ve been wanting to go UNDER one of those big wheel sprayers. Some of them have room for that and some don’t. I think I’d need to coordinate it with the driver and then have a video camera mounted to capture my illegal activities!
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Yeah, you might want to let the driver in on it before you do any death-defying stunts. Gotta admit that would look pretty cool on video!
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LOL. I annoyed a farmer once who passed me with his trailer full of boulders, but then I was able to tuck in behind him (annoying a couple of motorists who tried to come past me too, but he had pulled me up to his speed) and I stayed with him for miles – I was enjoying the free ride in his draft but he wasn’t so happy with me being there… in the end he slowed and waved me to go by, I thought he was preparing to turn off, but no, he gunned it past me, as far to the opposite side of the road as he could, so I was out of his wake. I was beat.
There is a nice downhill stretch of road near me with speed bumps, which as I cyclist I can go round… and sometimes cars too. It’s fun to beat them to the village after they overtook me going up the hill.
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Haha, us cyclists are too weird really. Here we are going down the road with just our two little legs to power us and yet every chance we get we have fun trying to stay ahead of vehicles with powerful engines!
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I think I only really try hard to stay ahead if I think they’ll squeeze past and then hold me up at a junction. But good on you 😀
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The tractor might have been sent by the cows to follow you after you called them all over to the fence. Befriend a tractor don’t run. It might have had an important cow message to give you. Just say’n…
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Oh man, you are probably right! They probably wanted to invite me over to their barn for dinner or something. Oops.
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