‍The prediction for the morning low temperature was upper thirties and upon checking it after waking up I found that it was very different in various places nearby where I would be passing through early in the morning. So I wore a bit more clothing and hoped for the best. I dressed for low thirties and should have been fine but specifically my hands and fingers were really cold. I had a light glove underneath my regular light gloves and this wasn't enough. But my toes and whole feet were both really cold also despite shoe covers and chemical toe warmers. But mostly my hands. So it was an agonizing several hours through sunrise until finally the temperature warmed up slowly. I was not really fully rested for this ride having done a couple of long rides the previous weekend. So I wasn't all that fast but still overall I am happy with my pace. There was a lot of fast pavement in the beginning as I rode over to Monroe county where the bulk of the exploration was this ride. I did several rural dead ends which went by without issue. Even though I probably didn't really drink enough along the way, even still I brought way too much water with me and still had more than plenty as I rolled up to my first stop at a QT in Forsyth a bit before 100 miles. In Forsyth right after this stop I almost witnessed a T-Bone crash right in front of me as the car in front of me at a stop sign pulled out right in front of an suv but they slammed on brakes and narrowly avoided the car which diverted out of the way a bit. Before Forsyth I went through Juliette and waited on a fast moving train and the smell of restaurant food wafted over from town as i waited. Most of the effort of exploration for this ride went to riding several forest stervice roads in a demonstration forest. There wasn't anyone there of course(it was gated to cars). About half of the roads had way too much gravel so it was like riding on marbles and almost as bad as riding railroad ballast. But I persisted and some of the roads deeper in were pretty good and fast. They had just finished up a controlled burn throughout so everything was still smoldering a bit. I stopped for a proper break by the river and then got back going after a few minutes. The trip back northwest from Forsyth was on gravel for several miles which was also filled with too much gravel and so this was a bumpy ride. I rode mostly pretty fast paved roads into Griffin as the sun went down. My second radar that I had swapped to since the one from the morning hit critical battery(as is typical) hit low battery while I still was in Griffin. So I would turn it off until I detected a car behind and then turned on the flash. I also decided to turn on my helmet flash for extra insurance and it worked well. As it was I had plenty of battery to get to the path system in town but for sure I should probably get a third for swapping on long rides soon. The last few miles I noticed my front tire was quite low from a miniscule slow leak I guess so I just took it a bit easy to deal with another day. So I finished long after sunset and a bit after my estimate but it was a good ride overall. 👍 77.72 new miles Completed 50% of Monroe County 🏘 Completed 25% of High Falls State Park -- From Wandrer