Hastings

Last weekend I rode out to Hastings on an Ingress hunt.  There was a portal at Spring Lake Park Reserve that was holding up big fields.  The ride there...not so bad.  Sort of downhill into the river valley for about 30 miles.  The ride back...different story.  I don't think it helped that I didn't eat because the breakfast joint I was targeting in Hastings opened an hour later than Google said.

Ride back: mostly uphill, 25 miles, slight wind, and a lot of road construction.  At one point I had to go under an under-construction under/overpass on Highway 52.  Going to Hastings it wasn't so bad because it was early and traffic was light.  On the way back it was around noon and the traffic was buzzing.  I was pinned against cement separators making sure I caught the eye of every motorist buzzing down the detour on/off ramp at 65 mph.  Nasty.

Those Hastings Ingressers are nuts.  The whole thing was back up within a few hours and I think they even scored some high rankings in the fielding standings thanks to rethrows.



On the way back I was running out of water, so I was excited when I found a pump.  After a huge chug of water, I realized it was slightly off tasting well water.  I thought about it for a few moments, and realized this bottle of water comes from directly between the enormous covered mountains of trash deposited by the refuse company and the cracking/processing plant on the other side.  I can't imagine, despite all their precautions, that this isn't one of the most fucked up bottles of water I could have chosen to drink, at least in my area.  I'm going to choose to believe that somehow nothing leaked into the water table.