But you can’t always trust what it tells you.

I’ve noticed this a few times just recently. I’d map out a route, go to ride it, then midway through the route, come upon a missing road. In most cases, it’s looked like the road has been gone for years, yet Google still shows it as an active road. How old is Google’s data, anyway?

In the latest example, I mapped a route starting in the town of Hillsdale, taking gravel roads south of the lake, and wrapping around back to the starting point. On gravel routes, I often try to find “crooked” roads, as these often indicate especially interesting terrain, as the roads have to detour from their normal north-south grid to accommodate lakes, rivers, creeks, hills, or whatever.

This time, there was an intriguing ripple just 5 miles or so into the ride (see the map on the right, between Harmony Road and 271st Street).

My first hint that something was wrong was this sign at the junction of 265th and Harmony Road. (And yes, that’s a broken concrete bridge in the background, with some missing rails.) The sign directs me to the right, so naturally, I turned left.

After a few hundred yards, the gravel starts to thin out, and I see this sign, knocked off kilter and partially hidden by trees. It says “Minimum Maintenance Travel At Your Own Risk”. OK, fine. I have a mountain bike, I can handle a rough road. At least it doesn’t say “Road Closed” or “Dead End”.

Another few hundred yards down the road, I come to a muddy section, muddy but passable. I continue, and pretty soon bare dirt gives way to grass and weeds, I start to wonder if this is still a road, or if I’m now trespassing in a farmer’s field. But I press on, with the two wheel-tracks visible off and on through the weeds.

Eventually I come to this. The road goes off over an embankment and across a creek. I stop on the shoreline. The creek is perhaps 50 feet across, but it appears shallow, all rock, no mud. The road continues on the other side, and disappears around a corner. OK, I think, I’ve come this far. It doesn’t look that bad. I decide to give it a go. Before I take off, I put my cell phone and camera in a plastic baggie, as a precaution. I mount up and slowly begin pedaling into the water. All’s well for a few feet, then the wheels slide out from under me and I go down, kind of half-falling, one foot and one hand in the water, the other foot still on the pedal, the other hand holding the bike. Only a few inches of handlebar get wet. I stand up, try to push forward and mount up again, but soon give up on that and dismount, both feet in the water up to my ankles. I consider turning back, but begin to push the bike across the remainder of the ford. The creek bottom is covered in green algae, slick as snot. But I struggle across. Except for a short bit where the water runs faster, the creek never gets deeper, and I maintain my footing.

I’m across. Here’s the view looking back the way I came. I continue on up the road a bit, but it dead-ends at a closed gate. I could have opened it, I suppose. This was supposed to be a public road. But at this point it wasn’t much of a road any more. Beyond the gate, all I could see was grass — no road.

So I decided to turn back. I waded across the creek and made it back to the other side without incident. Of course, now I have seriously soggy socks. Good thing they’re not cotton. And the sandals, aside from retaining a bit of water in the footbed, are no worse for wear. I return the way I came.

Of course now, with my planned route obstructed, I have to figure out another way around. Rather than doing that, I decided to take some time to explore the area around the Hillsdale Lake dam and state park. Which I did, for quite some time.

By the time I made it back to the truck, I’d covered over 23 miles, at the blistering pace of 9.35 MPH. Oh well, it wasn’t about the speed on this day, it was just about the joy of riding, exploring, getting wet, and learning the limits of Google Maps. To be fair, Yahoo Maps, which seems to have newer data, and better satellite images, shows the road as connecting as well. Later, I checked with the State Park maps, and they show it as a “seasonal road”. Even that, it seems, is stretching the truth…

No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you — it’s not a recumbent.

And no, I’m not planning to give up recumbents or anything. I still love my Burley Django, and it’s still my main steed. For riding on roads in reasonable comfort and efficiency, I’ve found nothing better.

But there’s some things it can’t do, and other things it doesn’t do particularly well.

You might recall that last autumn I switched the Django over to fat tires and rode some gravel roads. I even tried using the fat-tired recumbent as a mountain bike. Riding the recumbent on gravel worked well enough, but the singletrack experiment did not work at all.

So this winter I’ve been watching the local Craingslist for used mountain bikes, but the pickings have been pretty slim. I was looking for a basic mountain bike, nothing fancy or complicated, mid-range in price, no more than $300. It seemed like all the mountain bikes coming up for sale were either department store bike-shaped objects or high-end rigs costing over $1000. I was just looking for a solid, quality bike, something that I could experiment with without sinking a bunch of money into it, but something that I could build on if I decided I liked it.

Eventually, I gave up on Craigslist, and took a drive over to Lawrence to check out The Re-Cyclery, a bike shop that sells reconditioned used bikes. At the shop, I told them what I was after, and they pointed me to a bike that, quite frankly, didn’t look like much.

The bike had no paint, no labels, no identifying markings of any kind. The frame was just bare aluminum. I was told that the frame was made by Balance, probably in the mid-1990′s. The name didn’t mean anything to me, but I took a closer look, and saw that the old frame was surrounded by mostly new components — new brakes, new derailleurs, new chainrings, new cassette, new cables, new tires. There were a few old parts — the front fork, the saddle, the rims — but everything seemed pretty solid. The frame appeared to be in really good shape, with no visible damage, and very nice-looking welds.

I took it for a test-ride, and wow, I was impressed immediately. It just felt right — very natural. Took the bike back in the shop, looked at a few other possibilities, but came back to the Balance. The price was $275, including tax. I was told I could bring it back and they’d swap out anything I didn’t like. Sold.

Once home, I did some research, and found that Balance was in business from approximately 1993 to 1998. I found a scan of their 1995 brochure, and could definitely recognize the frame, though some of the details were different. So it’s not a ’95 model, and I found pictures of the ’98 models, and it doesn’t quite match that, either. So I suspect that it’s a 1993 or 1994 frame, and I never could quite nail down which exact model it was.

I ended up dubbing it the “Tabula“. The name’s a bit of an inside joke, but think of the phrase “tabula rasa” — Latin for “blank slate” — and perhaps you’ll see the appropriateness of the name.

I bought the bike at the end of March, and in almost two months, I’ve put a little over 300 miles on it. That includes some singletrack, some pavement, and a lot of gravel road riding. I’ve added a seat bag, pump, and water bottle cage.

I find the bike comfortable to ride, for the most part, though I’m still trying to work through some saddle issues. Coming from a cushy recumbent seat, any upright saddle would be a big change, and that’s where I’ve run into most of my problems.

My longest ride has been about three hours, and I was definitely happy to be done with it on that day. Even with padded shorts, I was experiencing some discomfort. I’m still not sure whether I need to experiment with new saddles, or just get acclimated to the saddle I have. Time will tell, I guess.

I do love the feel of the bike on gravel. Compared to the recumbent, the higher center of gravity of the mountain bike feels way more stable, particularly on loose rock or a soft surface. I don’t think I’m any faster than I was on the bent, but I’m much more confident.

Wish me luck — it’s a new adventure!