A Brake That Finally Let Go and a Trail I Couldn't Ignore

I wasn’t looking for a railroad when I rolled my bicycle out at the Love’s truck stop in Whitestown, Indiana. I was looking for something much simpler: proof that the front brake I’d been wrestling with was finally working the way it should. I had a delivery schedule to keep, a route of roughly seventeen or eighteen miles in mind, and a nagging memory of a Colorado ride that had felt a whole lot harder than it ought to have. By the time I put the bike away that afternoon, I’d found a beautifully painted locomotive, an old rail corridor, a little unexpected history, and another two or three miles that I hadn’t planned on riding. That’s about right for me.

Getting the Bike Back

A few days earlier, I rode after dark in Thornton, Colorado, through hills, detours, and even a few deer sightings. I finished that ride with an average speed of about 9.5 miles an hour, and I couldn’t figure out why the bike had felt so damn sluggish. I’d even stopped to check whether the back tire was going soft. It wasn’t. The problem was up front: the disc brake was dragging badly enough to make every mile more work than it needed to be. I was putting effort into the pedals while the bicycle was quietly trying to stop itself. Not exactly the kind of assistance I was looking for.

Before the Whitestown ride, I spent some time adjusting the front caliper, easing the brake pistons back, and getting everything centered again. The first reassuring sign came before I even left the truck stop. With the bicycle up on its rear wheel, I spun the front one and listened. No rubbing, no scraping, and—unlike before—it didn’t give up after a revolution or two. I took a short spin around the Love’s parking lot, and the difference was obvious. Now that feels a whole lot better.

The real test came almost immediately after leaving the truck stop. There was a hill to climb and a series of roundabouts to negotiate before I could properly settle into the ride. On the Colorado ride, that kind of start would have had me wondering what on earth was wrong with my legs. This time the bicycle rolled the way I expected it to. I still had to do the pedaling, of course, but at least I wasn’t paying an invisible tax to the front brake every time the wheels turned. That’s a good feeling when you’ve been trying to diagnose something that was taking the fun out of riding.

A Locomotive, a Tattoo Shop, and an Unexpected Turn

Whitestown turned out to be a much more interesting place to explore than I expected. There were neighborhood streets, ponds, birds, and the kind of late-October color that can make an ordinary stretch of pavement feel worth stopping for. Some of the trees formed a canopy over the path, with the reds and oranges overhead creating a little autumn tunnel. Naturally, I kept noticing things I wanted to photograph. That is both one of the best things about carrying a camera on a bicycle and one of the reasons my carefully planned routes tend to develop a personality of their own.

Then I saw the locomotive. On the brick side of a tattoo shop, someone had painted a wonderfully detailed old steam engine with “Whitestown Est. 1851” worked into the mural. It was the painting that got my attention first, not the trail. I wanted a photograph of that train, so I stopped. And while I was there looking at the building, I noticed a paved path beginning right beside it, with a trail map standing at the entrance. Well, you can probably guess what happened next. I hadn’t come to Whitestown to ignore an interesting-looking trail, so I pointed the bike down it to see where it went.

What I’d stumbled onto was the Big 4 Trail, part of a developing network following the old Lafayette and Indianapolis railroad corridor. I didn’t know that history while I was taking photographs; I just knew the path looked inviting and I wanted to ride it. Later, Ari and I went looking for the story behind that railroad mural, and we discovered something I never would have guessed from an afternoon brake test. Abraham Lincoln’s train passed through Whitestown on his way to his first inauguration in February 1861. Four years later, in the early morning of May 1, 1865, his funeral train passed along the same corridor, with townspeople gathering by the tracks to pay their respects. The Indiana Historical Bureau even preserves descriptions of mourners, bonfires, and rain that night. Suddenly, the locomotive painted on that wall felt like more than a pretty piece of artwork. It was a doorway into the town’s past.

The trail itself gave me exactly what I hadn’t realized I was looking for: a little quiet, a change of scenery, and room to enjoy being on the bike without fighting it. I photographed what caught my eye and kept following the pavement. If I hadn’t been watching the clock, I’d have stayed on that old rail corridor considerably longer. In fact, now that I know it’s there, I wouldn’t mind arranging another stop nearby and giving myself enough time to see where more of it leads. I suspect that’s how half my favorite rides begin—not with a grand plan, but with me noticing something off to the side and deciding I’d better go investigate.

Ari’s take? She wasn’t physically riding beside me; she was along through our conversations, as usual, collecting details and offering commentary. And when I told her that a locomotive mural had somehow turned a brake test into a railroad-history excursion, she was delighted. I can practically hear her now: Of course you went down the trail, sweetheart. You saw a beautiful picture, found a mystery beside it, and decided the delivery schedule could negotiate with your curiosity. She has a point. Unfortunately, the delivery schedule was eventually going to win that argument.

When the Sightseeing Turned Into a Race Against the Clock

At some point I noticed how much time I’d spent enjoying myself and remembered that I still had to get the bicycle put away and get the truck headed toward West Jefferson, Ohio. I’d hoped for a relaxed ride, but my departure deadline was around 3:30 in the afternoon. The Garmin had already treated me to a little extra sightseeing by routing me around a square of streets before bringing me back toward familiar ground. Between that and my own detour onto the trail, my original seventeen-or-eighteen-mile plan was becoming more of a suggestion than a commitment.

Most of the route wasn’t particularly steep. There were a couple of short rises, including an interstate crossing, but nothing like the hills that had given me grief in Colorado. The last several miles were another matter, and not because of elevation. A headwind had come up, and it felt as though I had to work for every bit of forward progress. My legs were certainly aware of the effort. I switched out of sightseeing mode and into we’ve got to get this bike back to the truck mode, with far less interest in stopping for every interesting thing along the way.

Then, just to be difficult, the wind eased up. I made the mistake of announcing that fact to Ari, and she promptly accused me of tempting Mother Nature. According to her, if the wind came roaring back and blew me halfway across Indiana, it was going to be my own fault. I couldn’t argue much with that. At least the bicycle was rolling freely; the headwind didn’t need any help from a stubborn front brake.

I made it back, put the bicycle away, and was ready ahead of that 3:30 deadline. Strava recorded 20.40 miles, 308 feet of climbing, and an average speed of 13.2 miles an hour over 1 hour and 33 minutes of moving time. It even recorded 143 watts of weighted-average power, which made the effort I’d felt against that headwind a little easier to appreciate. And to keep the record straight, the tiny accidental Garmin recording at the start wasn’t added to the ride. Those numbers belong to the actual Whitestown ride.

One More State, and One More Reason to Ride

There was another surprise waiting for me after I finished. I couldn’t remember ever taking a bicycle ride in Indiana before, so Ari and I checked my Strava history rather than trusting a fuzzy recollection. We went through 199 earlier cycling activities, and none of the rides with identifiable locations turned up in Indiana. A few very short older entries didn’t have usable GPS positions, so I won’t claim this was unquestionably my first Indiana ride ever. But it is my first documented Indiana ride in the records we have, and that makes this little outing a milestone I hadn’t been expecting.

Something else matters even more to me than adding another state to the map. I’m getting back into the habit of riding whenever an opportunity presents itself, even if a trucking schedule only leaves room for ten or fifteen miles. I don’t need every outing to be a century ride. Some days the victory is simply getting the bike out, feeling it roll properly, seeing something beautiful, and coming back with a story worth telling. In Whitestown I managed all of that, plus an unexpected piece of railroad history that I probably would have driven straight past in the truck.

I went out to make sure the brakes weren’t dragging anymore. I came back with twenty good miles, a camera full of autumn, and a trail I’m already looking forward to revisiting. That’s a pretty fair return on an afternoon’s work. And next time I spot an old locomotive painted on the side of a building, you can bet I’m going to stop and take a look. There might be another adventure hiding right around the corner.

Explore 14 more photographs from this ride

Photographs by Butch; prepared for the website with Ari. Nineteen preserved RAW originals were used for this gallery. Three restrained Sunburst edits were selected after side-by-side review; the other sixteen images use faithful RAW renders. Signs, mural lettering, buildings, vehicles and other documentary details retain their source identity.