LRRH News Feed

[yellow]

Velo News did it first...now we are following suit.

SadieKate, jobob, and Bubba arrived in Salt Lake last night. Here is Sarah singlehandedly holding up the bike trailer before they left Cali:



And here is the Bike Bus, ready for departure:



Once they arrived, we all got together and had dinner and Kolsch (that's beer) before retiring for the evening. In the morning, jobob and I took the puppy dog for a little stroll. It was a little warm out but Pi knows how to use the drinking fountain. So talented!




After the walk SadieKate joined us for the BIG shopping spree (for dinner Saturday night) and a drive around the City. Here's an example of fine, high Utah art at the light rail station (those are bicycle wheels):



Stay tuned. We'll return after this short break.

[Lifesgreat]

1.5 hours until blast-off! I can hardly wait!

[bikerHen]

Where is everyone? I'm checked in and ready to party! yahoo
I'm on the computer in the hotel lobby. So we do a link to the rest of the world. bikerhen

[yellow]

Hi and welcome back!

Veronica, aka_kim, and SadieKate's friend Marty flew in to Salt Lake at around 12:30 MDT. We then met up for lunch at Cucina, a very nice little deli here in my neighborhood. Following that we went to Hatch Family Chocolates, where we had to decide what to get:



jobob was particularly fascinated with the "worms in mud", which are gummy worms dipped in chocolate. She thought they looked like something else .



And here we are, all decisions made. snapdragen, jobob is holding your box. We're hoping it'll make it back to California intact.



(l to right, aka_kim, yellow, jobob, SadieKate, Marty, and Veronica)

Then we went back to my house to drop off the chocolates before heading off to my favorite bike shop and lo! There is a surprise box of more chocolate things. You can see by the tag who had them sent.



Thanks, AG! I'm sure we'll enjoy that tomorrow (and think of you and wish you were here).

Over & out.

[jobob]

snapdragen, jobob is holding your box. We're hoping it'll make it back to California intact.

Harrumph!

Well, as far as we know all the chocolate is safe and sound in yellow's house.

More specifically, in yellow's guest room.

Which is currently occupied by Veronica.

hey, waitaminute !

[snapdragen]

Veronica! Keep your hands off my chocolate!!!!!

[tprevost]

Okay Ladies!

I know you are off at Casa Yellow (or in the hotel hot tub), HOWEVER, we over here with no lives are wanting to know everyone is safe and sound!

HINT HINT!!!

Tracy

ps. hope everyone had a great ride!

[jobob]

Back from casa yellow and heading to bed real soon ...

But I'm very happy to report that SadieKate, Veronica, Yellow, CindySue, aka_kim, Trekhawk, Marty, Bikerhen, and I all finished the century and live to tell the tale ! (I think I'm forgetting someone but please cut me some slack, long day plus beer & mojitos make for a few missing brain cells).

Twas' a blast. The last 20 miles or so I was questioning my sanity but that's typical for me.

Now if only I didn't go and leave my package of chocolate at casa yellow. argh. No fear snap you'll get your chocolate eventually.

[tprevost]

Congratulations Everyone! Glad to get the good news and I'm looking forward to the reports and pictures!

Trac'

[yellow]

Building on what jo posted...this was a successful first century (that's 100 miles in one day!) for BikerHen, TrekHawk, SadieKate's friend Marty, my friends Cyndi and Yau, Tater, and Avocet and her friend Betsy. Other notables (old hat to them): CyclaSutra, Lifesgreat, AuntieK, and sulis.

Oh, and jo...your chocolate spent another night with Veronica. No guarantees.

Pictures coming!

Oh! And TrekHawk is a MAJOR SANDBAGGER!

[tprevost]

ya know, I might have guessed that about Trekhawk! Thanks for confirming my suspicions!

T~

[yellow]

What a beautiful day! Once we got through the registration fiasco, that is. SadieKate and crew met up with jobob and crew early enough to avoid most of it, but V and I didn't get there until about 7:30 (which is NOT late!) and the line was about 45 minute wait. This made me cranky. I ended up forgetting to put sunscreen on my neck, forgetting my extra packet of chamois butt'r, not getting to stretch, etc., etc. I was all discomboobulated after that but got better once I started riding.

We don't have a beginning ride group shot for you (yet), but here's Little Red herself, making sure we all know the rules of the road:





We were staggered at the beginning but ended up finding lots of AV jerseys later. Veronica, who took off with my friend Death-March-Martha (that means she rides hard and fast all the time, no exceptions), smoked us and then we never saw her again! But SadieKate and I ended up riding stints with aka_kim, jobob, TrekHawk (sandbagger!), cindysue, and my friends Cyndi and Yau Ming. We also ran into SadieKate's friend Marty, CyclaSutra, Lifesgreat, and sulis at the lunch stop:


(l to r, aka_kim, SadieKate, jobob, yellow, cindysue, Marty, and CyclaSutra)


(l to right, yellow and Lifesgreat)


Because the line for lunch was so long, we decided to go ahead and ride into Idaho first before wiping out the sandwich bucket. But we needed to do a little map verification of where we were before we ventured out. Very serious stuff here.



(SadieKate & jobob)

And some bike maintenance:



(cindysue)

Once we took off, the vistas returned. Here's cindysue admiring the view:





and here we are at the state line, smiling after recovering from having to repair FOUR flat tires (among the riders), TWO of which were aka_kim's, who incidentally had no pump. Thank you cindysue for the rescue!



(l to r, cindysue, aka_kim, yellow, jobob, TrekHawk)



(l to right, aka_kim, cindysue, yellow, SadieKate, and jobob)

Everyone (that I saw) was still smiling at the end and we all agreed that it was a fun ride. We'll have to see how aka_kim rates it, as she bases it on food and since I don't really eat the food at these things, I can't judge. Veronica says that they need sodas and pretzels at the lunch stop.

We didn't talk about next year at the BBQ. We mostly sat around and yakked. Tater and Mr. Tater joined us and we got to hear all about life in Idaho and we ate and drank lots of carbohydrates. As you can see it was dark by this time...we didn't get around to eating until after 9 pm. This threw Mr. Yellow off. He was hungry and wanted to eat earlier. My reaction? "Hey! This is about us LRRH riders!"



(SadieKate & aka_kim)


Thanks for such a fun day, ladies. I am fundamentally a social rider and love happenings like this. What's next?

[tprevost]

You ladies are so awesome! I am leaving for bay area so will get to look more closely later but wanted to say GREAT JOB!!!

Bikerhen! Great Job Lady! I LOVE your average and you definately would've been pulling me along!

Trac'

ps. everyone have a safe trip home!!!

[Lifesgreat]

Fun pictures! It was great meeting up with all of you. Sorry I didn't make it to Casa Yellow after. The thought of 1.5 more hours in the car to drive up and back to SLC thwarted me. Bikerhen, thank you for making the patches and thanks to CycleSutra for the "In Wyoming, they still hang bike thieves" sticker.

Thanks for posting the pictures. Here is my visual souvenir of the day: The aforementioned and pictured bearded Little Red, standing on the left side of the road near the top of THE HILL before Newton-the last rest stop- (he was next to the Airstream) shouting to all the riders "You are almost there! You can do it!". That was pretty funny.

It became a real mental effort the last 15 miles or so, but zooming in the the cute little town of Mendon gave me the oomph to plug onward.

Yellow, you give me more credit than I deserve. I have never ridden a century, but hope to later this year or next. Yesterday's "metric century" turned out to be 69 miles.

It was a very fun ride. The weather was wonderful and the company was great. It was SO social! I told Hubster to picture a scrapbook or other craft-like group, but on bicycles.

I agree, they need soda at the rest stops.

I can hardly wait until next year. Well, parts of my body are glad it is 12 months away

[sulis]

Good Morning ladies

Thanks to everyone for sharing your great pictures. I always manage to forget my camera. It was nice to meet all you lovely ladies, even if only briefly.

I can only echo what the rest of you have already stated. It was a wonderful day. I rode the 68 miles with Lifesgreat and a friend of hers that we picked up after the first rest stop. It was a great course and I was completely impressed by all the effort those Big and Bad volunteers put in. They really pampered us ladies and made sure we had a wonderful day, didn't they??!! The course was breathtaking. Call me crazy but I actually liked that long hill because I knew we would get to go down once we finally made it up!!!

Riding season is definitely in full swing for me. I have my share of funky tan lines under way, thanks to the gorgeous weather. And after Saturday the lines are getting more definitive. Right now I have the sexy sock line, the shorts line, watch line, glove line, the jersey line and thanks to the knee brace I had to wear, a lovely circular sunburn on the knee cap where the brace was open -- ooooh so sexy. duh me always forgets to put sunblock in at least one place ha ha ha

Have a great Monday everyone.