Quote Originally Posted by velocilex
Actually, to respond and make it not-so-much of a jack, my Special Cycling Buddy and I ride the Hilly Routes just about every week (especially the Sunday route), and will probably ride the Sunday route on Saturday this year on our own. We did the Hilly proper last year and will never do it again because there were so many people out there who had no idea what they were doing it was frightening (not to mention the fried chicken lunch on Saturday and the "Gosh, we ran out of food" lunch on Sunday). Talk about snobs on bikes. Every weekend for the past month we've been accosted by guys on Litespeeds and Orbeas and Kleins who have come down here to take over the roads while they "practice" for the Hilly Hundred. They're rude and disrespectful and make it difficult for the rest of us to maintain friendly relationships with the locals who live along the route-- people we have to encounter every week as neighbors. But I hope you have a great time, Mary! There's something profoundly rewarding about completing the ride-- and the Sunday ride is beautiful-- well worth getting out of bed for!
I worked the Saturday Chicken lunch last year and I was in AWE of the numbers of people participating. If you saw a silly woman dancing behind the chicken line making a fool of herself, that was me. I was having a BLAST. I agree the running out of food on Sunday was awful, that was the day I got to ride and all they had left was as we called them 'GRASS SANDWICHES'. At the same stop, we had to ask where the water was, they were actually taking the tents down when we got there LONG before they were supposed to be closed.
I must agree the Sunday route is absolutely gorgeous! I only did the 40 mile route as it was my first Hilly and I'd only been riding a few months, but I'm really hoping to do much better this year. We don't have hills like those down there in Indy here, but I'm getting better at the larger ones I've encountered here, so I'm hoping to ride more than I walk this year.