Nov 9th Sunday rides

[DebW]

I got out for a ride a little after 4 pm. Came home by headlight about 5 pm. Rode the loop around Water Row Rd. and up and back on Pelham Island Rd.

[cycling_sarah]

I had such a fun time on the bike today! Did 42.86 miles in all with DH and a couple of friends, including redrhodie. Btw, she is amazing at fixing flats

The weather was sunny and gorgeous and we saw a beautiful deer in a marsh. I've already posted a few pics to my blog of the paceline, the deer and redrhodie, so I don't think I'll post them again here...feel free to click my blog link to see them.

Glad so many of you had good rides today as well. Well done Bleeker on those hills!! It's so cool when you find out you've improved a bunch

[RolliePollie]

Kudos to you on those hills, Lisa! My nemesis hills are still hard and still painful, but they're better than they used to be.

I thought the weather here was supposed to improve as the day went on, but by early afternoon we were overcome by a low flying cloud (totally different than fog ) so I drove down to Placerville where I thought it would be a lot warmer and maybe even sunny. It sort of wasn't, but it was better than at my house so I did a 22 mile ride which took 2 hours because there are lots of slow hills (like 5 mph) on this particular loop. I wasn't expecting the traffic to still be so bad from Apple Hill. There were a few miles of good climbing where it was basically like a curvy 2 lane freeway with no shoulder...that was scary. Normally that stretch of road is pretty deserted. At one of my left turns which also happens to be the site of a popular Apple Hill ranch, I actually got off the bike and walked across the street and past their parking area. I'm sure I would've been hit if I tried to ride through the traffic jam. So, I guess what I'm saying here is that I didn't have that great of a ride! But at least I got to ride.

Oh, and one other thing...wet acorns are slippery. I wouldn't recommend running over them. I don't know how I stayed upright when at one point my front tire bumped up onto a huge wet acorn and then slid off. I thought I was going down. But I didn't!

[7rider]

I got my old Seven Axiom back out on the road.
Yesterday, DH and I took it out for a ride through Howard County (our "French Countryside" loop). For today's shop ride, we swapped out the wheels with my ID8's wheelset -- replacing the old Shimano Ultegra wheels for the Mavic Ksyrium SL3's. Holy smokes, what a difference! The bike felt so much stiffer, so more planted to the road. I loved it. I don't want to go back to my Ultegras. Crud. Now, I'll be scouring the net and the shops for a good deal on SL3's. Or...maybe I'll go with some less pricey Aksiums, since now that I flipped the stem and rotated the handlebars up to more closely mimic the fit of the ID8, I my ride this bike a bit more as my "winter" bike.
Oy. And I thought I was DONE with Jones-ing for any bike bling.

[Biciclista]

For me, the first ride all year on our tandem. We did 37 mostly flat miles. We rode in between rain drops. It stopped raining this morning when we got on the bike, and right after we put it on top of the car, it started to rain again!

Two flats, no problems.
we started in Woodinville (at the brewery) and rode back to the UW and returned to Woodinville.

[Aggie_Ama]

Rode a few miles up and down fire trails on a friend's bike to watch DH and then LANCE race a mountain bike race. DH placed top 10 in Cat 2 which was pretty decent since he had been sick all week. He was darn proud of himself even though before getting sick he was gunning for top 5.

Lance Armstrong of course won the pro division. It was pretty cool to see him out and in a relaxed environment. He seemed much less self absorbed than I imagined, looked like he had a great time playing in the dirt.

Now I am getting sick so that is not fun at all, hopefully I can get better soon.

[DebTX]

Way to go Lisa, on those hills! Gives me hope that improvement is possible!