May 24th Rides

[PamNY]

I had such a fun conversation with a woman who had just learned to ride a bike. She didn't have a bike as a child, and she is so excited. I hope I found the right words to encourage her. We met at a very narrow part of the bike path; you can barely get one bike through. She wasn't yet ready to ride through and I told her that I didn't either at first.

On a less happy note, a guy in a wheelchair was waiting for his turn on the narrow part of the path and two bikers went ahead of him. Grrrr. It's possible that he told them to go ahead -- I wasn't close enough to see/hear. But still...it seemed rude.

Pam

[kenyonchris]

Out by myself today. I have had some trouble with my "inner gerbil"....the little guy that runs the wheel. I have been riding with a friend who is much slower than I am, I have been spending my rides trying not to drop him, worrying about doing too much for him. If I don't ride with him, I ride with a group of very strong men (my SO amongst them) and spend my time trying not to get dropped. I didn't connect it with the inner gerbil problem until today, when I was on my own, flying along at 2/3 mph faster than the fastest I had been going with my slow friend, 2/3 mph slower than I do with the strong guys.
About 3 miles in it started to pour. I mean POUR down rain. I could have gone left and gone home, but I pressed on. I stopped and asked some guys smoking a joint on their front porch for a baggie for my phone (which they gave me, and asked me multiple questions on why exactly I was riding in a downpour). I pressed on and found that the inner gerbil started running again. I am not so sure why, but suddenly I was INVINCIBLE. Even into a headwind with stinging cold (well, cold to me) I was flying!
The funny thing was that I got SOAKED. About 20 miles out suddenly it stopped, and I was in sunshine land....it had apparently never rained. A family unloading groceries turned and looked at me as I squished by (my bottom bracket squeaks in the wet) and stared at me as if I had just materialized at the beach in a snowsuit, covered in snow. They all looked like they were getting ready to play golf, and here I was, dripping, my white jersey clinging to me like I was out of an x-rated film (well, sort of...I'm a 32 A).
About 10 miles from home, I came across a rollover accident that had just happened. Being coplike, i stopped. One of the guys rolled up right after, lights and sirens going. He laughed at me (being wet) and I helped him direct traffic until another officer got there (directing traffic in uniform is bad enough, few people take a traffic directing wet cyclist very seriously). It started raining on me again soon after, and I finished my ride in the drizzle.
It was awesome, and the gerbil is moving again.
30+ wet, sloppy miles, 18mph average.

[Triskeliongirl]

Well usually my rides are usually pretty uneventful, but today we had a couple exciting things happen on our club ride.

I've gotten stronger since I got my cervelo, so I decided that today is the day I try ride with a faster peer group. I actually went out 10 minutes early to warm up, since this is one of those rides that starts with a climb, and I always do better if I am warmed up. My idea was to go out at an easy pace on my own, and then hop on the first group that rides by that I could hang with. I knew I couldn't hang with our fastest men, but was hoping to ride with the second string men. So, at a certain point the fast men whoosh by, and no, on a climb there was no point to jump on that train, even though they did have some guys I knew would get dropped soon and I might be able to hang with.

Next, I notice a guy barrel down a descent in the middle of the road (literally at the midline) riding like he is Danielo DeLuco or Paulo Salvodelli on a car free race course. Hello? In the real world we need to share the road with cars, and this isn't a place to be screwing around with motorists since there is already a lot of tension between cyclists and motorists in this part of texas (ride is Helotes to Bourne in the TX Hill Country). I see a truck approaching and I yell 'car back, cyclists move right' but he stays right there, so the truck had to veer almost completely into the lane for oncoming traffic to avoid hitting him, or his bud next to him in the middle of the lane. At the bottom of the hill they stopped to regroup, riding with 3 young fit women and two less fit men. I said to him, hey, that was close, you need to be more careful........and he says, yeh, I know so many b***** out here. I proceeded to explain why in this situation he was in the wrong, but it went on deaf ears.

I then proceed up the next climb (toutant) with the group, and the women start gaining some distance on the guys (the fellow riding in the middle of the road was also quite overweight). One of the women pulls up next to me, and says, those two have been riding like jerks, hop on and lets lose these losers, and we proceeded to really push hard up the climb. Now, I know you guys that race do this all the time, but I never intentionally tried to ride someone off my wheel. BOY WAS THAT FUN!!!

When I got in, I met up with my husband and the rest of the fast men. They did encounter a real scary fellow out there today. A guy in a truck had the nerve to intentionally ride into their peleton, and hit one of their riders. He was OK, but they called the police and somehow managed to keep the driver there until they came. Cops show up, identified themselves as cyclists, and said they were prepared to charge the driver with aggravated assault with a lethal weapon if the guy that was hit was prepared to press charges. He said absolutely, and the guy pleaded no contest (he was almost bragging to the cops about what he did). I think this fellow has no clue how much trouble he is in (I just learned the penalty in texas for this is 8-10 years). We have a lot of problems with guys like this in south texas, but it is very reassuring to see the police starting to take our side, heck they ARE US, but so glad none of my husband's riding buds were hurt either.

So, a bit more excitement than usual in the texas hill country today.

[spindizzy]

An eventful ride, Triskeliongirl! Glad the police took care of that obnoxious driver!

Was raining a bit here in the morning; elected to wait until the afternoon. It was gorgeous - sunny, bit of wind-(what's new?). Did 70k over rolling terrain; pre-rode race course that I will ride next week with our infamous 6th line hill.
avg. 26.5kph.

We've had a problem recently with the bugs called "midges." They are everywhere. The last 10k, I felt like I was being pummeled with them. There were dead midges spattered all over my helmet, in my hair ( yep through the big vents in my helmet) and stuck to sunscreened areas on my body...ick!

[Possegal]

My ride today was on a bike of a different variety.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NeyLFwRels