Saturday July 11 Rides

[7rider]

Wow, was this Erica? Good for her!

Scary, RolliePollie.

I did a leisurely 6.8 miles trying to find my way from my hotel to the triathlon site in Philadelphia where I need to be bright and early tomorrow morning. Good thing, too, because I had a heck of a time finding the right road. Went by the Rocky statue at the Art Museum and had a nice quiet ride along the river.

No, not Erica. Her name is Kay, and another woman and I are interviewing her tomorrow and drafting an article on her for the women's cycling column in the August Spokes magazine. So...stay tuned!

Good luck to you - and to Nicole - on your tri tomorrow!!!

[Miranda]

Short on time so a quick 16mi w/my ride buddy. Hot and windy. But good wind to chat. Always makes for a fun ride.

[hilldweller]

... but me and one other did 50k despite the sleety showers not long before we set off. We got very wet, and filthy (with a nice mud/cowshit mix), and my feet were so sore when the circulation finally returned in the shower afterwards, but we rocked .

Tried a Clif bar for the first time too - yummy!!! - and with the temp just above freezing and drink bottles splattered with the aforementioned mud/cowshit, much more appealing than sipping electrolyte .

Happy to say no lightning strikes. That would freak me out

[Fredwina]

Did a metric on the Santa Ana today
at green river:

I wasn't the only person taking photos:

The beach at last:

We had about 15 people , so we took over Newport burger:


a really big A:

when we got back, we found a nice shade tree and chatted:

[Mr. Bloom]

Oprah says, "what? are you crazy? It's raining! I'm not running in the rain... it messes up my hair!".

Hmmm...I got more flexible when half of my hair disappeared.

[Kano]

This morning, I said to DH, since you're going out tonight, I'm going for a ride this evening. DH set my ride plan for this evening while I was working today:

"The plan's changed, cuz our host is sick. But I haven't seen Mark in a couple of years, so I'm going to his house for some beer. YOU can ride your bike over later, and give me a ride home!" This meant my bike was going to ride home in the back of his convertible.

So, after he left, with Mark's address marked on Mapquest, I planned my route while eating dinner -- Mark's house is a little over six miles from our house, but I wanted a longer ride. Found a twenty mile route, texted the route to DH, telling him no objections allowed, just info (he doesn't seem to like me to do the hard stuff alone, so sometimes I don't tell him til it's done, cuz he won't go along on the hard rides, either!)

Sun's nice and low in the sky, and it was a bit cloudy, to go with the 90-degree weather, making it a very pleasaant ride. Head winds on my favorite really fast stretch that slowed my by a few mph, but that was okay too. I was in the mood to work a bit, and needed wind to compensate for my long, generally downhill run after the one big climb early in the ride!

Hanging out with the guys for a while after the ride was good -- Mark's an interesting character. But then, time to go, and they tucked my bike into the back seat. We got home, and my poor bike was kind of stuck back there. It's a tight fit, and it was a bit challenging to extricate it in the dark. Once in the garage, we could see what needed to happen, since we had light.

The bad news is that in the process, they managed to damage my bar tape -- fortunately on the end of the bar, where I never grip, but oh, darn, now she needs new, and I'll need to go shopping...

It's actually kind of handy: I've been considering moving the position of the hoods, but didn't want to wreck perfectly good bar tape!

Aargh -- I should be asleep! We're getting up to ride down into town and meet another Mark-friend for coffee in the morning!

Karen in Boise

[Aggie_Ama]

I live on the face of the sun!

We went to test ride mountain bikes and only got 2 hours before both of us drained our 96 oz camelbaks. It was over 100 (again) and I started to feel nauseated. But at least I got enough information to order my new bike! Last hour long road ride I did after work I used 2 bottles.

Today DH wants to road ride and I want AC. I thought last summer was bad but this one is worse.

[RolliePollie]

Whoa Rollie! Did you get their plate number and call the cops? Call the cops now if you haven't already, even without the plate. If you ride alone in that area, they could do it again. Glad you are okay.

I know, I was really mad at myself for not getting the plate #...it was on such a dangerous stretch of road and there were more cars coming up behind me so I was totally focused on staying on the road. I don't even know what kind of car they were driving, other than it was an older tan 4 door compact. I have a feeling they would laugh at me if I called the cops...it was not in a city so it would be County Sheriff and they don't like bicyclists. My co-worker's husband is a deputy and she's told me exactly what her husband and his buddies think of us crazy cyclists riding the country roads around here. I'm just relieved they didn't make me crash.

[redrhodie]

I know, I was really mad at myself for not getting the plate #...it was on such a dangerous stretch of road and there were more cars coming up behind me so I was totally focused on staying on the road. I don't even know what kind of car they were driving, other than it was an older tan 4 door compact. I have a feeling they would laugh at me if I called the cops...it was not in a city so it would be County Sheriff and they don't like bicyclists. My co-worker's husband is a deputy and she's told me exactly what her husband and his buddies think of us crazy cyclists riding the country roads around here. I'm just relieved they didn't make me crash.

Could you report it to the state police instead?

eta: I just think there's got to be someone of higher authority who will take this seriously if the Sheriff will not.

[Grits]

We are working on increasing our mileage in preparation for the MS 150 in New Bern. We are up to 50 miles now.

We left yesterday morning when it was nice and cool - in the 60's- knowing it would warm up fast. It was a pleasant ride through the countryside, somewhat hilly, like everything is around here, but not too bad. We had two dogs not really chase us but run along behind us, leisurely, more like they were just keeping us company, for a couple of miles. Not being sure of their intent, it was a little stressful and was highly motivating to go as fast as we could! It was like interval training!

We also had an idiot driver squeeze at a high rate of speed between us and a coming car, and then, to top things off, a dog (different dog) ran up silently behind our last rider and made contact with his back tire knocking him down. Road rash and a badly scraped elbow, and he is too sore to ride now for a few days. He barely grazed my tire before going down, but I was able to stay upright. I was glad I had some first aid supplies with me. This is the second time I've had to bandage up a fellow rider.

This is normally a nice, uneventful ride. You just never know what might happen when you take off in the morning!