Mines Road Recap

[jobob]

This is near the start of the ride. You can tell because it was one of the very few times I was with at least some of the group.



I was (sort of) riding with V. at one point - if you look reeealy hard you can see the tiny dot on the curve in the road up ahead.



V. at some point turned around to check up on Thom and Patric. I was stopped under a shady tree having a Motivational Crisis moment (geeze, it's only going to get hotter, what am I thinking ???) when Patric showed up. He said Thom had a bit of a mechanical problem and he & V were working on it. He said we were pretty much over the worst of it, and encouraged me to keep going, and having already fried a sufficient number of brain cells so all common sense escaped me, I figured, oh what the heck.

Patric and I kept each other company through the remaining steeper parts of the road. I managed to not overheat by continously dumping water on myself. Did I mention that the scenery was lovely?



Eventually we encountered aka_kim who was waiting for us near a shady section - she wanted some company . We passed through some more very scenic areas.



The three of us were stopped along the side of the road to refill water bottles (yay for my big saddle bag) and along came V. & Thom! I had thought maybe they had called it a day, so it was really nice to see them.

We still had some miles to go to the Junction, and V. coached me over the two remaining climbs. The descents into the Junction were really fun but I couldn't help but think of the couple of climbs we had in store for us on the return trip

Here we are at the Junction - from l to r, it's aka_kim (in the background), V., BikeMomma/Kim (also in the background), Robert, MP/Sarah, SK/Sarah, and Patric.



And here we are hanging out. Lots of bicycles and motorcycles at the Junction Cafe!



Ah, the return trip. It was hotter than stink, my legs were like lead and the road tilted up entirely too soon. Oh, and we had a headwind, naturally. Patric's saddlebag was rubbing his rear tire on account of the weight of his extra water bottle so I carried 2 extra bottles in my rear bag. My good deed for the month.

I figured if I pushed it I'd only cook myself even worse, so I geared waaaay down very early on and was going up those initial hills at a rip-roaring 3 - 4 mph. Far be it from me to ignore the traffic signs.


Patric and I eventually encountered V. and Thom who had hung back to check up on us.

We finally got over those hills and it was a descent for most of the remainder, thank goodness. I actually didn't realize that we had been climbing almost the entire length of Mines heading towards the Junction, since a great deal of the climbing was at about a 1-2% grade. The descent was fun, but it would have been more so it wasn't into a very warm headwind - I felt positively dessicated when we reached the bottom of the descent

When we got back to our cars, SK brought out her Portable Changing Room which some of us took advantage of. It was fun to watch SK, MP and aka_kim try to figure out how to collapse the structure into the nice little compact form to fit into the eensy bag. They finally just wadded it up and stuffed it into the back of SK's car




Going into this, I knew it would be a hard ride and that I would be bringing up the rear. But in retrospect, I think it was pretty irresponsible of me to go on such a tough ride in such a remote area. If Patric wasn't there for moral support, I would have turned around at my first Motivational Crisis moment which was around, oh, mile 10. As it was, it was great he was there because the two of us pretty much stuck together since we were both having a tough go of it. But if one of us did get into trouble on account of the heat, or had a mechanical problem, it might have been a long time before we could have gotten any help. So I'm really grateful for V. and Thom hanging back and being there with us.