august rides

[salsabike]

DH and I just finished the Seattle Int'l Randonneurs Maltby-Granite Falls 100 km ride: http://ridewithgps.com/routes/3728236

The ride was just over 64 miles and started and ended at the Maltby Cafe. What a scenic route! It went through mostly quiet country roads, with lots of horse ranches and farmland. It was also mostly downhill with lots of long descents, a few miles of rollers, and only a few climbs, kind of like my favorite loops around the Kitsap Peninsula, even including some water views of Lake Roesiger.

We've done that SIR Maltby 100k on our tandem! It's a great ride. And omelettes after at the Maltby Cafe.

Today we did a ride on our tandem that we made up and love, about 44 miles, that includes a bunch of hills, including riding up the ridge from Meydenbauer Bay in Bellevue, a 13-14% grade in parts. Beautiful day in the PNW today. 70 and mostly sunny. Typical sight on this ride: Mount Rainier from Medina City Hall.

[pll]

This summer I was training in part for Rebecca's Private Idaho, which was on Sunday. Let me pitch it to you ladies here: that area of Idaho has the most amazing landscapes. The only muscles that nearly cramped were those in my face because I had a silly grin most of the ride. It is a gravel ride and they offer two courses: the 'big potato' (93) miles and the 'small fry' (50-something miles). Each rest has wonderful volunteers -- they would fill your bottles or hand you one on the go, if you were racing the course-- and the tastiest roasted potatoes... It's a small ride, limited to 300 people, Rebecca Rusch is super nice. I can't say enough. I wish I had spent the entire week leading to the ride in Ketchum and hope to go back. Here are a couple of photos:

[Crankin]

Did another little 22 mile ride with my 2 older friends today. We are pacing the one guy, and he was very pleased with himself today. He stayed with us, did better on the hills, and felt better about himself. I did bring up the cardiac issue, but he says he has no issues there, it's just age. He did want to hear all about my DH's story with cardiac stents, so I know I gave him something to think about.
The humidity is gone, but it's still too hot for me.

[Owlie]

Sunday, I went for my first ride in a long time. About 10 hot miles. I nearly bonked. (I went with my BF and his parents. ALL of them are of the type that can't eat anything before riding. I am exactly the opposite. I figured I'd be OK, since I'd had 2 days of more food than usual--loads of sushi on Friday night, Saturday they had people over, and there was a huge amount of loaded nachos and so forth--and I wanted to get out before it got really hot. Yeah, no.

[ny biker]

My road bike is still in the shop getting new wheels after the two broken spoke incidents. Last night I planned to ride my mountain bike for my usual post-work ride. I haven't ridden the mountain bike in a while, so I pumped up the tires to max psi on Monday night, figuring any leaks in the tubes would make themselves known before Wednesday. As I wheeled the bike out to the car yesterday morning, everything was fine.

After work I arrived at my usual starting point, started to take the bike out of the car, and discovered that the front tire was completely flat. Awesome. I got out the floor pump (doesn't everyone keep a floor pump in their car?) to put some air in it so I could see what was going on. That's when the local mosquito gang arrived and started to attack. Naturally the floor pump decided not to cooperate. I could tell that air was going into the tube, but the tire gauge didn't show any air pressure. I take the thing off the valve and try again, and now it won't stay on the valve at all. While I'm struggling with it, I'm trying to fight off the mosquitoes, and one of them keeps flying right into my face, and it's hot and humid so I'm sweating, and I'm yelling at the mosquitoes to leave me alone. I take the tire off the rim, look at the tube, finally get some air into it, it seems fine, I put it and the tire back on the rim and try to pump it up again but the pump is still not cooperating. I reach for the frame pump, then find that the air I had already put into the tire has leaked out again. And these damn mosquitoes will not leave me alone.

At this point I'm ready to give up. I only have one spare tube with me for this bike (of course I have a bunch of 700c tubes in my bike bag, but no extra 26" tubes). Given the way my luck has been lately, I don't want to use the only spare tube before I even start the ride. So I throw everything back into the car and head for home. Once I get there, I bring the wheel and floor pump in to the house, replace the tube with an extra that I had at home, reassemble the tire, fight some more with the floor pump and finally get enough air into the tire. It's almost dark, but I have good lights so I can still get in a ride around my neighborhood. So I go back outside to get the rest of the bike out of the car, change my shoes, top off the air in the rear tire, finally get ready to ride. While doing this more mosquitoes show up and attack. These are slower than the first gang, and I manage to kill three of them.

So. All in all I rode 12 miles, doing laps around my neighborhood. It was not easy to get going, but pretty uneventful after that.

I'm hoping the road bike and its new wheels will be ready tonight. Also hoping that I get a break from mechanical problems for a while.

[Crankin]

I hope your spokes are fixed soon! The same thing happened to the other bike leader I was leading a ride with back in July. No one in the group could fix his issue, and the wheel was totally out of true. He walked/hitch hiked back to his car 5 miles and left me to lead the ride. We were in Mystic, CT, so I was thankful as hell that we had pre-ridden this route.
I rode with my friend Linda today. She spends most of the warmer months at her house on the Cape, so I haven't ridden with her too much this year. It was fun, and I didn't mind her slower speed. I stopped at the tops of all the hills and enjoyed the weather. The ride was about 22.5 miles and had about 1,500 ft. of climbing. My legs are a little dead today; I have taken about 10 days off from boot camp, to ride more, but next week, back to the grind, in both fitness and work.

[ny biker]

I'm a bit worried that it's 5 pm and I haven't heard from the shop yet. Though I'm still okay for Saturday's big ride if it's ready tomorrow.

I'm going to bring the old wheels home, keep the front as a back-up and practice using the FiberFix temporary spoke on the rear, so I can be more prepared the next time.

I noticed that the multi-tool that I keep in my mountain bike seat bag has a spoke wrench on it. I never new what it was before. If I can get better at emergency spoke repairs, the whole experience will have been worth it. The adorable little multi-tool I use for the road bike doesn't have a spoke wrench, but I bought one to keep with it.

[emily_in_nc]

It's been pretty windy here lately, and we're back to having to use arm/leg warmers, etc. in the morning (ugh!), but we've managed some really nice rides. Just put up a blog post today about two of them. We did the Touchet North ride again today (photos in the blog are from about 1.5 weeks ago, when we last did it), and thankfully got a break from the wind as it was light today. 58 miles round trip.

http://travelingtwosome.weebly.com/t...-of-highway-12

[Crankin]

Today was some of the worst weather I've seen this summer. We did some stuff at home this morning and it was 12:30, 88 degrees and at least 60% humidity when we finally got out. At least it was mostly cloudy and breezy. With the threat of impending severe weather, all ideas of a long ride went out the window and we did our go to 11 mile hill route.
Despite starting off slowly, when we turned onto the homeward part of the loop, my average was at 15 and ended up at 15.9 just as I started climbing the hill to my house. Very strange, as I felt terrible in the beginning of the ride and like I was flying by the end.
I do not enjoy this weather. Plus a lightning strike hit our cable modem about an hour and a half ago; DH is now at Best Buy getting a new one.