Weak Link

It was a marvelous winter riding day today over on the Northshore. We started out with 13 riders under a clear blue sky with the temperature just under 40F but rising quickly. There was only a hint of wind, and that made the cool temperature feel a whole lot warmer, especially considering that the first few miles of our winter rides always seem to head straight North.

Although I had more than a couple glasses of wine at the party the evening before, I was in fairly good shape when the alarm went off at 5:45 a.m. this morning. Noel had called earlier to say that he could give me a ride across the lake, so The Wife dropped me off at the Morning Call so I could switch over to Noel's fancy truck. She was planning on driving across the lake herself to do some christmas shopping, since a lot of the stores over here are still closed. We had a good group for the ride, starting some time after 8:00 ,and ended up doing about 60 miles, arriving back at the cars around 11:30. We weren't too far along when Noel dropped his chain climbing a little hill. He stopped for just a second to put the chain back on, and we all continued on, but a bit later I noticed something odd. Noel's chain was now acting like it had a stiff link, so we finally stopped again five or six miles later. It turned out that one or maybe two of the links were bent, twisting the chain and causing it to jump off of the jockey wheel every time that spot came around. Luckily, Jorge was there with his handy multi-tool (gotta get one of those) which includes a chain tool, so I removed the offending links and we were good to go.

Although much of the ride today was at a nice steady pace in the low to mid-20s, things did get a bit out of hand a couple of times. When we were coming back down Lee Road toward Enon Jay took off, perhaps anticipating the Enon town sign sprint. A number of us responded and pretty soon most of us were in full-out race mode. It was fun! For once, we didn't stop at the store in Enon and just continued on up the Watchtower hill. Jay and Rick took off near the middle of the climb, but I waited a little bit before going after them. For a little time it was Race #2 and there were only six or seven of us still together by the time we go to the Tung road turn.

Now if there's one thing I hate, it's having to rush off from a training ride, salty and unwashed, without a chance to go home first and shower and eat. The other thing I hate is shopping. Especially when the traffic is all backed up with christmas shoppers. So by the end of the afternoon, we had checked a bunch of items off of the christmas shopping list (especially The Daughter's list), and I was a tired, cranky and rather fragrant mess with a significantly lighter wallet.