Well, the big storm drifted a bit north toward Mississippi Friday evening and completely disintegrated, leaving us with quite a nice weekend for riding. Unfortunately there weren't any races around here, leaving me to fend for myself with a couple of Giro Rides. Saturday's ride started out with me getting a flat before we'd even gotten off of Lakeshore Drive. Then, as the pace started to ramp up on Chef Highway, there was another flat. This time it was Courtney. Nobody really wanted to stop because we'd just picked up a nice tailwind and rest of the ride out to the turnaround was going to be fun, so I told them to go ahead and a few of us turned around to help. Once we got going again we got a little paceline together, finally turning around to join back up with the group on its way back. After the Goodyear sign sprint, we were rolling down the service road at a pretty nice clip when we passed a big chunk of something on the road. I was still trying to figure out if it had been a crumpled piece of paper or a rock when I heard a commotion behind. This time Courtney's sister Heather had a flat. I'm guessing that what I'd seen was indeed a rock and that she clipped it. Anyway, at that point about half of the group continued on and the rest of us had a nice mellow ride back.
So Sunday I'm planning to hit the Giro again, but I oversleep and don't get out of the door until about 7:05 (the ride starts at 7:00 about 7 miles away). Ordinarily, I might have just bagged it and headed out for a solo ride, but for some reason this morning I decided to take a shot at catching the group by riding through town, down Broad St., and out Chef Menteur. I figured there was at least a chance I'd meet up with the group around when it turned onto Chef. Well, I was close, anyway. About a minute and a half up the road I saw the group turning onto Chef. Damn!! So close, but so far away. I knew they'd be flying, so I just put my head down and continued plodding along until I finally saw them on the way back. I made a quick U-turn and got onto the end of a small group that was already going pretty good. Once I got over the shock of going from 20 mph to 27 mph, I looked up to see who was there. Mike Williams on a fixed-gear TT bike with nothing resembling handlebars, Howard, Jay.... Hmmmm. I figured I'd better stay out of trouble and hang out on the back for a while. Sure enough, Howard was lifting the pace into the 30s when he's hit the front and Mike was taking random flyers down the side of the paceline. One of the NOBC women's TTT teams went by in the other direction along the way, and eventually I took a couple of pulls, but with that level of disorganization we were finally caught by the rest of the group before the Goodyear sprint where I tried too late to give Brandon a little leadout. Then, as we crossed under the interstate on the service road my front tire went flat...again. (Sigh!) Maybe it's time to put those new tires on. Anyway, that delay pretty much took the wind out of our sails and we cruised in the rest of the way, except for those who hadn't stopped, of course.
It's looking like it might be wet around here tomorrow (it's raining now). Oh well, no worries. I have fenders... How come I never see bike commuters like this around here??
No comments:
Post a Comment