Make-Up Day

Oh man it was hard getting out the door this morning. The sky was still cloudy, which made it even darker than usual, and of course I'd stayed up too late last night. At least it wasn't too terribly cold -- around 50F -- although it was still good and windy. In fact, it was one of those days when the wind was coming from just the right direction to guarantee a crosswind for about 80% of the entire out-and-back ride. The whole way out to the levee I was fooling with my front light. Every time I hit a little bump in the road, of which there are many, it would go off. I think that the batteries must bounce around enough in there to occastionally break contact, and since it's not a good old-fashoned mechanical on-off switch, it just goes back to "off" mode when that happens. Sometimes if I beat on it a bit it improves, but one hates to resort to physical violence with an innocent piece of imported plastic. On the plus side, I found that I could mount my trusty bike path bell onto the end of my handlebar, over the tape, so at least I can use it on the Orbea now. I didn't get too many opportunities to ring it today, though. The depressing weather must be keeping most of the walkers inside until later in the day.

We started out with a small group, and for a little while I was thinking we might not have enough horsepower to do the full long ride, but by the time we'd hit the playground we'd about doubled in number. I guess after being rained out yesterday a few of us were subconsciously trying to balance things out by making up for lost time (or in this case, effort) today. The Donald was no exception, either. Right away he rode off the front and just dangled out there for most of the ride out to the turnaround. We weren't going particularly slowly, either. Every now and then we would catch him and he'd drop back for a little while, only to reappear on the left side and ride off the front again. Having a "rabbit" out there definitely seemed to be keeping our speed up, and we weren't halfway out before the rotation was down to only about five riders. Next thing I knew, the rest of the group was OTB and SOL in the crosswind. Trying to sit in on the back of a 10 rider eschelon while on a 4 rider wide road does not make for an effective survival strategy. Anyway, the bottom line was that we were pushing pretty hard this morning both coming and going.

After the turnaround we picked up just a few riders, so the rest of the group must have turned around rather early today.

I can't believe it's already Thursday. It's been fairly busy at work, and some of that has consisted of rather last-minute surprises, so I guess that does make time seem to fly by. Well, that and my impending age-related dementia.