A Good Day and Girls on Bikes

I'd been expecting today's weather to be good, and perhaps it was that anticipation that had me up and ready to go nearly half an hour early. With the roof rack clamped to the Volvo, two full water bottles and a couple of Powerbars, I drove over to Starbucks with, for a change, plenty of time to spare. Ed was already there feeding oil to his BMW, and soon there were five or six of us. I bought the shop's first cup of coffee for the day and we loaded Viv's and Elise's bikes into and onto the car for the drive across the causeway.

It was pretty chilly when we arrived, perhaps in the mid-40s, but the forecast was calling for a high of nearly 80F, so it was difficult to decide what to wear for those first ten miles before the sun got down to business. By the time we clipped in there were sixteen of us and we rode a nice steady double paceline all the way up to Enon. From there, the plan was to make a big clockwise loop, yielding a total ride distance of about 68 miles. Soon the pace started to heat up a little and a few gaps opened, but it wasn't until we got to the top of the big loop that we started making some contingency plans. The girls were going to stick together and with a map in hand and a couple of cell phones I figured they'd be OK if the speed got out of hand, which my legs were telling me would happen soon.

Somewhere a little past the halfway point the route goes over a number of little climbs and of course that's where things started to come apart. My legs were feeling pretty frisky and when I felt the pace slacken going up one of them I couldn't resist putting on a little extra pressure, so I came around the group and pushed up the long gradual uphill. Near the top, breathing heavily, I eased off and figured I'd wait for the group since my legs were, well, screaming. A moment later I felt a hand on my back as Mike came past. Well of course that's the universal sign for "get on my wheel and prepare to suffer," so we continued to push the pace as we headed East toward Sie Jenkins Road.

After a while Jay and a number of others bridged up and we had a little group that hammered for the remaining miles until the next turn. That brief effort split the group rather dramatically, so after making the turn at Sie Jenkins we rode down the road a bit and eased up, eventually turning around until we saw the rest of the group coming. As it turned out, though, there was one rider who was behind that group and somehow he missed the turn and we missed him. His timing must have been perfect. We thought he must have turned earlier to take a shorter route home because he was "on call" and had gotten one just before things went ballistic.

Well, fifteen minutes later Mike's phone rings and it's Brent, and after some discussion we determined he'd missed the turn and ridden an extra ten miles or so but was now heading back in the right direction, so I gave him the short route back to Enon so we could all meet up again there. By now the rest of the lead group had ridden on ahead, leaving Mike, Jason and me to team time trial all the way back to Lee Road. By then we could see them just up the road, but Mike and I stopped and turned around to pick up a stray glove that turned out to be Charlie's, so we put in yet another chase and finally regrouped with the rest as we approached Enon. So at this point Howard and Jack were somewhere off the front, we were with the main group, one rider (we hoped) was taking the shortcut to Enon, and the girls were on their own somewhere. Well, we mostly all regroup at Enon except that we never see Howard and Jack again. Jason heads back toward Highway 60 looking for our stray rider and a few minutes later when we see them coming down the road the group takes off for the watchtower hill with me trailing behind. I keep looking back but don't see them coming around the corner, so I finally turn back and find that they've stopped at the store, so finally the four of us head off again with the main group now quite a few minutes up the road and out of sight. Going up the watchtower hill Jason and I put in a little effort so we're off on our own all the way to Tung Road and shortly thereafter Jason, who just got back from a ski trip, says his legs are toast and eases up, so I'm on my own. By now I can occasionally see the rest of the group way up the road, so I time-trialed the last five or six miles and closed the gap a bit but never got really close before finally arriving back at the cars. Just one little problem...

The girls aren't there. If they had taken a shortcut they surely should have been back by now, so I finally get Viv on the cellphone and we figure out that they had also missed the turn at Sie Jenkins and done an extra ten bonus miles, but luckily had taken the same shortcut as the other rider and were now seven or eight miles away. So I put my shoes back on and Mike and I rode up the road to meet them. I guess I ended up with maybe 78 miles or so, but the weather was so nice I felt like I could do another twenty. It was a what I'd call a really good day on the bike.

So I was honored today to see a couple of my Mardi Gras photos on the Copenhagen Cycle Chic "Girls on Bikes" website. Just doing my part to promote my city, you know!