Winter Ride Complications

I had been looking forward to this morning's ride. The forecast was for cold and crisp weather with clear skies and a moderate wind. Basically, it was the very definition of a winter training ride. The email list, however, had been oddly silent this week, except for a lone note from Jason announcing the meeting location and time. Saturday evening, before rushing off to a rather nice party by one of the Tulane psychiatrists, I'd sent out an email letting people know that if they wanted a ride, I'd be at the usual Starbucks at 7 am. Early the next morning I filled my bag with winter riding stuff and headed off for a hot coffee, arriving with enough time for a few minutes in one of the cushy chairs. By 7:00, nobody else had arrived, so I fired up the old Volvo and pointed her north on the Causeway. With the temperature in the upper 30s, I looked down the long bridge as the sun came over my right shoulder, set the cruise control on 65 mph, and thought, "here I go again." Indeed, it's been a whole bunch of years that I've been doing these winter rides in the country, and every year I wonder if this will be my last. I mean, it would be so easy to skip these rides and sink into the winter doldrums, only to suddenly realize, some time around late January, that I'm hopelessly out of shape.

So anyway, we had either nine or twelve riders today (I think I miscounted somewhere along the line), as we rode slowly into the chilly wind. Luckily, by the time we started at 8:00, it was already warming up, so the cold was never a problem. What was a problem, however, was my back. I'm not sure what I did yesterday to deserve it, but I'd obviously pulled something in my back, as the ride went on it only got worse. Even so, it was never all that bad -- more of an annoyance really. When we turned off of Tung Road onto Lee Road, I was glad to find that the road had been completely repaved with nice smooth asphalt. None of that damed chip-seal crap - this was genuine black asphalt. Even better, it looked like they had added a foot or so to each lane. I was really enjoying the silky-smooth ride over the watchtower hill and the long descent to the River at Enon. Then the ride started to get kind of complicated. There were the usual "nature breaks" and resulting slowdowns and re-groupings, and then there was a flat tire, and then when things started getting faster the group kind of came apart. When we tried to regroup at Plainview there seemed to be a lot of confusion about how many riders we were missing. Eventually we continued on with, as best I can determine, everyone we started with. After a rather brisk ride back into Enon, we stopped at the store for a minute to refill water bottles and regroup, and at that point we realized someone was missing. So Keith rode backwards on the course looking for the missing rider and about the same time most of the rest of the group continued on toward the watchtower hill. I don't think they realized that Keith was going the other way. Three of us lagged behind, looking frequently over our shoulders to see if Keith was in sight yet. Well, that "looking over the shoulder" thing didn't work out so well for one of the newer riders. He dropped a wheel over the edge of the road and went down pretty hard. He was at the back of our trio at the time and all I heard was the loud "smack" of a helmet hitting the pavement. I immediately thought, "that doesn't sound good." On the plus side, by the time I'd gotten back to him he was already back on his feet and looking relatively uninjured. Jason straightened out his brake lever and we continued on our way, but a minute later he said, "I think I might have broken my collarbone." We suggested he turn back to Enon and wait for us to come back with a car, but he said he was OK. So we continued on.

The main group was by then many minutes up the road, and we were beginning to be worried that we still couldn't see Keith or the missing rider. Then a motorcycle came up alongside us and slowed down for a chat with Jason. He said there was a rider back there who was looking for us. So Jason turned back to look for Keith who was missing because he had turned back to look for the other guy, and we continued on to the next intersection to wait, meeting up with Steve who by then was wondering where we were and had turned back to look for us while we were were waiting for Jason who was looking for Keith who had been looking for the missing guy.

Finally Keith and Jason rode up, having never located the missing rider (who apparently had told one of the guys in the lead group that he would just ride in at his own pace). It was all very complicated. I think Keith later said that the missing rider had somehow appeared back at the parking lot ahead of us, so perhaps he got a ride. With all the complications, it turned out to be a fairly easy ride, speed-wise, although personally I was definitely hurting. If the collarbone turns out to be broken, that'll make eight, I think, for the year. Weird. Definitely weird.