Crazy Fast

The weather was again fantastic on Wednesday morning as I stepped out the basement door into the dark. The moon was bright and the sky clear, so I knew I'd be comfortable in my single jersey. Since I was feeling guilty about missing Tuesday's ride, I left a little early so I could put in a few extra miles before meeting the group. I had time for a nice little warmup, riding down to the playground before turning back to meet the group. It was still quite dark, but up ahead I could clearly make out the figure of "Crazy Guy." This is a lunatic who regularly walks on the levee bike path and for some reason just absolutely hates cyclists. I suspect his hatred is not actually limited to cyclists, but that's another story better recounted in a chapter entitled "Abnormal Psychology." Whenever Crazy Guy hears somebody coming up from behind (we always say "on your left" or something), or for that matter, ahead, he intentionally moves over and walks directly on the center line, often poking his elbow out as we come by. It's not what you expect, of course, and sometimes results in close calls for riders unfamiliar with his little private war game. So anyway, just as I come up to him I see and hear Chad Jay coming toward him and they both stop and start arguing. Apparently when Jay had come up on him he'd issued the usual "on your left" at which point Crazy Guy had done his usual sachet to the left. To make matters worse, Crazy Guy said something to the effect of "F*&k You" as Jay passed. Anyway, Jay soon realized that no good would come from trying to have a rational conversation with this idiot, and met the rest of us for the morning ride where I brought him up to speed on Crazy Guy history and tried unsuccessfully to get a photo of Crazy Guy in action (it was still too dark). The rest of the ride was relatively uneventful other than the occasional patches of thick fog. It was such a nice day, though, that after work I went back out for a little spin just to enjoy the scenery.

Thursday arrived just a bit cooler and more than just a bit more windy, and I was surprised by the number of people up on the levee for the 6:15 ride. The sky was overcast, so it was even more dark than usual as we rolled out. I could see there were a couple of guys pushing the pace from the start, and soon we were going way, way too fast for the conditions. I mean, it was hard enough to see the edge of the road, much less the pedestrians. I very quickly put a couple of extra feet between me and the rider in front of me, just to be on the safe side. Man, we really need to keep the speed down until there's a little light. This morning was kind of scary, especially when the speed really ramped up.

Between the speed, the crosswind, and the darkness, the group started to fracture pretty early today. At one point, about halfway out, I guess, there was yet another surge, and rather than walk the tightrope along the edge of the asphalt I thought I'd drop back a bit and maybe see if we could get a second paceline going. When I did, I was surprised to find that, other than Tom, the rest of the group had already dropped off the pace. So I just put my head down and sprinted back up to the front group. It was so dark today that I didn't turn off my headlight until we were almost to the turnaround out at Ormond. The return trip was not a whole lot better, and between Rob, VJ and Woody the pace stayed high enough, long enough, that by the time we were getting back into Jefferson the paceline was getting pretty fragile. At first, everyone was taking pulls at a fairly even pace. Then the pace started to fluctuate depending on who was on the front. A little later people started skipping pulls, opening gaps in the paceline. Then, to twist the knife, Rob and Woody threw in a few little attacks. By the time we got back to the Playground, I was only too happy to dump it back into the small chainring and back off for the ride home.