Cold, Wind and Wine

I started my Saturday with a little pre-dawn time trial, an unintended one, of course. I'd told Jered that I'd meet up with him at the start of the Giro Ride around 6:50 am. That wouldn't ordinarily have been much of a problem, except that a sudden drop in temperature cost me a little extra time spent hunting around for misplaced winter riding gear. Then, when I finally got out the door I was hit in the face with a howling north wind. So despite my best effort, I arrived just barely before the ride started. Luckily he'd already found the mixed tri-road group over at Kona Cafe'. The first part of the ride was a real comedy of errors as the front part of the group refused to believe that the sections of Lakeshore Drive that were under construction were not rideable. We ended up riding up onto the levee, through some mud, and finally turning back and taking Leon C. Simon like we should have in the first place. By then the group had gotten reasonably large despite the cold and wind, and things got quite spread out going over the bridges. Next think I knew, Rob, Brett and Jered are half a minute off the front. When we got close to the end of Hayne Blvd., Jered sat up and came back to the pack for a few minutes. Rob and Brett continued to hammer away off the front. When we made the turn onto Paris Road and picked up a hefty tailwind Jered took off with me on his wheel. I looked down at my computer ,which was showing 32 mph, and thought, "this is a little early for me to be going at an unsustainable pace, and even if we catch those guys, do I really want get myself into that little hammerfest?" So I eased up to wait for the rest of the group which was already starting to shatter.

Rob, Brett and Jered stayed off the front all the way to Venetian Isles despite a pretty good effort from the group. That's about where I made the questionable decision to go with them to Fort Pike. On windy, cloudy day, the ride down that stretch of featureless asphalt can be very long indeed, but I had a Powerbar in my pocket and enough time, so I figured, "What the hell?" Actually, considering the wind and all it was not all that bad of a ride. After we turned around we picked up Mignon who had been with Jon behind us, but Jon made the fateful decision to continue on solo to get in the extra miles. He would end up splitting the sidewall on a tire, going through two tubes, and walking the last eight miles home. Our group stayed together, although a fast stretch near the end of Chef Highway almost split it. Toward the end of the ride Brett and Rob kept us entertained by attacking each other. By then I was mostly in survival mode, sucking wheels unabashedly. Anyway, by the time I got home with 80+ miles the I was seriously questioning my ability to make rational decisions.

That evening was the annual NOBC party, so I went out and picked up the drinks and was over at the rooftop party room at 123 Walnut right on time. The party was nice. As usual we had maybe thirty or thirty-five people there. It seemed that red wine was popular this year. Perhaps it was because it was so cold outside.

This morning I got up at 5:45, which usually gives me plenty of time to get over to Puccino's for 7 am. However, when I checked my cellphone, which I had accidentally left in "vibrate" mode, there were two messages from one of the guys saying his wife may have left her wallet at the party. So I rushed over there to check, only to later find out that someone else had found it when we were cleaning up the night before and had subsequently contacted them. Anyway, it was really cold (around 36F I guess) and really windy and my legs were a bit stiff as I drove across the causeway alone to meet the Northshore ride.

Having polished off my share of wine the night before, I was having some serious doubts about this ride. We started off straight into a strong north wind and I knew immediately that my legs had not recovered. It was still overcast and grey and as soon as we got going the conversation stopped as our 7-rider paceline plowed ahead. For the first 25 miles I was pretty miserable. My legs were hurting on every little hill, so I started taking shorter pulls. Luckily, the weather and wind sucked most of the aggressiveness out of the rest of the group, so the ride was pretty steady. Eventually the sun came out, which made a huge difference, and as I started to warm up, my legs finally came around to where I wasn't too worried about getting dropped.