Collateral Damage

It seems that last Sunday's six hours in the rain resulted in a little more collateral damage than I'd expected. I mean, I expected the water seeping into the seat tube and running down to the bottom bracket, and I expected the dried out chain, and I even kind of expected that I'd already waited so long to change the chain that my regular training wheel's cassette would be worn out. So the other night I set about installing a new chain and putting the bottom bracket back together. It was about 11 pm and after ever so carefully pressing in the connecting pin to join the nice new Campi chain, I made the disturbing discovery that I'd run the chain under the chainstay instead of over it. Crap. So that little slip-up pushed the bike cleanup project back another couple of days. I'm still planning on installing new brake and derailleur cables at some point soon. In the meantime, I've been riding the Cervelo, which I really like except that the left shifter cable is so gunky that it doesn't even click any more, and the rear brake needed to be coaxed back open every time I used it. So last night I decided to at least get the brake working again and discovered that the plastic cable housing ferrule on the little piece of cable between the top tube and the brake has basically disintegrated inside the brake adjuster. I ended up having to actually drill it out to get all of the pieces out. I'd also discovered that my trusty old Campi computer had some moisture in it. That was surprising, since it's survived numerous roof-rack trips through thunderstorms at 75 mph. Then again, it's getting pretty old and I guess those silicone seals don't last forever. Anyway, the computer was freaking out on Wednesday's ride, so I had to open it up, dry it out, and replace the battery.

The morning weather has been great this week. In fact, this morning was the first time I gave serious consideration to wearing arm-warmers. We had a big group heading out in the dark, and although we didn't start out too fast, the pace seemed particularly uneven. I found myself leaving a little extra room in the paceline, just in case. Tomorrow night I'm meeting the Tulane Cycling group to watch "Chasing Legends" again, then Saturday morning I'll do the Giro, followed that afternoon by a city ride with the Tulane group. Should be fun. Sunday I'm hoping to do a Northshore ride. There's supposed to be another cool front coming through, so Sunday morning is likely to be pretty nice.

The official results from Six Gap are up, along with a video explaining the issue with the chip-timing (one of the decoders probably couldn't handle the rain). Despite the rain and wet roads, the lead rider actually set a new course record time, which was practically an hour faster than mine. I really thought that the times would be slower, but apparently the rain didn't slow things down much at all. Anyway, my careful analysis of the times revealed that I went REALLY slowly on the Hogpen climb. Maybe one day I'll figure out just how hard I can afford to go on those long climbs without blowing up before the finish.

Drying Out and Shifting Gears

The weather this morning felt très approprié and I rode the old steel Cervelo out to meet the early levee ride. I know, of course, that it won't last too long since it's not even October yet, but a few days of Fall-like weather couldn't have come at a better time. Late last night I went down to the basement to survey the damage from the Six Gap weekend. When I'd arrived around midnight on Sunday, I had just dropped everything on the floor, thrown the wet clothes into the washer, and gone to sleep. Ordinarily, I would have taken a few more minutes to at least lube the chain on the bike, but I had already decided that Six Gap would be the last ride for that chain . Since I was going to change the chain anyway, and there's no more road racing (yeah, right. it's not a race....) for the immediate future, I though it would be a good time to give the Orbea a good going-over, especially after a six-hour ride in the rain. The old chain, completely washed clean of lubricant, already had a light film of rust forming on the rollers, and I knew for sure that some water must have found its way down the seat tube to the bottom bracket. So I cracked open the tool box, removed the chain (but kept it handy so I can make the new one the same length), removed the jockey wheels from the derailleur and the crank arms from the spindle, and pulled out the bottom bracket. Yeah, there was some water down in there. The bearing felt good, though, so I just cleaned it up and left it on the workbench. The jockey wheel bearings were stiff as usual, so I cleaned them up and re-lubed them. I still need to stop by the shop and pick up a set of brake and derailleur cables, so that's about as far as I went. I left the bike on the stand so it could fully dry out, so I'll probably be riding the Orbea for a couple more days until I can get everything I need. After all, there's no rush. It's about time to shift gears and start thinking about those long group rides in the country again.

You know it must be the start of the off-season when you see Woody showing up for the morning ride on his track bike. Well, despite his gear restriction, the speed got going pretty fast for the first part of the ride, but after a number of riders pulled off at the parish line, things settled down a bit. I am still feeling some soreness from my extended affair with the 27 tooth cog, so I was taking short pulls until we got to the bridge in Destrehan where I sat up and turned around. Luke and I rode easy back downriver until the group caught us on its way back just before The Dip. At that point, Donald had commandeered the front for a while, so I happily sat in the draft at the back. Even after the rotation got going again, I stayed on the back for most of the return trip today.

It was still wonderfully cool and dry at the end of the ride, so I just had to stop at Zotz for a cup of dark roast while I carefully peeled off the stick-on helmet number I'd acquired on Sunday. Those things always leave a lot of residue behind.

Wet and Wild in Dahlonega

The forecast was not leaving much room for optimism as we headed off for Georgia Saturday morning. Despite the fact that a number of local riders had already decided to skip this year's Six Gap Century, a few zealots remained. I was driving up with Mignon, while John Maurin and John Chauvin were to meet us up in Dahlonega. The weather on the drive was beautiful, which made Sunday's forecast all that much harder to believe. We must have checked and re-checked the forecast a dozen times throughout the long drive, each time hoping for just a hint of improvement. None was to be had, however, and about the best we could do was a 50% chance of rain. At least is wasn't going to be particularly cold.

So we arrived at the town square in Dahlonega around 5 pm, picked up our packets and transponders, made our rendezvous with the two Johns, and made our way over to Ro's house where we'd be staying overnight. Steve, who was our contact with Ro, had needed to cancel that morning. Our hosts fixed us a nice dinner, and after a couple of glasses of wine we went downstairs to watch "Chasing Legends" on their big home theatre system. The documentary on the 2009 Tour de France did not disappoint. I recommend it highly. In fact, the Tulane Cycling group will be getting together to watch it on Friday.

Sunday morning we made an early getaway in a light rain, arriving at the big school parking lot around 6:15 or so (the 6-Gap start was scheduled for 7:30). Fifteen minutes later, just after I'd pulled the bikes out of the car, there was a heavy downpour. I jumped into the back of the Volvo wagon and watched it come down as I contemplated my clothing options and wondered what those 45 mph downhill switchbacks would be like when wet. Luckily, the rain eased up and practically stopped half an hour before start time. Mignon and John Maurin were on the fence as to whether of not to do the full 104 miles or skip some of the misery and do the shorter "Three Gap" ride. I was committed to doing the full ride, but my focus was definitely going to be more on preventing hypothermia and road rash than on posting a good finish time. Considering the guaranteed rain, chill, and wet descents, this was not going to be a fast one for me. I was going to be using a 39x27 for the first time on this one and was kind of looking forward to a little less time standing on the pedals at the tops of the big climbs. I finally settled on two jerseys, arm-warmers, a chest protector and toe-covers. In my pockets were my Oakleys (mainly because they have stick-on reading lenses), a full flask of HammerGel orange (I'd bought the last bottle at the Expo the day before), and an emergency PowerBar. On the bike was a small bottle of water and a large bottle of water with HEED electrolyte mix. Because of the wet roads, I'd stuffed three spare tubes into my saddle bag, just in case. The bike felt like it weighed a ton. So did I.

Fifteen minutes before the start I said goodbye to the the others so I could make my way down to the start early, lining up near the front with the "under 6 hours" group composed mainly of active racers from throughout the southeast. We rolled out in a light drizzle. The bulging group was very cautious for the first twenty miles or so, and I was glad that the rain was relatively light. We made our way over the first little climb at 12.5 miles and around 20 miles in finally started the long climb up to Neel's Gap. Things got quieter as the group started to string out and up ahead I could see what would become the lead group already pulling away. I settled in to a moderate pace behind another rider. I knew better than to try to stay with the front group so early. The really hard stuff wouldn't come for another twenty or thirty miles. I came over the top of Neel's with a number of other riders and after a fast descent we regrouped with what I guess must have been the second main group. I was not feeling particularly strong and had been surprised at how quickly I'd resorted to the 27. The next two climbs, Jack's Gap and Unicoi Gap, both topping out at around 2,900 feet, were similar, but toward the end of the Unicoi climb most of the group was a minute or two ahead of me.

The descent from Unicoi is awesome, and would really be our first real fast test on the wet roads. The rain had been going back and forth between heavy and light, and everything was soaked. I'd long since taken off the chest protector and given up entirely on the glasses. I came over the top and immediately accelerated downhill, squinting to see as the raindrops stung my face at 45 mph. The traction felt surprisingly good and I dumped in into the 53x12, grabbing handfulls of both brakes as I approached the blind curves, but generally passing a lot of more timid, or careful, riders. Toward the bottom I could see a group up ahead and I got together with another rider as we chased our way back up to them.

Hogpen Gap is the pretty much acknowledged as the hardest climb. It's about 7 miles long, topping out at almost 3,500 feet, and it usually pretty well shatters the groups. It didn't take long for me to deploy the 27 once the climb started, and as usual I spent most of it riding pretty much alone at 6 to 10 mph. It take a very long time to ride 7 miles at that speed. For a change, I was never really completely out of sight of other riders, though. Up ahead, I could see a number of riders, all strung out and struggling up the hill alone like me. As I came over the crest, I noticed a bunch of the riders who had been ahead of me stopped at the rest stop. Right about that time the rain turned really heavy and it started to get quite foggy. I knew that if I stopped I'd freeze, so I shifted to the big gears and let gravity do its job. This downhill is quite a bit more technical than Unicoi, and there were a few times where I had to brake hard coming into sharp switchbacks on somewhat sketchy asphalt. As on all of the downhills this year, I was burning a lot more brake rubber than usual. I can't even begin to imagine what it must have been like for riders with carbon rims and cork brake pads! Anyway, I just absolutely loved riding these fast sketchy downhills in the rain. There's just something about the way it demands your full attention that find irresistible. The biggest problem from my perspective with the downhills this year was the chill. My legs were freezing by the time I got to the bottom of each long descent. There was one bit of excitement on this descent (I think it was this one, anyway). As I came flying around a particularly sharp and blind left-hander I suddenly came upon a rider who had slid out on the outside of the turn. He was just getting up, standing in the middle of the road, with various bike parts and water bottles still rolling across the wet asphalt. Luckily I was already on the brakes and was able to pick my way through the debris safely. A little while later when I caught up to a few more riders they asked about it. Apparently there had been two rider who had gone down. I don't really remember seeing a second rider, but of course all my attention at the time was focused on getting around the curve safely so I might have missed him -- or perhaps he's gone over the barrier??

As usual, I was pretty much cooked after Hogpen, but with the help of another rider I found myself back with a little group for a while as we made our way toward the last big climb of the day, Wolfpen Gap at 3,364 feet and 77 miles into the ride.

Wolfpen is one of the prettiest climbs on this ride, and as usual I climbed it mostly alone. All I could hear was the rain falling through the forest, the water rushing over the rocks in the stream below, and my own breathing. I was really quite a peaceful, albeit painful, climb. By this point I had become very good friends with my 27 tooth cog, and although I'd failed to adjust my derailleur carefully enough for smooth shifting, I had figured out its quirks enough to keep it from auto-shifting too much. Wolfpen and Woody's Gaps, which come one after the other, have, I think, some of the steepest grades, especially on the inside of some of the switchbacks, but they are, relatively speaking, short. The descent from Woody's Gap is a fast drop from 3,200 feet down to about 1,700 feet in about five miles, and is a lot of fun. Of course the wet roads again limited my speed, but along the way I hooked up with another rider or two for the final ten miles in to the finish. The last five miles of this ride are, by some accounts, the hardest. The road is smooth, but there are a number of nice little climbs that can seem particularly painful once your legs are shot and you're thinking about the hot pasta waiting for you in the school cafeteria. For some reason I was feeling relatively good along this section. I was still with one of the guys who had descended with me, so we kept rolling pretty well along this stretch. We were probably just four or five miles from the end when I saw a distinctive red, white and blue rain jacket up ahead. It could only be Debbie Milne, who I'm sure had gone all-out on the two timed KOM climbs of Hogpen and Wolfpen Gaps. As we came up on her I tried to get her to get on, but she looked pretty cooked and just said hello and let us go. When I saw her later she said she had gotten really, really cold and had to drop off from the group she had been riding with to limp in to the finish. Anyway, I think we finished at just under 6 hours. I don't know for sure because the rain eventually got to my computer and it reset itself a couple of times during the ride. I guess that under the circumstances, and the fact that I hadn't gone into the ride with any sort of goals, it was a decent enough time. From what I heard, the fastest time was around 5:08, nearly an HOUR faster!

By the time I got back to the car John Maurin had already departed. He and Mignon had decided to do just the 3-Gap ride, so Mignon had already gotten dried off and cleaned up. I grabbed a plastic shopping bag and headed for the bathroom to peel off my wet clothes and shoes. I think it had been a hard decision for Mignon to do the shorter ride, but probably a sensible one. I saw a number of people huddled under blankets at the rest areas trying to warm their way out of impending hypothermia. We waited around for a while for John Chauvin, who had started out with Mignon and John, but continued on for the full 104 miles after they decided to do the shorter route. When we were down at the finish line waiting for John, we saw a rider come walking across the finish carrying his bike. I immediately recognized the Tulane medical center jersey and realized it was one of the Tulane Cycling guys (can't recall his name, of course). He said that he was coming down a hill just ten miles or so before the finish when a rider forced him to the outside of curve. His handlebar had slammed into the post supporting a barrier, breaking it completely off and damaging his front wheel. Luckily he'd pulled his hand away at the last moment. It was amazing that his only injuries were a cut on his finger and some light road rash! We eventually left a note on John's car and headed south for the long and rainy drive home. Nine hours and half a gallon of coffee later I arrived back home shortly before midnight. Finally, the rain had stopped.

Woundn't You Know It

This week seems to have flown by rather quickly for some reason. Almost every evening I've spent time fooling with the somewhat messed-up results from last weekend's Pensacola Cycling Classic. Although most of the Road Race and Time Trial results were solid, it seems like the five officials at the finish line of the Criterium just couldn't seem to get the lapped rider situation straight. Of course, it can get really confusing, especially with a big Cat. 5 field that tends to get spread all over the course within the first few laps. On the other hand, it sure would help if riders would hang around long enough to check the results after the race instead of sending angry emails two days later. It doesn't take a whole lot of racing experience to figure out that the officials are often doing a bit of a guessing game, especially towards the back of the field sprints. In any typical weekend stage race, my advice is to always get your own TT time, always count the number of riders ahead of you at the finish, and always, always check the results as soon as they are posted. Technically, protests about the order of finish must be made within 15 minutes of the announcement that they are posted. The only exception is for intermediate stages in stage races, in which case they are accepted up until the close of sign-in for the next stage. Anyway, suffice it to say that I re-did the Acrobat file at least four times this week and made numerous corrections to the data that I had already uploaded to the USAC R&R database. Almost all of the problems involved riders who were well out of the money. The only major exception was Donald Davis in the masters criterium where he was somehow listed initially as being a lap down. Once that was fixed it bumped me down to 13th place on GC, one place out of the money.

Anyway, aside from all of the results drama, I spent much of the last half of the week anticipating the Six Gap Century ride that I'll be doing on Sunday. I never feel quite up to this ride, of course, since it involves so much climbing, but it's a fun road trip and a fun challenge nonetheless. The past two years that I've done it, my biggest worry has been that it might be uncomfortably cold. This year, however, things are looking a little different. Although the weather on Saturday up in Dahlonega, Ga is supposed to be spectacular, wouldn't you know it, the weather on Sunday is looking to be wet. There's a solid 50% chance of rain from about dawn till dusk. As a result, a number of people who had been planning on going have already backed out. I don't really understand why. It's not going to be particularly cold - probably upper 60s. Granted, it's probable that the roads will be good and wet all day, which will mean taking it really easy on those long downhills where I usually hit speeds of 50+ mph, but that's what the brakes are for, right? As much as I love bombing down those hills, the fact that there's no prize at the end will make it easy to keep myself within the safety zone. I'm just about to go start packing my bag for this trip. I'm leaving around 7 am to pick up Mignon and perhaps Elizabeth. Steve will be driving up separately because of complications at home, and John Chauvin and John Maurin are meeting us up there somehow. In light of the weather situation, I'll be packing my toe-covers, arm-warmers, rain jacket, and maybe a few other items of that nature, and I'll be carrying at least two tubes and my trusty Silca minipump along with a few PowerBars. If it turns out to be raining the whole time I may actually stop at one or two of the rest stops this year. We'll see.....

Last Race, Last Lap Gift

I'd been looking forward to Sunday's criterium in Pensacola. It looked like the kind of course that I like -- fairly technical with turns in both directions and not too long of a drag race from the last turn to the finish. After checking out the standings from Saturday's racing I figured I didn't have much to lose, either. I was down around 13th place thanks to my time trial time and would need around eight seconds to move up one more spot. Considering the horsepower in the 34-rider field, I was expecting a fast and aggressive 50-minute criterium.

Warming up with Dave we discussed the possibilities. Dave said he'd try and cover things early in the race. We were both expecting a fast start and lots of attacks, and unless a good breakaway opportunity presented itself, our best shot for this race would likely to be to hope for a fast hard race finishing with a pack sprint. This was a course where positioning during the final laps would be crucial to a good placing in the sprint.

The Master 35+ race started pretty much on time at 10:20 am, and as expected, the first four or five laps were fast as the field kind of sorted itself out and the early breakaway attempts went off and were pulled back. After a while, though, things settled down a little bit. There were still a number of really serious breakaways, but this field was not giving them a whole lot of rope. There were a couple of times when I really had to go flat out to close a gap that I thought might be "it." One of those times was the hot spot sprint where it looked like the guys who had sprinted hard for it might just decide to consolidate their advantage and try to stay away. Anyway, with five or six laps left the pace started to fluctuate more and there were a few times where the pack was spread out all over the road as nobody wanted to be on the front. Finally, with about three to go things got serious again. It was a constant battle just to maintain access to the front and, frankly, I was loving it. With two laps to go Debbie Milne, who had been riding really well, suddenly flew off the front. I thought maybe she had decided to go for the classic last minute break while the front was all clogged up with sprinters. As I later learned, she had thought it was the bell lap and once she discovered it wasn't, she shut down and came back to the pack, which by then was pretty strung out. The last lap started out as last laps usually start out -- fast. Riders were taking more chances than usual in the turns. Behind me, I heard Donald scrape a pedal on the first turn. I was too far back. Out of the saddle I inched up a couple of places between the next two turns. Then, coming into the 3rd-to-last turn I saw the inside line open up and went for it, flying through smoothly on the right. As I stood to accelerate I saw someone skip a pedal hard just ahead and to the left. His bike went all sideways (he rolled a tire) and as the riders behind him hit the brakes I accelerated to catch the wheel of the one rider who had been ahead of the crash. I caught his draft on the short block between the last two turns, but waited a bit too long to start my sprint so I couldn't come around him before the line. By then, of course, other riders had caught up too, so I was lucky to hold onto 2nd place. Even so, it was kind of a nice gift to get for my last race of the season.

Not Working in Pensacola

Friday afternoon I skipped out of work early, loaded up the car and started the drive East to Pensacola for the first, hopefully annual, Pensacola Classic stage race. I was travelling solo this time, battling the unsteady flow of Friday evening traffic. I already knew I'd be hitting Mobile, Alabama right at rush hour. Ordinarily, I prefer to get up at 4 am when I'd have the whole road to myself, but I was hoping to be able to drop off some of the LAMBRA equipment with Ricky when I picked up my packet at Bamboo Willie's down at Pensacola Beach. As it turned out, he wasn't there, so all that stuff would have to stay in the car overnight in the Motel 6 parking lot. At number pick-up the person handling registration handed me a blank release form. Hmmm. Having pre-registered on BikeReg already, I was expecting that they would have the nice pre-printed release form ready for me to sign. I took one glance at the form and handed it back, saying, "This is the wrong form." ---- Blank Stare ---- I explained that she'd given me the one-day form and not the regular form. She didn't know. Bad sign. The next morning I'd hear from a couple of the LAMBRA officials about the problems they'd run into when getting the entries set up for the race. There were many riders for whom they could find no release form, and many others where the rider had just signed the form -- no name, license number, etc. Typical problems for a first-year event.

Saturday morning we had a 50-mile road race on a nice 25-mile course up around Milton. The masters field was a good size, maybe thirty or thirty-five. I really don't know for sure since I still haven't seen any results (it's Sunday morning and I'm sitting in a local Starbucks getting ready to head to the criterium course). This was a fast and aggressive race. Every time I looked up there was another break off the front. For the first lap, the pace rarely dropped below 25, and we were well into the 30s on numerous occasions. There was a lot of horsepower in this group and by the end of the first lap I was starting to seriously doubt that anything was going to be able to stay off the front. Every time a group would get more than about fifteen seconds the pack would accelerate and pull it back. I tentatively decided to save my energy and roll the dice on a pack sprint. The second lap seemed a bit slower than the first, and despite numerous breakaway attempts everything was still together, I think, when we made the final turn a few miles from the uphill finish. I think a couple of guys got away somewhere between there and the finish and they may have made it to the line ahead of the group, but I'm really not sure about that. Anyway, there were still a lot of people left in the pack and most of them were thinking they had a shot at the pack sprint, me included, so things were fairly tense over the final couple of miles as everyone wanted to be near the front but nobody wanted to be on it. There was a fast downhill to a little wooden bridge right at about 400 meters, and then a moderate climb all the way to the finish line. I wasn't positioned too well coming down the downhill, but I was still close enough to the front to do well once the left lane opened up at the 400 meter mark, which we hit at probably around 40 mph. I took a few pedal strokes as the sprint started and reached for the shifter. Disaster! Somehow the chain must have gotten between two cogs and slipped -- and slipped -- and slipped. By the time it finally caught a number of people had gone past me and I was sprinting uphill in something like the 53x13. Shifting again didn't seem like a good idea, so I sprinted it out, passing a few people and lunging for the line along with a few others somewhere between 7th and 10th. I felt good sprinting, but was rather disappointed with the placing. It was my own damned fault, of course. On Friday I'd put on the 12-27 Miche casssette I'd ordered for Six-Gap in order to try it out. The cogs weren't aligned quite the same as on my Campi cassette, so I'd tweaked the derailleur a bit to accommodate. Then, when I put my racing wheel on I'd just turned the adjuster back to where I thought it had been. It seemed fine during most of the race, but obviously it wasn't. Oh, and there was another semi-mechanical issue for this race. I did the whole thing with 60 psi in my rear tire. I'd pumped it up before the start and I guess the valve must not have seated well. On the start line I reached back to check the pressure and I remember thinking, "that seems kind of soft." It was. Good thing I'm not a big guy and that I missed all of the potholes.

Saturday afternoon's 5km time trial along the beach was hot and presented it's own problems, mainly traffic. The early groups had a lot of trouble with slow-moving cars, but by the time I started, an hour and a half later, the police had started turning back a lot of the cars. There was a stiff wind blowing off of the Gulf, but it was a direct crosswind and didn't really seem to have much of an effect. I lined up a few minutes before my start hoping to put in a respectable effort with my feeble little clip-ons amidst a sea of decked-out TT bikes. The first time I looked down at the computer, it read 28 mph. I thought to myself, "that's probably not sustainable," and backed down just a bit to compensate for that little shot of adreneline that I always get at the start of a time trial. The next time I looked at the computer it said "0." What??? Crap. The speedometer had chosen a particularly bad time to go from working to NOT WORKING. I *cannot* time trial without a speedometer. (Some would say I cannot time trial *with* a speedometer, and they wouldn't be too far off.) Anyway, this development really took the wind out of my sails. I slowed down a little bit and even considered just sitting up sparing myself the pain. I didn't, of course. So as I was approaching the turnaround I sat up and pulled the computer head off of the mount and then replaced it. It worked, so at least I had a speedometer for the return trip. I'm not sure if that was good or bad, because some of the numbers I saw there were not encouraging. So the bottom line is that, in addition to being painful as usual, my time trial was also frustrating and disappointing. Oh well, that's bike racing. Dave and I had a nice dinner with Mitch at Flounders where I drowned my sorrows with a couple of pints of beer (and a quart of Gatorade that I drank on the way back to the hotel). A little dehydrated, perhaps?

I don't know what to expect from this morning's criterium. The course looks suspiciously like one we raced on at masters nationals some time back in the 80s. We'll see.

Unsettled

It's that time of year again. Days are getting just a little bit shorter and suddenly, almost unexpectedly, another racing season is sputtering to an end. I always feel kind of unsettled in September, as does the weather. One day it's hot and humid and feels every bit like summer, and then the next morning there's this cool dry air and those long morning shadows, and I want to ride easy and enjoy the breeze. So it was this week. Tuesday's training ride was fast and hard on the way out, and a little easier on the way back, as per usual, and Wednesday's was the traditional long, long 24 mph pulls in a steady paceline. Then there was today.

The humidity was back, but there was still just the slightest remnant of Tuesday's cool morning in the air. As often happens for the 6:15 am ride this time of year, the group seemed a little reluctant to lift their elbows up off of their handlebars and actually start the ride. By the time we hit the playground the group was getting pretty large. I'd guess we had close to twenty this morning, and even though Woody was taking it easy today we ended up in a long paceline at around 27 mph. I'd dropped back after taking a pull early in the ride and after a few miles noticed that nobody was coming back. I guess someone was short-circuiting the rotation somewhere ahead of me, but we were nonetheless going fast enough that I wasn't too inclined to try to move up. Eventually the guys who had been stuck up front started getting tired and trickling back down the paceline, which finally allowed the back half of the group to find the front and take over the pace-making duties. Thanks to a light tailwind the effort level never went too far into the red, except for a few brief times when there was a big surge at the front. After the turnaround, however, we could really start to feel the wind, which was now mostly in our faces, so the pace eased up a bit. The net result was a fairly decent workout and arrival back at the house a few minutes later than usual.

So earlier today I registered for the upcoming stage race in Pensacola. It's a good thing I finally took the time to read the flyer because as it turns out they are requiring pre-registration. That's pretty brave this time of year. That fact, by the way, is not mentioned on the main event website page and it's not mentioned on the race flyer that's linked to that page. It's only mentioned way at the bottom of the BikeReg site. Could be an issue for some people, I suspect. Anyway, the $70 entry fee plus gas, two hotel nights, etc. kind of stings right now. Even so, those guys deserve to have a good turnout since they've been so supportive of our races all year. The Cat. 5 race is being handled as an omnium and the road race is already about ten riders over the 50-rider limit, so I'm not sure how they plan on handling that.

It's looking like I'll be making the trip alone since I have to bring some of the LAMBRA race equipment with me (one of our officials is officiating and the promoter will be paying LAMBRA a small per-rider fee). I think this will be a fun race, but I have to admit to feeling a little demotivated right now. I think it's just the time of year. We'll be making the annual pilgrimage up to Georgia for Six Gap the following weekend, and after that, well, we'll see. Right now it's looking like we will have some track races at the Baton Rouge Velodrome in October, and there's some serious talk about a Cyclocross series as well. Hopefully all of that will happen. Somewhere along the way I will need to make arrangements for the annual USAC meeting, a business trip (probably two), the LAMBRA annual meeting, a trip to Iowa, and who know what else. I'm already tired.

Change of Routine

It might have been just another in my series of same-old weekends. Fortunately there were a couple of tweaks that allowed for a slight -- actually very slight -- change of routine. Saturday morning I got out the door nice and early as usual, arriving at the Harrison Ave. Starbucks (after again setting off the traffic light camera with my bike) around 6:30 am. I had my usual iced coffee with just one shot of milk, and headed out with the group just before 7. Unfortunately I'd neglected to eat anything. This was a bit of a mistake and you'd think I'd know better by now. The combination of an empty stomach, coffee, and milk had my gut churning for the next two hours. The Giro got going pretty fast on Hayne Blvd., and after we went around the turn onto Paris Road, I figured I'd better spend a little time on the front because I was going to have to turn back early. I was signed up for a 10 am CPR certification course at Tulane, so when we got to Chef Highway I said goodbye to the group and headed back home.

The CPR course took from 10 am until around 3 pm and it was reasonably interesting and informative. That evening Jordan was having a party for the Tulane Cycling Assn., so I figured I'd stop by for a little while. Well, I ended up staying there until nearly 10:00. The turnout was pretty good, as were the hamburgers. While I was there, I was trying to figure out what I was going to do on Sunday. There was one of the MS Tour training rides on the northshore, there was a different ride that the Midsouth guys were doing in order to paint the sprint lines for the winter rides, and then of course there was the Giro Ride. I ended up deciding to do the MS Tour ride. I guess I must have been in the mood for a change of routine.

Sunday morning I headed over to Puccino's to meet Joey and Mignon for 6:45. I wasn't quite sure what to expect of this ride. I was kind of envisioning a sea of baggy jerseys, rear-view mirrors and recumbents. Of course there were some of those, but most of the various racing team jerseys seemed to seek each other out and we all started together. There wasn't any sort of organized start for this ride, so I guess our group was probably among the last to head out onto the circuitous 60-mile route. I was expecting a fairly easy ride and hoping I wouldn't end up wishing I'd taken one of my other options. I needn't have worried. Once we got past the warm-up stretch along the Tammany Trace, the pace suddenly started to rise and the group started to string out. I craned my neck to see who was up there. VJ was on the front, and close by were Matt, Todd and a couple more of the Giro Ride regulars. The speed stayed quite fast, although everyone stopped at a couple of the rest stops. I don't think I even got through one of my water bottles even though it was getting pretty hot by the time we got back to the car.

So I guess the bottom line for the weekend was that I missed a bit of the usual training intensity but in the process got in some good solo riding on Saturday and some surprisingly fast and fun "social" riding on Sunday. I guess now it's time to start thinking about next weekend's stage race in Pensacola.

Saints Alive

It was warm and humid and oh so very dark this morning. With one hand on the bike, I pushed open the basement screen door, rolled the Orbea forward just enough, letting it fall onto my torso as I used both hands to lock the door behind me. The creaky screen door slammed shut and I looked up at the eastern sky. Yesterday was a new moon, so the sky looked pretty dark and Jupiter, I presume, looked really big and bright. Quite a bit brighter, in fact, than my headlight which seems to be badly in need of fresh batteries. As I rode up the access path to the top of the levee, I looked up ahead to see who might be there. It looked completely vacant (Zack was hiding behind one of the stacks). I glanced down at my watch to see if perhaps I was earlier than usual. It was 6:12 am. The ride starts at 6:15. Within those three intervening minutes I guess seven people must have arrived. Amazing how people get their morning ride timing down to the last second. We hung around a few more minutes as the sky started to brighten up, and by the time we were a mile down the road we'd picked up even more riders. The levee police had the bike path blocked off under the Huey P. bridge this morning, so we all had to ride straight down one of the access roads, stop amid the sand and rocks at the bottom, wait for a break in the morning traffic, and ride the broken-up edge of River Road for a few hundred yards before we could get back up on the bike path. The group got all broken up during that process and it took a while for everyone to regroup.

Woody held out as long as he could, but a little while later he went to the front and just like that our speed went from 22 to 27, which was about as slow as it got all the way out to The Dip. The only image I have in my head of the first half of today's ride is a rear wheel, cassette, derailleur, and blurry asphalt. The paceline split and regrouped a couple of times, but I wasn't too concerned because I knew Woody would be turning around early and that the pace would then ease up a notch. Well, it was a rather small notch, actually, and the paceline got quite well diced and sliced by the time we reached the turnaround.

The ride back started out at an easy pace, but by then we'd picked up a few fresh legs and so the last half got quite fast again. I felt like I was on gap-closing duty most of the way back. Then, of course, we had to negotiate the path closure again. I was near the front at the time and coasted down the levee, shifting to the small ring as I went. I lucked out and merged into the slow-moving rush hour traffic fairly easily, but when I got to the spot where I had to make a right turn through sand and rocks straight up the levee slope I ran into trouble. Usually I am able to pick a good line and maintain a little momentum without washing out in the sand. This time, however, there was a truck coming down the slope and suddenly I ran out of options. I hadn't shifted to a low gear yet, and had to make the turn very gingerly to avoid falling. With zero momentum left, I tried for an emergency shift to a low gear but predictably the chain slipped and I had to put a foot down. Then I had to lift the rear wheel and turn the crank to get things in back straightened out again. Nothing like starting from a dead stop heading straight uphill. I'm not sure where everyone else went at that point. I saw VJ continue on River Road, since he normally stops at the playground anyway, and I guess a number of the others must have done the same. I rode slowly down toward Ochsner with Donald, looking frequently over my shoulder and wondering where everyone else was. I eventually turned around to pick up Zack, but then split off to ride home.

So things here at work are really dead today. There's this Saints game thing this evening and since it's the kickoff of the NFL season there is this huge pre-game thing going on. There's a huge stage in the Quarter for a pre-game Dave Matthews concert, a big parade that will run down Decatur Street, and I assume a huge tailgate party at the new "Champion Square" next to the Dome. The city government is completely closed today, the downtown campus will probably be essentially shut down by 2 pm, and even here on the uptown campus things are really quiet. Lots of people are off today or have suddenly come down with "Saints Fever." I have a couple of calls to make but I'm not expecting anyone to answer the phone and will probably resort to email. I did take a minute to track down a 12-27 Campi-compatible Miche cassette for the upcoming Six Gap Century. Hopefully that will make the last few miles of Hogpen Gap a little less painful. I went with the cheap Miche cassette because I really didn't want to give up that 12 tooth cog for the fun descents (most of the Campi cassettes dropped the 12 when the big cogs went to 26 and beyond.). We'll see how that works.....

Return of the Muggies

Our little flirtation with Fall was beginning to dissipate by Tuesday morning as I made my way out to meet the early group on the levee. My legs were starting to feel the effects of the long rides of the long Labor Day weekend, so I was hoping that the group might exercise a little restraint. The turnout for the ride was relatively small, which kept the speeds down a bit, but just like the day before, we were tempted by an outgoing tailwind. One might think that riding with a tailwind would be easy, but my experience has always been that it is just the opposite. For one thing, the relative energy savings of being in the draft are lowered. For another, it seems that riders are far more willing to push themselves into the red with a tailwind, enticed as they are by the fast speeds. They always seem to forget that there will be an equal and opposite wind on the way home. I arrived back at the house pretty well soaked in sweat, even though the pace, relatively speaking, wasn't really over the top. As I got ready for work I remembered that (a) I had no spare tube for the commuter since I'd confiscated it the day before for the Orbea, and (b) I was pretty sure I'd broken a spoke in the commuter's rear wheel during that ill-fated ride on the rim last week. I took a look at the wheel and quickly found the broken spoke and equally quickly decided to take the car to work rather than deal with it all. Besides, I was out of glue, so I couldn't even patch a tube to take with me. Around lunchtime I was out near the CBD, so I stopped at the Wal-Mart and found a nice big tube of Slime rubber cement that should let me patch a bunch of tubes.

That afternoon we had a Tulane Cycling ride scheduled for 6 pm, so when I got home I rushed over there to find seven or eight riders, a couple of which had just shown up to pay their dues. We headed through the park to the levee path where the group quickly split, so I stayed behind and ended up riding mostly with a very new rider on a rather aged but functional aluminum Schwinn. Actually, our 16 mph speed was quite welcome after the four long group rides I'd done since Saturday. The only problem was that it was getting quite dark by the time I got home, and although I was glad I had my red blinky light still attached to my seat bag, I was wishing I had also left my headlight on too.

That night, after dinner, I patched a couple of tubes and set about fixing that broken spoke on the commuter. Since I had a spoke of the correct length and threading handy, it was an easy fix, but when I put it on the truing stand I discovered it was way out of line, but not in the place where I'd replaced the spoke. I was perplexed for a minute, but then I checked more carefully and found yet another broken spoke. I shouldn't be too surprised to find broken spokes on this particular wheel. I'd gotten it for free from Adam probably seven or eight years ago (at least) when he pulled it out of the little shed behind his old shop on Calhoun Street. It's a salvaged rear wheel from one of those famous, or infamous, Viscount bikes from the mid-70s. I remember seeing them at Betat's when they came out and thinking what a great deal they were because they weighed about the same as the better-known brands at probably half the price. Unfortunately, the "innovative" aerospace aluminum forks, aka the "death forks," tended to snap off rather unexpectedly and the unthreaded bottom brackets proved to be a constant source of problems for the survivors.

Wednesday's ride turned out to be a little bit faster than usual for some reason. It was still pretty steady, but rarely dropped under 23 mph, even with the headwind on the way back. Also, the humidity was back in full force Otherwise, it was pretty uneventful -- just a quiet 25 miles or so in a steady little paceline. Afterward, Zack and I stopped at Starbucks for some iced coffee and conversation until I suddenly realized how late it had gotten and rushed off for home and, ultimately, work.

Up and Over

Holiday training rides are always interesting, in a schizophrenic kind of way. There had been a few emails on Sunday resulting in an apparent consensus, which means more than two people responded. The plan involved a 7 am start at the "stacks" on the levee bike path with a ride out to Destrehan and back. If all went well, we would also go up and over the Destrehan-Luling bridge across the Mississippi, which adds a nice 1 mile climb. I really didn't know what to expect as far as participation goes. I awoke earlier than I needed to, which turned out to be a good thing because I remembered that I was down to only one spare tube and about a hundred others with holes in them. Normally, I'd just sit down and patch a few, but as it turned out, my trusty can of glue had finally dried up to the point of uselessness. Considering the historical success rate of my tube-patching activities, I'm not generally comfortable without two spare tubes, so I went back upstairs and dug the spare tube I carry for my commuting bike out of my messenger bag, thereby doubling my chances of having a tube that held air. I guess I need to put glue on my rapidly growing list of things I need to get, along with a six-gap compatible cassette and new chain.

Anyway, there were six or seven people at the start, and that number grew quickly once we got rolling. Before long we were up to about fifteen, I guess. There was a light tailwind and although we'd started out at a nice civilized holiday-ride pace, after a while things started getting seriously out of hand. When we had to negotiate a few pedestrians and casual cyclists, two or three riders split off the front and suddenly we were in full-on chase mode. The group started to splinter, but eventually things slowed down and everything came back together.

When we got to the bridge a number of people decided to skip the excitement and wait while the rest of us headed up the long curving on-ramp. This particular bridge over the river happens to the end of a section of Interstate highway, so although there's a nice wide shoulder (littered with road debris as always), the traffic tends to be going pretty fast. Lawrence took off up the climb, drawing Mark and Steve, who eventually passed him before the top. We over the bridge, regrouped at the bottom, and rode right back over. The ride back was a little sketchy because they had the shoulder of the road barricaded off because of some work they were doing up there (replacing the support cables, I think). Of course, I'd never ride over this bridge if it weren't a quiet Sunday morning or holiday, so it wasn't too terrible.

The ride back remained nice and controlled for a pretty long time, but the growing headwind was making it harder and harder to maintain the 22-23 mph pace. A few people started pushing the pace, which started opening gaps, and then, despite the headwind, the speed started increasing even more. Naturally, things completely came apart and I found myself trying to buffer the surges without losing contact completely. Anyway, what I'd expected to be a nice smooth holiday ride turned out to be significantly harder than anticipated. It happens.

Ride, Lobster, Ride

Sitting here on a Sunday afternoon playing MP3s from the laptop on the antique Realistic System Seven and finally drinking that bottle of Abita "A Charitable Pilsner" SOS. I'm not really much of a fan of Pilsner, but hey, it's a good cause and an interesting website, so I'm doing my part. With my legs finally feeling more or less normal again, I had been considering a long ride in the country for Saturday, but I ended up just setting my sights on the good ol' Giro Ride instead.


So there I was at 6:05 am Saturday looking out the door and trying to decide whether to put the headlight on or not. I decided to leave it at home, but most definitely turned on the rear blinky light. A little cool front had come through, dropping the temperature down a few degrees from normal, although I still went for an iced coffee when I arrived at Starbucks. I mean, it was cooler, but really. Anyway, although the Giro Ride took a little while to really get going, and we were missing a few of the guys who normally animate the front of the group, it turned out to be a pretty good workout. Sixty miles later I rolled the bike back into the house thinking, "Man, I sure feel better after the Giro when it's not 95 degrees and I'm not totally dehydrated and I can actually still see through my sunglasses." Imagine that. Other than a little tree-trimming out in the back yard, I pretty much blew off the rest of the day, sitting on the couch where I watched two full episodes of Star Wars on TV. Yeah, I do that sometimes.


Last night the neighbors came over with an ice chest full of Maine lobsters plucked out of the Atlantic the day before. Apparently having a brother who is a lobsterman has its advantages. These were "Shedders," which means that you can generally crack them open with your hands. You won't find these at your favorite New Orleans seafood restaurant! Anyway, between the lobster feast and the accompanying adult alcoholic beverages I was ready for bed by 10 pm. I wasn't what you'd call a highly productive day, but then again, you need some of those now and then.


Sunday was another Giro Ride for me. The morning temperature was even cooler than it had been on Saturday, which is to say that it may have dipped down to 75F or so. It felt absolutely great. As usual, the Sunday Giro crowd was a bit smaller and the ride a bit easier, despite a significant WNW breeze. As we were riding out along Hayne Blvd. someone rolled up alongside me and asked if I was "going out to Ft. Pike." This meant that at least a couple of people were planning to extend the ride by an extra 20 miles. I told him "no," but was still kind of considering it. I had put a Powerbar in my pocket before leaving home, and it wasn't going to be miserably hot, so it the back of my mind I was holding it as an option. Then, on the service road, Keith (Desire Title) flatted. A few of us stopped to help as the rest of the group continued on. Robin grabbed the wheel and after trying two different tubes we finally got back on the road only to immediately discover that my own front tire was also going flat. That meant another stop, so by the time we got going again we were probably fifteen minutes behind the group. As we got our paceline rolling down Chef Highway I did a little math and figured we'd probably see the group somewhere just after the Highway 11 split. This might have presented a problem. With the West wind, the group would have a nice tailwind, so it was entirely possible that they'd be going 30 mph when we turned around to join them. Luckily they were still going pretty easy, so everyone was able to make the u-turn across four lanes of state highway and merge back into the group. I guess the cooler weather had everyone in the mood to just enjoy the ride today. A couple of minutes later, Eddie flatted and everyone stopped. Other than a couple of brief surges and sprints up the bridges, the pace never really got too fast after that.


With tomorrow being a holiday, I'm planning on meeting a few people (I hope) on the levee at 7 am for a long ride. If I can get any takers, we may ride across the river twice on the Luling/Destrehan bridge. I could use a couple of miles of something -- anything -- that's not flat.

Pulled

This time of year I always start to feel like I'm being pulled in ten different directions at once. As soon as the days start getting shorter, and the mornings just a bit cooler, people around here start to emerge from their heat-induced August hibernations. There are a few Fall races and rides still to do, some travel looming on the horizon, Tulane cycling club activities, and of course a little surge of activity at work. It's all good, of course, but I find myself doing some things I otherwise hate to do, like not reading some email until the next day and putting off some of the cycling-related work in order to keep up with the work-related work. Fortunately, there's coffee.

So Thursday morning I rode out to meet the morning ride. The gradually waning day length seems to be most noticeable this time of year, probably because sunrise gets pretty close to the start of the rides. On the plus side, the morning temperatures have been relatively pleasant lately, which is to say they've been below 80F. There's even a little cool front that is supposed to be coming through, which should make the weekend weather pretty nice. With the road racing season just beginning to wind down, the training ride speeds begin to fluctuate this time of year, and Thursday morning the pace remained conversational for a long time before finally starting to ramp up. By the end of the ride I was, for a change, not completely drenched with sweat, so I stopped off at Zotz on the way home for a cup of dark roast and a quick check email check. I had to ride downtown for an 11 am meeting, so I just worked from home until 10:30 rather than add the extra four or five miles going to and from my uptown office. Everything was going smoothly. I packed a nice fresh shirt, hopped on the bike, and, with some time to spare rode at a nice gentlemanly speed down Fontainbleau to Broad Street, expecting to have lots of time to change cool down and change shirts before taking the elevator up to the big board room on the 24th floor. Just after crossing Washington Avenue, however, I felt the rear rim hit the ground. Flat tire. I sought out a shady spot on the sidewalk, pulled a sharp sliver of rock out of the tire, and replaced the punctured tube with my spare. It took a little too long to pump up, but I figured I must not have gotten a good seal on the valve, so with maybe 40 psi in the tire I packed up and headed off again down Broad toward the overpass. I didn't even make it to the top of the overpass before the tire went flat again. I was out of options. I glanced at my watch and figured I could probably still make the meeting even though I'd have to ride the last two miles on the flat. It was close, but I made it there, changed into my fresh shirt, and walked into the meeting just about half a minute late with a cold Coke in my hand. Luckily The Wife had taken the car to work, so after the meeting I was able to get the keys and drive the bike and myself back home where I fixed the flat, smeared some olive salad on a slice of bread for lunch, and rode over to the uptown campus for a three hour "subsurface oil sampling" session with the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command and forty of fifty researchers. It was actually pretty interesting. It would have been more interesting if they'd told us who was going to get the next $10M in research funding that they are about to announce.

By 7:30 I was over at Zotz again working on a sponsorship proposal for the Bastille Day Criterium project. Some good progress was made on that, thanks mainly to other people "nudging" me to finally sit down and really get it started. Sometimes I need a little nudge, you know, especially when I'm feeling pulled in multiple directions at once. Anyway, I'm hoping to get in some miles this weekend. Six Gap is approaching and no combination of ultra-low gearing will compensate for insufficent miles when you're seventy miles into a 104 mile ride in the hills.

This morning's Friday ride (that's the photo way up there at the top) was nice and steady. We rolled along in a good paceline taking long pulls at 23-24 mph as we enjoyed the slightly cooler morning air. It was good. Amazingly, I can *still* feel the damage I did to my quads last week. Wow! That is not good.

Pain and Rain

I awoke at 4:30 am Sunday morning to the sound of rain. I'd set the alarm for 5:15 but couldn't go back to sleep. The Time Trial in LaPlace was scheduled to begin at 8 am. I had to be there around 6:30 am. This was not looking good. I moved my legs to get out of bed and winced in pain. The quads felt like blocks of wood. Any thoughts I may have been harboring about actually riding the TT were immediately dismissed as I hobbled about getting dressed. I was disappointed that I couldn't ride, but it would have been pointless to have even tried. I'd already staged all of the equipment I needed to bring down in the basement, but when I opened that door and looked at those steps, I paused. This was going to hurt. If' you've ever overcooked your quads you know that the most painful thing you can possibly do is to walk *down* a staircase, especially one without a banister. I clomped down one stair at a time, sideways.

By the time I was ready to load up the car the rain had eased up a little bit so I was able to make the seven or eight trips back and forth with the generator, clock, bins of clipboards, tables, coolers, etc., without getting too terribly wet. It was still too dark to get a good read on the sky, but by the time I was out around Kenner I had no doubt what it looked like. Once again the rain started falling -- sideways -- complete with a full thunder and lightning show. That's when I started getting text messages that mostly all said the same thing, "Is the race still on?"

At 6:45 I was standing in the rain with Eddie and Mark and Carey and we were debating what to do. Someone pulled up the weather radar and it actually looked like things might improve, so we decided to wait until 7 am before making any hasty decisions. Five minutes later the rain stopped and the clouds parted a bit and we were good to go. I guess we lost about ten riders to the weather, but otherwise the turnout was good, we actually started right on time, and everything went smoothly. In fact, there were some really fast times. The fastest of the day came from a Triathlete, disguised as a Cat. 5, who posted a 54:29 for the 40 km TT. Since the wind was gradually increasing throughout the hour and a half that we were starting riders, and the Cat. 1/2s went last, the closest any of them could come was 55:38. I wonder how much closer it would have been without the difference in wind. I mean, it was still a whole minute, and the wind wasn't all that terribly strong. Anyway, somehow we managed to pull off the time trial, which was the final event of the 2010 LCCS season, without rain. By the time I got back home and unloaded the car it was already raining again and I don't think it stopped for any appreciable length of time for the rest of the day.

Monday was wet and rainy, so I figured I'd spare my sore legs for another day. Tuesday it was raining again. It was just as well, I guess. I've been kind of down the last couple of days anyway. Some of that probably has to do with the unavoidable TV and web coverage of the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and then hearing that Laurent Fignon had died was a little sad as well. Fignon really represented the end of an era to me. His career reached its peak just as bike racing was about to undergo some big changes. TT bikes were becoming more specialized (and expensive), cables were getting hidden, shifting was getting indexed, pedals were getting clipless, and then Lemond won the Tour de France by 7 seconds by beating Fignon in the final Time Trial thanks to the then-experimental clip-on aero bars and Fignon's decision to ride without a TT helmet. I'll always remember the contrast between Lemond with his big yellow Giro TT helmet, huge Oakley glasses, and Scott clipons and Fignon, helmetless, bespectacled, and with his ponytail flapping in the wind. The 5-year anniversary of Katrina seems like a turning point as well. Kenny finally pulled together all of his photos from the days immediately after the hurricane when he was helping rescue people from the flood. You can see them here, but be forewarned, a few of the photos are pretty graphic and show people who did not survive.

I finally made it back onto the road this morning for a nice smooth Wednesday ride. The legs have recovered enough that I can now walk without my knees locked. Surprisingly, it doesn't hurt much at all to ride. Yesterday I registered for Six Gap. I'll probably make the stage race in Pensacola in a couple of weeks, follow it up with Six Gap the following weekend, and start thinking about long easy rides in the country.