A Warmer Ride

Finally things have warmed up a bit around here and I was able to leave the jacket and long tights at home when I headed off to meet the Tuesday morning group today.  It was overcast and therefore dark and relatively damp, making the upper-50s air feel like it was going right through the long-sleeve jersey I was wearing.  I wasn't complaining, though.  I'll take damp and 60F over dry and 38 any day of the week.  The ride started off a little faster than usual, stringing everyone out over the first mile or so as a couple of riders baited the group, but soon it all came back together and settled down a little bit.  The whole way out the wind alternated between crosswind, tailwind, and something in-between, so although the speed might have been a little higher than normal for this time of year, the effort level wasn't too bad as long as you still had enough asphalt to get a draft on the crosswind sections. 

I was feeling pretty good, so I spent some time in the wind here and there in order to give a few more riders a little draft because the very front of the group didn't seem to be rotating very often.  When that happens in a crosswind it makes it really hard for everyone beyond the first five or six riders.  As we got farther upriver there were a few surges that caused trouble.  I tried to kind of buffer them when I could, but still had to seek shelter sometimes just to keep from getting dropped.  The group, of course, eventually split, so we were missing a few riders by the time we got out to the turnaround at Ormond.  I had been trying to conserve a little bit because I knew it was going to be a long ride home, mostly into the wind.

The return trip started out fairly easy as the group mostly ignored a couple of riders who were riding off into the distance. It wasn't too long after we finally got really rolling again that Matt flatted.  We were still pretty far from home, so while some of us stopped, some continued on.  It wasn't the world's fastest tire change, but as we stood around criticizing Matt's tire-changing technique, which is of course the main reason we all stop when someone flats, Richard spotted a bald eagle flying overhead.  I think that makes five that I've seen in the last couple of months. Just on the other side of river road there was one house that had a boat decorated with Christmas lights being pulled by a couple of equally decorated plastic alligators.  Right next door was a Christmas bonfire that was about half-completed.  I've never made the trek up the river to see the bonfires on Christmas Eve, but they have gotten to be a big deal in some of the towns that build little mini-festivals around them.  Anyway, after we got the tire fixed our group got a really nice little rotating paceline going for quite a long time, although eventually it started to falter as the wind got stronger and the riders got more tired.