Hot Time, Summer in the South

This time of year my Bianchi presents a problem that only short people can truly appreciate. With the advent of carbon frames and sloping top tubes came a whole new problem. With a normal water bottle cage there's not enough room to use anything except a small water bottle in the seat tube location, and even with a small bottle, there's no way to remove or insert it without hitting the top tube. For much of the year, this isn't an issue. Typical 2-3 hour training rides in fall, winter and spring are easily accomplished, at least by me, on a single large water bottle or two small bottles. However, things change in the summer. So on Saturday morning as I was filling water bottles I was wondering if, and how soon, I'd run out of water on the Giro Ride. I decided at that point it might be about time to visit the LBS and see what the options were for side-entry bottle cages.

Saturday's Giro had a typical crowd, which was good because I was planning on doing a lot of wheelsucking. I was slated for a ride at Red Bluff for Sunday with mostly Cat. 1 and Cat. 2 riders and although I wasn't committed to doing the planned 100 miles, I certainly didn't want to get dropped on the first of the three 33 mile laps. Fortunately, the Giro Ride, although fast, was pretty steady and forgiving and I arrived back home with a little water left and only slightly dehydrated, well before the temperature got above the lower 90s. Rather than go back out into the blazing sun I decided it would be a good day to clean out my T-shirt drawer and closet, a process that yielded about a hundred T-shirts for Goodwill and another full garbage bag of T-shirts for the trash. It was kind of interesting going through all of those T-shirts, but I was pretty ruthless about it and saved only a few of the newer ones plus a handful of old ones like the ones from the Coors Classic, Tour de La, and NOBC. Then, while searching under the kitchen sink for furniture polish I discovered that the sink drain was no longer actually connected to the waste line. The contractor had apparently used a 6-inch tailpiece for a distance that was, at the time, probably 6.1 inches. Something must have settled, pulling the end of the pipe out of the waste line, leaving a little gap. Since everything was still lined up there wasn't exactly a flood of water, but it was obvious that a little water had been spraying out through the gap for some time.  Anyway, a trip to the hardware store got that fixed pretty easily, but then when I was done I went to the bathroom to find the toilet running. The metal clip connecting the chain to the handle lever had broken, so now it's rigged up with a zip-tie. After all of that I decided to reward myself with a new side-entry bottle cage that ended up being a ridiculously expensive carbon one from Lezyne. By then I had learned that both Taco and Steve, who had been planning on doing the Red Bluff ride, had cancelled, so I'd be going up there alone.  Oh well.  Situation normal I guess.

So on Sunday I headed out a bit after 5:30 for the drive up to Morgantown, MS to meet Stephen, Jaden, Joe and a few others. This time I had two full large water bottles for the bike.  The new side-entry cage allowed just enough room to get a standard large-size bottle in there with about a quarter inch to spare. The plan, at least Stephen's plan, was to do three loops of the Red Bluff loop that includes almost as much chip-seal as climbing.  With about 1,500 feet of climbing per lap, Red Bluff is kind of a destination for area riders looking for a little more than the short little rollers available elsewhere. It can also be a pretty hard, hot, and unforgiving ride with lots of irritating chip-seal, a little gravel, etc. We headed out right around 8 am as planned, and I was relieved when we hit the first long climb, just a mile after the start, without it becoming a race to the top. Somewhere along the way Stephen decided that rather than do the whole counter-clockwise loop we would do the long climb on Sand Road and then circle back right away to the main road, returning the way we'd come. Apparently the road surfaces on the back side of the course had been deteriorating and he didn't want to deal with that. This was fine with me since I really like the return trip heading south on 587. Somehow I always feel better going in that direction. After getting back to where we started we then headed west to do the loop backwards, which of course meant riding on the same roads we had apparently been avoiding earlier. By then it was starting to get pretty hot and things were coming apart a lot on the longer climbs. The plan was to finish that loop and stop at the cars to refill bottles. I was feeling OK all this time since nobody was really attacking the climbs, and ended up rolling off the front on Joe's wheel for the last few miles.

Back at the cars I grabbed an ice-cold drink from my little ice chest, and then another, sitting down in the shade for a minute to try and rub some of the pain out of my right foot. As I got up I saw the other guys taking off their jerseys, a decision having apparently been reached that we'd had enough fun for the day. My Garmin was reading 102F by then and I wasn't planning on doing another full lap, although I would have been OK with another ten miles of easy out-and-back. Even so, I didn't feel in the least bit short-changed as we drove down the road to the local Wendy's. I was glad I'd gone on this ride, and also glad to have had the benefit of experience behind me. I've ridden Red Bluff a number of times in mid-summer and it has always been brutally hot which, combined with the power-sapping chip-seal and steady stream of uphills, always makes 60 miles feel like 80, especially on a course there there is no place to stop for refreshments. It sure would be nice if it wasn't so far from home, though.

This morning I slept a little late and was rushing to meet a few of the Tulane riders for an easy ride downtown for coffee at Rouler. As I rushed into the kitchen, The Wife looked quizically at me and said "you're going out?" That was followed by "It's about to rain."  I checked weather.com and saw that the current radar and the hourly forecast were dramatically at odds with each other, but there still seemed the possibility we'd miss the worst of the rain.  Indeed, although we got a bit of a misting on t he way there, and a few raindrops on the way home, we managed to avoid getting very wet.