Considering all of the trash talk going on the last couple of days it was surprising that only eight riders showed up. The rest of you all (except for young Tom and anyone who was with him) are now officially wusses!
On a nice sunny day with calm winds Tom Aga, Hef 1, Doug M, Mike Wagner, myself, and new club members Steve Wahl, and Christine Wehlburg set off on the normal Saturday ride. We were soon joined by Iain who had ridden from home. Doug, Tom, Iain, and Steve Wahl were on their fixies. The ride started out fairly fixie friendly until Wagner got on the front, and took a monster pull. Then things started to fall apart in other ways. Hef 1 broke his chain. Then Iain had to bail due to time constraints. Shortly thereafter Doug bailed. The rumor is that he was upset that no one had shown up for his breakfast. Actually Wagner showed up, but couldn't find the house although I think Mike was having one of those days as he mistook Christine for a man in the parking lot.
Steve Wahl was having some problems clipping in, but that seemed to settle down as the ride went on. The ride would surge every so often and break apart, but then would eventually regroup. We fought a headwind all the way to the rest stop, and decided we'd head back via the Boyd's Turn route as Tom's thermometer was reading 21 degrees, and it was starting to cloud up. We did have a nice tailwind on much of the return trip. Just as we turned onto Fairhaven Rd Steve Wahl's pedal issue suddenly got a lot worse. In fact part of his left pedal literally fell off, and he was unable to clip in completely. This was made even worse by the fact that he was on a fixie. Undeterred he continued the ride, and rode rather strongly in sections.
Shortly after we crossed 258 Mike, and I took off and did a nice long interval through the rollers. Once we reached Route 2 we backtracked to join up with the rest of the group. Apparently some woman had offered them warm pie. I'm still kind of unclear as to exactly what was offered, and how it was offered, but Tom, Steve, and Christine seemed to be happy with the exchange.
The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful, and needless to say we didn't stand around chatting in the parking lot!
Mike and I both agreed that even though it was colder the weather overall was better than last year's Rite Aid ride.
Kudos to both Steve, and Christine for coming out on a day like today especially for their first Saturday Davidsonville experience. I learned some interesting things from both of them, and it is nice to know there is another Monty Python fan on the squad.
Next Saturday the ride moves back to 10AM unless something really unusual happens. Hopefully some of you wusses will get off the couch, and we'll have a better turnout. Remember the Navy team is starting their trash talking already!
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