I was a bit surprised how few cars there were in the lot when I arrived. With clear blue skies and perfect riding temperatures, I was expecting a full house. As 6:00 approached, I noticed that Bob hadn't changed yet. It turned out that he wasn't going to make the ride. This worried my just a bit, since it meant that I might end up alone after the long climb.
We all left the lot and headed down Silver street at a good warmup pace. Even after we crossed the highway and headed up a small grade, the pace stayed low so the entire group had no problem hanging together. I ended up very close to the front by the time we hit the bottom of the climb, so pulled right out to let the group pass me as I settled into my own pace. I had no idea who would be around to ride with once I got to the top, but Walter said he'd wait up for me at the top. I fell off the back on the steepest part of the hill, but could still see many other riders strung out on the hill ahead of me.
As the grade went down, I started to make up time on a few people ahead of me. I passed Bill Haines, Don McCool and John Marcy (who all jumped on my wheel) by the time I got to the top where we came upon Walters and Ceil.
The six of us set off North at a decent pace. We knew the A group was long gone (though I did get a glimps of them a few times when we hit long stretches) so our goal wasn't to try to catch them. Six riders is really an ideal number for an envening ride. We all took turns on the front as we made our way to Guilford, then turned South on Rte. 5. Of course, the short sharp climb up Tyler Hill road to the 91 overpass slowed up up a bit, but then we had the long descent of Tyler Hill to play on. Walter and I got off the front on the descent, so soft pedalled once we were on 142 until the group came back together.
We decided to take Pond road to get off 142 for a while and in no time were back on 142 for the state line. One of the last climbs of the day was that rise on 142 that always slows me to a crawl. I was determined to not let it get to me this time, so stood up and charged up it. I made it up, but was really winded when I reached the top so recovered while the rest of the group came up behind me.
Just before we got to Rte 10, we started discussing how to get back to the shop. We decided that Adams road was our best bet, so took a right on 10. I was 2nd from the back at this point, will Bill behind me. After a long pull, Walter dropped off the front. As he dropped behing me, I heard him say 'Hey, where's Bill?'
Looking back, we didn't see anybody behind us so called for the group to stop. Within a minute, we made him out, WAY back. He was back with us in a few minutes. It turns out he had dropped his glasses and had stopped to retrieve them without yelling out to the group that he was stopping.
The light was starting to fade as we headed down Adams road. One last climb and we were dropping down to the lights on Rte 2. Only a few hundred feet after going through the lights, I heard a loud BANG. It took a few seconds to realize that somebody had flatted, it sounded more like a backfire from a van that was pulling into a driveway across the road.
It turns out that John had hit some road garbage and sliced his tire open. The group stopped with him for the repair. I decided to ride on back to the shop to let Bob know that we were close so he didn't have to worry about where we were as it started getting darker.
A full 15 to 20 minutes later, the rest of the group arrived. They'd had troubles with the change, so it was fully dark by the time they pulled back into the parking lot.
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23-05-2009 23:24
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Darn Curt, This sounds so much like the ride from Tuesday 5/19! OK, enough with the slight sarcasm - the time lapse movie was very cool and I think you should try it again - but double the length of each image so my poor brain can try to absorb a litte more of each image. Thanks! Jeremy
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