cycling

Rode out to Manor on Saturday with DuShun. About 30 miles total, though I forgot to reset the cyclometer until we were a little ways into the ride. Much less hard on me than the last ride we took together. He wanted to go farther. I told him “Look, I don’t want to ride so much that I don’t want to ride anymore.”

We stopped at the Manor grocery, and DuShun noticed, alongside all the usual “pigs for sale” signs and such, that someone had drawn a | inside a circle on the back of their receipt and taped that to the window. He speculated this must be some cryptic signal for a secret society. Anyone have any idea what that means?

On the ride back, we saw a truck in the ditch. It was hitched to a trailer fully loaded with 2x4s; the truck was perpendicular to the road, nose-first, and the trailer was jackknifed past 90°, digging into the side of the pickup. As we rode by, we marveled at this feat of vehicular contortion and wondered how, exactly, it had gotten into that position.

After too long off the bike, and a long run of foul weather, we had a nice day today, so DuShun and I agreed to go riding. I wanted to do something relatively flat, so we headed out towards Webberville. With the wind at our backs on the outbound leg, we made good time, hitting the Webberville convenience store 17 miles out at an average speed of 19.2 mph.

We stopped at the convenience store in Webberville. I was surprised to see a display-case full of bling-bling crapola in front of the counter. There was a large dog-run next door where some guys were training pit bulls to be attack dogs. What has happened out here? Webberville = gangstaville?

Anyhow, I thought it would be prudent to turn back at this point–after all, I hadn’t done a serious ride in a couple months–but DuShun must have been feeling his oats, because he pushed on.

We wound up putting in 42.5 miles. Our average speed at the end was…considerably lower. I was starting to wish the ride was over around mile 30, meaining I am badly out of shape. Which means I need to be doing this a whole lot more.

Rode 360 southbound today. 28 miles. Hot hot hot. Ugh. I haven’t been riding enough and wasn’t prepared for the heat (nominally 99°F–actually a lot more out on the road). I was reduced to my bailout gears by the last couple hills on 360, grinding along at a miserable 6 mph, under a cloudless sky and atop egg-frying pavement.

30 mile ride with Caesar today, northbound on 360. Wind out of the south. Fast. Whee. Light traffic. Caesar showed me a shortcut that I like.

Rode the Webberville-Manor short loop today. 36 miles. Managed to keep my average speed at about 17 mph, despite very strong winds that seemed to be against me for most of the ride (funny how that works). The weather was otherwise beautiful, though.

Rode 360 northbound today, solo. Beautiful warm day. Hard to believe the winter Olympics are going on. Saw plenty of riders out on the road, stopped by Nelo’s shop, where there was a rep from Nimble showing off some impossibly lightweight wheels with carbon rims. He had one unlaced rim and invited me to sit on it. I did, and it didn’t seem to flex at all. Pretty amazing. Now all I need to do is rob a bank…

When I got home, the 5,000-meter speedskating event was going on. Those guys were averaging about 30 mph. I have a hard time doing that on my bike on level ground. Pretty amazing.

Rode to Buda with DuShun and Caesar today. 43 miles. Beautiful day–warm, sunny, clear. But a stiff wind out of the south, which we cursed loudly on the way down, and enjoyed quietly on the way back. At times we wound it up to 30 mph on the flats, which felt great.

The ride was excellent, but was somewhat marred when we were getting back into town and a motorist heatedly berated us for not keeping to the bike lane (which was heavy with gravel, debris, and parked cars), and other imagined violations. I countered (not heatedly) that we hadn’t done anything wrong (I know the law on this), and if he didn’t know that, he shouldn’t be allowed to drive. This riled him even more–he got out of his truck and threatened me, but didn’t actually hit me. We continued with a lively exchange of views. Dushun stepped in at this point and goaded him just a bit. He apparently felt exposed, and decided to retreat to the safety of his truck to yell at us some more. I suggested that if he were really that angry at us, he should have just run us over. At that point, the quality of his insults took a nosedive: he retreated to the old ad-hominem standbys of saying nasty things about our parentage, sexuality, and in DuShun’s case, color. We had to laugh. DuShun asked his 10-year-old son “Are you proud of your dad?”. The son realized his father was being ridiculous. When the light turned green again (he had been holding up traffic through a couple of cycles of the lights), he drove off.

Once we got through the intersection, Caesar (who had ridden across at some point) was talking to a woman who was about to call it in to the cops. We told her not to bother, but once we got back to DuShun’s place, we did.

On a crisp and slightly chilly day, did an in-town ride with Caesar. 23 miles. Fun.

What a day. Perfect weather–upper sixties, little wind, and the air was so clear I almost thought my vision was improved. Needless to say, I took this opportunity to go for a ride. Went down to Buda with Caesar. 45 miles.

Rode 360 with Caesar today. 27 miles. Excellent weather–sunny, blue sky, cool but pleasant. Wind was from the north, so we rode southbound on 360, and I was just jamming up the ascents with the wind at my back.

Stopped at Amy’s Ice Cream after for shakes. I had a coffee-ice-cream shake, C had Belgian chocolate. Also on the menu was one of Amy’s inimitably whimsical flavors, Copstop, which turns out to be coffee and donuts.

Rode the Manor back-loop with Susan today. 35 miles. Couldn’t ask for nicer weather–it must have hit 80°F. Sunny, little traffic, light winds. Perfect. Really weird that it is supposed to get down into the 20s tonight.

Rode Shoal Creek + the Mesa hill with Caesar today. 18 miles. Whee!

Rode the Cuernavaca loop with Ram yesterday. That’s a fun ride, and it was Ram’s first time on it, so it was good to introduce him to a new route.