100 mile weekend

I figure everyone else I ride with blogs, I'd better do the same. I'll pick up a camera and start taking pictures while riding soon.

Friday was Bike to Work day in my fair city. I wanted to wake up early and bike downtown for pancakes, but, eh... I'm SOOO not a morning person. I did manage to shower and pedal 12 minutes to work. Hopped in the bathroom for a lil presto-chango and it was work time.

Rode home at 5, showered and drove to pick up Alex from daycare. We drove out to Brandon to meet up with my gf and her son. We hung out at their house awhile, then zipped a few blocks away to pizza ranch for non-diet food/cake/soda (but what the heck, I'm carbing up for Saturday). Taylor, Alex and Taylor's cousins all played games next door at the County Fair, then opened presents. We went home and went to bed shortly thereafter.

The alarm at 6am was far too early, luckily I'm a boy and don't have to shower. I grabbed my bike clothes, dressed in normal clothes, threw the bike on the car and drove to mom & dad's across town. Kirk was picking me up for our trip down to Vermillion to a crazy ride Biking Brady was putting together. We got there about 8am and saw the first couple riders show up.

Kirk and I settled in with a beer, signed the waiver, then waited for the rest to show up. When they did we did our "Bunyan's Bombers" and started rolling out. The trip down to Martinsburg was easy and fun. At the first big turn I noticed a few riders had fallen off the back of the bunch (the trip across the bridge was about a mile uphill). I was pretty sure some of the riders didn't have a map, so I waited and Darren rolled up a minute later. We rolled alongside each other down thru Ponca, then west to Martinsburg for lunch. We were the tail end of the group, but had an enjoyable ride and still had plenty of time for food.

The food portions were enormous (suffice to say I didn't come close to finishing anything) and I was certain the grease wouldn't sit well with me. An hour or so after sitting down we started to roll home. A number of riders had arranged for rides and were taking a trip home by van/suv. The wind was considerably stronger now, others said 25-30mph with gusts in the 40s. I'm not a small guy and I was being blown around the road (I was blown off into the gravel once). Darren and I slogged our way home, taking frequent breaks.

On one of the uphills (there were tons, it was a hilly route) I looked down and saw my speedometer pegged at 4.6mph. Wow, I can run faster. The nice thing about all that wind was I was in no danger of overheating.

We stopped a couple times (and had 3 offers to ride home in an air conditioned vehicle) but I couldn't justify leaving Darren behind or wimping out. Roughly four (4) hours later we made it to Vermillion. I think some of the other bikers were worried about me-- I was a bit delirious, totally parched, seriously low blood sugar. It was rough.

16 oz of water, 20oz of grapefruit juice, liberal splashing water on my face and a change of clothes and I felt considerably better. Kirk and I headed for home.

Other stuff happened (saturday nite, sunday morning, sunday afternoon) but I'm running out of time and need to get to bed so I'll just tell the rest of the bike story.

Sunday night after dropping Alex off I was calling around looking for a recovery ride. My neighbor Curt was home so I rode around the apartment complex to his place, then we started rolling. He's on a Cannondale hybrid his dad bought him for xmas (his dad bought himself and all the kids bikes for xmas). We rolled down Tomar, over to the bike trail, then kept rolling around the trail. Curt was originally only in it for 6-8 miles (his longest ride to date was 10miles) but we kept going until he wanted to turn back. By the time we hit falls park we were starting to think about a full loop. Curt dropped his water bottle (and it spilled everywhere) so I gave him half of my bottle of gatorade. I didn't think we were in for a long trip, so I only brought 1 bottle.

I was awful proud of Curt, we rolled up Penitentiary hill and kept going. The lack of liquids (we were both out around the airport) started to wear us down. When we got to 41st street we had to get off the bike trail, so we used that opportunity to hit a gas station for water/gatorade. A bit more riding (we took city back streets-- it was too dark for the bike trail without headlights) and we made it home. 22miles of recovery ride, and I dinged the 100miles (give or take) for the weekend.