First cold weather ride of the season

I’ll chalk it up to the cold, as we got off to a slow start, with both of our ride leaders claiming mechanicals in the first 5 miles. While Kent just suffered a chain drop, Alan had to fight with a flat and a loose cassette that continued to nag him the rest of the ride. I’ve e-mailed him the link to the Stein Hypercracker so that he’ll never have a similar mechanical again. That’s how Karma works, right?

The first rest stop was really quite early after multiple mechanical pauses, but I was still happy to see the men’s room at the RaceTrac. As I was again 20-odd miles later in Princeton at Allsup’s.

I was pleased how much less bothersome the stretch of 407 west from Princeton is on the new bike. I barely even noticed it. Where usually I’m lagging off the back dreading each pedal stroke, I rode up front with Todd K (who re-appeared at Allsup’s after disappearing en route to Blue Ridge).

Somewhere along the line, I realized that during the weekly “persuade Cayla to go the distance” frenzy I had uttered the words “don’t worry, I’ll ride back with ya if you get tired” and did the gentlemanly thing and fell back to ride with Cayla from the fruit stand on in. Jeff Frye had stopped halfway up the hill on Old Stacey to make sure we were OK. Shortly thereafter, we met up with a couple guys who REALLY needed a Snicker’s at the CVS at Angel & Stacey. We rode as a group until lights split us up and the three musketeers trouped on toward home until Jeff suffered one of the infamous “if Jeff or Lauren ride too close to each other, one will suffer a slow puncture” flats. Then Jeff said something completely inappropriate about a slow leak. So we didn’t say anything when he took off like a scalded dog trying to outrun air. He made it. So did Cayla & I.

It’s not just a bike ride! It’s an adventure!