Sunday, April 5, 2009

Local Shop Ride

Jeff ate a bug today, so I think that means it's truly spring now! I'm glad I have managed to postpone my first bug swallowing of the season! The weather was fairly warm, sunny and windy and we went to Village Bicycle for a group ride. Ribuck met up with us there.

As you can see from the map, we could call this the 'butterfly ride'. It annoys me when I forget to turn the Garmin on at the very start of rides, but I did remember before we got too far. The red/end pin shows the more precise location of the shop.

Riders sorted out into different speed zones in the first few miles and Jeff, Ribuck and I ended up in a group of 10 for most of the ride. This was a really good bit! On the 'train' to Horseneck Beach with a tailwind!

We did 36.51 miles at 16.3 mph average.


I've been riding on my own or with people I know well lately and I found it a little hard to get comfortable riding with strangers again. I was frustrated with the amount of yo-yoing I did off the back for awhile. I'd be on a wheel and hit a pothole or something and get nervous and drop back and then have to work to bridge back, again and again. Eventually, I got it together and did better, particularly if I was on Jeff or Ribuck.

At one point in the ride we had a bunch of wild turkeys cross the road in front of us! It was nice to see the views in sunlight for a change rather than shrouded in fog and clouds. I struggled with a bit of a mechanical for a ways when my chain got stuck in the big ring. When I finally got it free with some awful cracking and popping sounds, everything seemed to be rattling, but after some shifting up and down it got sorted out again. Ribuck had an encounter with another gray pickup truck and a flat when we were nearly back to the shop! Not sure what is with the trucks going for him lately, he's a good, predictable rider!

It's been a great weekend of biking with 2 fun group rides totaling more than 70 miles! I'm looking forward to catching up with the blog reading to see what everyone else was up to =)

3 comments:

ribuck97 said...

It was a great recovery ride today! This pickup was different though. He only honked once to alert us and went over into the other lane.

This one was partly my fault in that I didn't look when I pulled off the front of the paceline.

It was funny to hear someone in 3rd complain that it was taking her 225 watts to go 11 mph on a flat road. Gotta love the wind.

amidnightrider said...

I almost went out to Westport yesterday, but had a few things around the house that needed to get done.

Back to commuting on Tuesday. Light rain and all

amidnightrider said...

RYN about the red light races. That ride served to remind me why I changed my route.

My commute is from the Galleria Mall to the Industrial Park in Taunton. Thats where you see the big golf ball and Holiday Inn when your driving on rt495.