i needed this ride

After eight weeks without a weekend group ride, I finally got one in today with Laura OLPH and the Hill Slugs. Several of them mentioned the cranky tone of my last post*, and one noted that it might have been a Post Office problem, as he received his paper ride list long before The Excellent Wife (TEW) and I got ours.

An email from Laura said (in part):

We're going to Lambertville on a circuitous route designed to piss off the people who think they know where I'm going.  Only (ha!) 2600 feet of elevation gain (by ridewithgps mapping) in 43.3 miles.  It might be painful, but it's gonna be our baseline.  Gotta start somewhere.

Well, here's the route; you can decide. I'm always lost, so I'm not the one to ask, but it seemed to me that we did a number of the roads we frequently do, but in the other direction. There were also a few loops for no other reason than to add loops (which, frankly, is good enough for me; the point of the ride is not the destination, but the riding). It was unpredictable; long before the break at Rojo's, folks in the front were waiting for Laura to call out the direction. (In the club, riders who have gone off the front of the group and then get separated, often by a mid-ride route change, are referred to as "getting Spragued", after Don Sprague, a leader who has perfected the practice. I think Chris Cook claims he invented it, but nobody refers to it as "getting Cooked".)

Ten of us: Laura, Chris C, and I left from Laura's this morning, and picked up John & Jane D, Ron S, Cheryl, Ed C, Dave H, and Peter in Pennington. All of us, I think, were complaining about the difficulty (and the unexpected headwinds), made worse, I'm sure, by the cold and our less-than-ideal-condition, due to the earliness in the season (that's my story and I'm stickin' to it). Still, the pace wasn't bad, for a Slugs ride... and, most important to me, I got to see some friends I haven't seen in far too long. I needed this ride. I've missed you guys.

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*One other thing I'm stickin' to, though: I still think we should post the rides on the website. Not to do so tells the world that we don't want you unless you're willing to front the $20, sight unseen, for a club membership. The club says that the ride lists are available in local bike shops... but I've been to Bernie's, Bicycle Rack, Economy, Halter's, Jay's, Knapp's (both locations), Kopp's, and others, and I've never seen the lists out.