post-event ride

Leader Ken G just doesn't get how hopeless I am at navigation. We did this ride today, which was very similar to the other two rides I've done with him, except for a very excellent side trip off 518, up to Skillman Rd, then up to Long Hill, so we could come down a nifty descent (more later) on Hopewell-Amwell... well, anyway, it was similar to the other two rides, and I could have told you that once we were on those roads... but I still couldn't have found the route, without a cue sheet, a map, two compasses, and a baggie full of Valium.

I need to brag about Hopewell-Amwell, though. In addition to my hopelessness at navigation, I'm not a great descender (although I can hold my own going UP the hills). But that stretch of Hopewell-Amwell is just the ticket: long, steep... and straight, so I can see that there's no traffic comin' to pick me off. Yes, that is a top speed of 41.9, one of the count-'em-on-one-hand times I've broken 40mph.

We started with nine, and finished with six: two decided they wanted a shorter route, and one broke off as we got close to home. But it was a well-matched, and fairly quick (for a hill ride) group; we averaged 15.5 for this hilly ride. Only one was falling off the back; he was complaining of feeling like a cramp might be coming, and you can't always control those things.

I'm not going to try to remember names: you'll see Barry and Paul in the pictures below, and leader Ken, and Bruce, who's ridden on this ride a number of times, and whose hill-climbing skills are improving at a frightening pace. The pictures are not great (and you only get about half of them). If the way to get good at doing hills is to do hills, and the way to get good at riding into the wind is to ride into the wind, I'm hoping that the way to get good at bicycle pictures is to take lots of bicycle pictures.