late winter in april ride

Tom H's post about the ride read:

• Yea I know it is official spring but it still feels like winter.

...and it has felt like winter, with all the cold and wind. One of my coworkers asked if we should put out an APB on Spring.

Enough of us have had enough of winter, though, that thirteen came out for Tom's ride. I got there early, then Joe M rolled in, then a new guy John whom I just met (but he'd been out with Chris C and Laura OLPH the previous week)... and then either driving or pedaling, people just kept arriving.

(I just wanted that one to be the first picture in the post.)

With a group that big, Tom hired me to sweep. We had a quick discussion about who the ride canary was going to be. (The canary in the coalmine is a sign of the presence of coal gas, because the canary dies before the miners do. The ride canary is the one who doesn't keep up or has other problems, and is the first sign that things might not be going ideally.)

The group were nominally B riders, but abilities were all over the map; we split into fast groups and slow groups, and at several points there was probably a half mile between the one at the head of the pack and me in the back. Slow riders aren't always ride canaries, though; some of those folks can put in that pace for six hours without flagging.

The route wasn't particularly demanding, but the headwinds were. The new guy, John, is a chopper pilot; I asked him how we could turn 90° and still have a headwind, and he actually had a useful answer (serves me right for trying to be a wiseass).

Tom promised us little traffic on a Sunday morning, and wide shoulders on roads that would be new to most of us. Now, Tom has been known to engage in mendacity about things like elevation when he knows the routes; when the roads are new, his reliability is even more suspect. And while the traffic wasn't mostly bad (there was one point at which, I'm sure, we caught the congregation being released from an earlier service), the wide shoulders were not as promised (or at least, not as frequent as I had been led to believe).

The group kept pretty good order, though, especially for a group that doesn't ride together much (like, ever), and for it being this early in the season. We got to some Wawa or other and we were still all together.

The stop was about 32 miles into this 45 mile ride, and on the way back, we fell into the "macho mile" riding about which Laura sometimes complains: the riders know the way back, and make little pretense of riding together. I was sweeping, so I stayed with the folks in the back and made sure we didn't lose anybody... and by the time I left the lot in Cranbury, I was the last one out.

Ride page.

I'll be grateful for some warmer weather, though.