worm jerky

Yeah, it's been a while since I posted anything. I did go on the Spring Fling last week and led a C ride; the plan was for The Excellent Wife (TEW) to come and I would lead a ride at her pace so we could make a date out of it, but she cane down sick the night before and couldn't. I did the ride anyway with four or five participants (depending on if you count Jeff & Patricia on the tandem as one or two), but the camera was dodgy, so I didn't get pictures, either. I had fun, and rode with some people I don't normally, but I couldn't see how I was going to get a blog post out of it.

Except I just did, didn't I? Ride page here.

So that was the Saturday. On the Sunday, I ran the mechanic station for the Franklin Food Bank Tour de Franklin, with an assortment of routes from one mile to a metric century. I didn't get many pics there, either. I worked on a number of bikes, mostly filling tires (how do these people ride on these low pressures?) and lubing chains, although there was a certain amount of brake and derailleur adjustment, some saddle-height consultation, and at the end, I did a major tune up on a guy's bike. He and his co-rider had the idea that you shift to the big ring to go up hills. I pointed them towards hill-climbing orthodoxy. We also had a discussion of disk brakes, the essence of which was: if you have a bike you like with rim brakes, and you don't ride in wet or muddy conditions frequently... just get on that thing and ride it.

Retrogrouchy, right? Well, as I write this, I just turned 63 a few hours ago. I'm invoking my grumpy senior citizen privilege.

So yesterday, Tom H put in a ride out of the Park-&-Ride in Yardville for 50 miles with about 2500' of climb. I'm a member of Tom's Insane Bike Posse, and that sounded like a good idea; what sounded like too much was Laura OLPH's invitation to add 20 miles by riding to and from her house to the start, through Trenton and across the Calhoun St Bridge. Instead, Ricky and I drag-raced on I295 to the start, he in his Cooper and me in the Prius. Laura, Jack H, and Robert N rolled in, Peter G drove up, and Ken G rode in on his own route.

Because it was an early-season ride Tom did his ritual of the Holy Kickstand, sprinkled with the Holy Water of Brita; as a regular kickstand keeps the bike upright, so the Holy Kickstand is supposed to keep the bike and rider upright. It's a fun ritual, but it's also a reminder not to ride like a jerk.

We mostly didn't ride like jerks. There were some moderately-demanding climbs, and some traffic, but it was mostly a fine hilly ride on a gorgeous day.

We came down the hill for the break at Carversville, and saw that Fleecydale, which I remember having been under construction apparently since the Carter administration, is open again. The Carversville store is neat.

Everybody else apparently thinks so, too; there were a LOT of riders there.

Finally the bike rack cleared out and we could park!

I got to talking about how I haven't given the bike a good cleaning since fall, and discussion led to the kinds of grime that builds up in various places. When you ride in wet weather, there are often a few worm bodies that get caught by the rear brake caliper. They tend to dry off and stick. "Worm jerky," Laura called it.

I thought I saw Bob N turn green as he quickly removed the detritus from his own rear brake.

Then back. Tom had scored most of the hills in the first, say, 60% of the ride, but there was his covered bridge (are you ALLOWED to ride in this area without crossing a covered bridge?).

Now, covered bridges are frequently over streams; streams are at the bottom of hills; so on the other side of the covered bridge, there was, of course, a hill. Hrmph.

Which brings me to my final whine (well, for this post anyway). If you look at Tom's page, linked above, you'll see he got 2488' of climb. My page, however, shows 2976'. How does he get me to climb 500 more feet than he does when we do the same ride?