traded sunday

I haven't led one of my Sunday rides in a month... but Tom H said it was gonna be too cold for him to lead yesterday (and it was), and wanted to do 40+ miles today, and I didn't really have a plan, so I agreed to let him lead (because many of the same folks would want to do both rides).

Well, we got the folks that would go on both rides, as well as others - we wound up with twelve, and I'm sure I couldn't remember all of 'em. We left from Mercer East.

As we started pedaling out,I felt a sharp pain in my chest that made it hard to breathe. For a moment, I was sure I was having a heart attack... until I remembered that I don't keep my heart on the right side of my chest. And sure enough, within a short distance, the pain dissipated, along with my unwarranted panic.

To celebrate the fact that mortality wasn't taking me right at that moment, I got a few pictures.

We stopped at one of my favorite places that isn't the Pig: Charleston Coffee (they use their Facebook page as their web page, and I refuse to participate in such foolishness). It's attached to a bagel shop, so there's all kinds of wonderfulness, and if I ever plot a ride through that area, I'll be sure to stop there.

Presuming I can find it.

We came back at a pretty good clip: even though the ride page says my average was 15.0mph, there were places where we were cruising at over 20.

Tom, Ralph, Joe, and Laura turned off before the end; the rest of us went back to the lot at Mercer East. Bob N and I were discussing why one of the sites we use sows such disparate results about effort on this ride; I got almost twice the credit he does... and I'm not twice as fast. It's one of those vagaries of the life digital.

But I gotta get back to Blackwells Mills on Sundays.