a good route for iffy weather

 For most of my ride start pictures, I was too far away.

I listed this ride late in the week, thinking that with the weather prediction as cold and windy as it was expected to be, I'd have few takers. But the ride was full by mid-day yesterday; in fact, I had one rider waiting in case there were any cancellations.

There weren't. All nine of the other registrants came.

The theory for this ride came after a discussion with Dave H about doing rides in winter during the pandemic when we might not be able to go inside anywhere inside for a stop. His thought was that we could stop somewhere briefly for toilet breaks and eating whatever bars we'd brought, and then go on. We agreed the ride might need to be shorter.

So I came up with a route from Claremont School, going down to Kingston and then up to Somerset, with a stop at the Montgomery arboretum.

It worked fairly well. I'd made the plan on the ride listing and described it at the start. Laura OLPH and Peter G each separately pointed out other benefits: that we were never far from the start if the weather turned, and that we didn't have to ride long into a headwind (in addition to the cold, it was windy, as predicted). I'd like to take credit for planning both those things, but honesty and humility demand I point out both were just dumb luck; I'm not that smart.

Shorty before the end, one of our number went off the road. He complained of no injuries, but his chain got caught inextricably between the cassette and the spokes. (It's a simple job to fix with a socket wrench, a cassette gig, and a chain whip... but these are shop tools; who rides with them? Neil C, do you keep those in your Tardis bag?). The easiest solution was for a rider to head back to the lot, and drive out to pick up stranded rider and bike. I waited at the end for them, and when they showed up, the rider was still complaining of no injuries (well, sort of; there was a certain amount of good-natured pulling of Plain Jim's leg). He should have the wheel tuned when the chain is cleared out of it, too.

The few regular readers who don't only read these posts when I announce 'em on Facebook will know that I recently got a sewing machine (you can click on that link for some sewing machine posts). Laura decided that an apt use of my new talents will be to sew up some catnip toys for her cats, and she delivered my some loose catnip.

There's the catnip, and a few fabric cuts that are too small to do anything else with. I'm not up to tailoring or alterations yet, but I'm fairly sure I can contribute to the delinquency of a few representatives of felis catus.