unwieldy

 

I posted a ride for yesterday, and didn't pay much attention to the signups... but then Dave H cancelled his ride for the previous day, and suddenly I had fourteen registrants. I capped it at fifteen, then saw that one of my recent regulars hadn't registered yet, and raised it to sixteen. She registered (I swear I did not contact her directly...), and then there was a flurry of cancellations and registrations (and in one case, re-registrations; a rider was undecided if he wanted to be out with a faster crew or not), but we wound up with sixteen.

All with differing abilities and expectations, and all of them showed up. One who did NOT appear was my usual sweep Dave H (when I offered any assistance, he said he thinks it's a passing ailment; I hope it's true); luckily, Eric H had the legs and the inclination to sweep for that ride. By myself, I could not have reliably kept track of the folks at the front and the folks at the back.

In a (possibly hopeless) attempt to keep the group together, I had posted a route from which I knew I was going to make corrections and changes, and announced when fast riders could ride ahead and wait, and when they would have to stay with me as the posted route was unreliable. It worked, kinda... it would have been better with a smaller group. (One of the changes was over roads new to me. Sometimes that kind of thing works... and sometimes it manifestly does not.)

At the start.

I'm not even going to apologize for that eyes-closed picture of Ming, and she's got such an excess of politeness that I can count on her to forgive me for it. Also: did a memo go around about hi-viz cold-weather gear? (I don't care; I've already made my thoughts on that known.)

We did this route (note the side trip off Elm Ridge Road; with Bayberry closed, I'm probably going to use Elm Ridge, but with little shoulder and fast traffic, limiting the amount of distance on it may be a virtue). We did not take the turn on Fairway to Tyburn, as Laura OLPH usually directs, and she assured me that the ghost of Joe Miller McBride was sticking his tongue out at me (although, as I remember, flipping me off was more his style). However, the road surface on Fairway has gotten difficult, and until Joe's ghost has a chance to repave it, I will risk his ethereal, ectoplasmic ire.

We stopped at Boro Bean, where I mostly got bike pics.

On the way back, a question arose about whether a rider was off the back or in the group at the front. It turned out that not only was she at the front, but had gone off ahead and had told riders to tell me, but, with the separation, the message hadn't gotten to me yet. There has been a certain amount of unnecessary apologizing since (emphasis on the adjective).

Many times on this ride, I mentioned that I'm now an old, retired guy (mostly because I'm trying to persuade myself), and it was pointed out to me that, with some number of my fellows not-close-enough to that status, the frequent reminder was less than welcome. Apologies...

In other news, when I got home, I arranged for an interview for part-time work at Sourland Cycles. Watch this space!