midweek ride

 

I found myself with some unexpected free time yesterday, and friend Judy F was leading a ride, so I dragged along. It turns out the start is close to home; I left far too much travel time and was early. 

This was to be the first long ride on the new handlebar setup, so the short-ish planned distance (27 miles), and the pace (a degree slower than I usually go*) were a good fit for the day. And what a day it was: not hot, breezy, clear  - a great day for a ride.

*I need to admit that, in my decline, my pace IS slowing. While I can keep up with club rides listed at the pace I go, I'm no longer at the front, and the rides at the next pace down don't feel draggy. We have a club rule about "if you're off the front, you're on your own," but in these days of devices with turn-by-turn directions, it's common for group rides to split into faster and slower groups. I find myself in the slower group on some rides, and the faster group on others, or sometimes both on the same ride.

Judy apparently has a route she likes and does the same route each time; it looks like this. The break comes at Grover's Mill Coffee, about ten miles into this 26-ish mile route.

(I had a LOT of pictures that didn't come out on this ride. Contact me if you want some blurry, barely-recognizable images.)

The early stop gave me an opportunity to complain (there weren't many; I really had to dig). And how do you know if I'm having a good time if I'm not complaining?

Judy's route goes through neighborhoods I don't know, in towns that are close to me. I remember asking Mitch at one point, "Are we still in New Jersey?" "Kansas", was his reply.

A little while later, I asked, "Did you say 'Kansas' before, so I'd say later, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore' "?

"I wondered if you'd pick up on that," he said.

New handlebar setup: The bars put me in a more forward-leaning position. It puts the weight on a different part of my hands, which I'm not used to, and I find I move around the bars frequently for comfort. But I didn't find I got the pins-and-needles, hands-going-to-sleep feeling I got on the other bars, which I tried to manage by using gloves with padding across the full palm (that solution was only partially successful). Friend Ron A points out (on Facebook) that the new bar is a Cinelli 66 Campione del Mondo, so it's got racing cred (far beyond my league, but it pleases my retrogrouchy heart), so I intend to continue with it. The on-the-hoods position gets me a little lower than previously, and out of the wind, and (so far) my back has not registered any complaints about the new posture.

Good ride, good people to ride with. Judy doesn't do this ride every week, but I'm going to start looking for it.