short ride before lunch

 On the last Wednesday of the month, the Team Social Security riders, the folks in the Princeton Freewheelers bike club who have rides most Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, cut short the rides, so they can gather for lunch at an Italian restaurant near the regular Wednesday ride start. As usual, they have two groups go: a slower, nominally-C-paced ride:

... and a faster, nominally C-plus-paced ride, although some riders go far faster than the thirteen-to-fourteen-mph C-plus pace.

Bill B was listed as the leader, but his aging GPS device got wonky and he lost the route. I didn't have it loaded, so we formed a team with a couple of riders who did (Eddie L and Andy A) and a few others, and made it to the stop at which the others had already arrived.

While they were ind enough to invite me, I didn't do lunch with them post-ride; chores and regret over too much high-calorie eating recently intervened. But it was a good ride; I'm glad I went (and I was presentable enough, on this not-too-hot day, to stop at a grocery on the way home).

Ride page.

last-of-the-month real c+

 Y'know, except for the fact that there was nobody at the ride start when I got there, prompting me to think I'd either selected the wrong start time or the wrong start location...

...and the fact that, before the ride start, one of the new riders had a failure-to-clip-out tumble, and skinned his knee, but not badly enough that he didn't do the ride...

...and the fact that one of my regulars, who's never late, got to the ride start late...

...this was a pretty-OK, uneventful ride.

I listed it after getting an email from one of the riders who was new last time; this C+ ride is one of the few he can do, to which he doesn't need to drive a gazillion miles. He wanted to make sure that I was planning to list it, and that he wasn't closed out.

I don't generally limit my rides. But by the time I got home last night, I had eighteen registrants. A little later, I had a cancellation. So, with seventeen registrants, I set the limit to fifteen, so that, unless I had more cancellations, nobody else could register.

It was a grey morning as the riders started to appear. John K was first, easing my anxiety that I'd messed up the listing.

 

One of the new riders, Eduardo Z, planned to meet us along the way - and then apparently was unusually quick, and started with us at the school. 

And then along the way, John W met us, and followed much of the way.

We stopped at the Blawenburg Bistro, where we tried to ensure that they would not go broke or be acquired by another, less-desirable owner (yes, I'm lookin' at you, PJ's...). Unfortunately, I sweat all over the lens of the camera, and none of the pics are acceptable.

We all made it back, though, and brought the pace in right in the middle of the C+ range. Thanks to Larry for sweeping. 

I plan to run these every month that there's not snow or ice on the ground. Y'wanna come out?

easy job, unexpectedly fast ride

 

My excuse for going on Christine R's (nominally) C ride today was that I'd agreed to do a bit of mechanical work on one of Herb C's bikes, and since he was planning to do this ride, that was a good occasion for us to meet so I could do it. But it didn't hurt that it was scheduled to be a less-demanding ride than I often do, since I'll be doing three rides in as many days, including leading one tomorrow.

The work for Herb was a stem replacement. Herb got a great deal on a bike that was just a little too big for him. He's dropped the seatpost, but the stem was far too long and too low. He finally decided to go with a shorter, higher stem. The one we found was aluminum rather than his preferred carbon fiber, and the handlebar clamp section was a larger specification than his bars... but with the proper shims, carbon paste, and a torque wrench set down to six newton-meters, we got it to work. Herb is just delighted with the way the bike fits now.

We did the job in the parking lot waiting for the ride start. The B+ fast boys got in and out, and the riders for Christine's ride started to show up, along with some of the other rides going out of Cranbury Village Park.

Eighteen to start. We took off at a fast clip. Soon, some were falling off the back; at about 12 miles, my average was 15.2, and I was not setting the pace. I had fallen back to see what was going on with the riders in the back. A few were having real trouble keeping up, and one decided to go back; Robert S agreed to accompany him.

We slowed down some after that... but the final average was still too high for the posted range.

We stopped at Woody's in Allentown, which is a better stop than I remembered; they had better choices for ride drinks and quick food, and treated us like folks (which is a real attractor to me!) 

On the way back, we kept meeting club members on other rides: first Bruce K... then about a half-dozen or so from Dennis W's ride... and, as we were coming back along Old Cranbury Road, Dom C's group from the B ride that had gone out 30 minutes after we did. Those were pleasant surprises (if a bit confusing when Dennis's ride turned at a location that Christine did not).

So maybe you'll come out on my ride tomorrow, and see just how decrepit I am after all this exertion?

tew gets cider donuts

 

The Excellent Wife (TEW) took off this week from work, and has been enjoying herself immensely, including going paddleboarding for the first time. Today, she wanted to go on the Friday Team Social Security C ride, so I agreed to go on the C+ ride and bring her to the park. 

She was more than a bit put out that Eddie L had scheduled OUR stop at Battleview Orchards, where cider donuts would be available, while her stop would have no such offering. TEW has a thing for cider donuts, which I do not share, but de gustibus non est disputandum.

We enjoy seeing the folks at the start. They're always delighted to see her, and she enjoys the attention (mostly...).

Eddie's route (which he inherited from Al P, I'm led to believe) went over roads with which I am largely unfamiliar, but they felt as minimally dangerous as is possible for such a destination; I've been to Battleview Orchards a few times, and I'm fairly sure I remember being a lot more terrified on those rides. You can see the route on the ride page. (HAH! And we actually brought it in at a C+ pace!)

 While there, I bought a half-dozen of the cider donuts, managed to get rid of three (not by eating all of them myself!), and wrapped up the other three in the plastic bag and stuffed 'em in my pocket (I was wearing a home-made jersey with really deep pockets). On my return (with the last of the C+ group; I was a slowspoke today), I found TEW among a circle of the C group and the faster C+ riders, apparently having a great time. I presented the donuts to TEW. The response, even as I am typing this several hours later, was as I'd hoped: I have a certain amount of "good husband" cred out of it.

(I was sure "cred" was going to be flagged as misspelled by the spell checker, but it's not. I'm hopelessly out-of-touch.)

One bike-y mechanic-y note: one of our number had a flat, and in replacing it, inadvertently broke the wire on his Di2 rear derailleur, and had to ride home with only the front derailleur able to shift. While this is a rare occurrence, it is not making electronic shifting more attractive to me. My cheap Sensah Empire mechanical set, however, now has well over 100 miles on it, and is behaving nicely.