A Busy Week

After riding on Memorial Day with Adrian, I went to the teamFIRE ride on Wednesday, which was plenty zippy for me. We rode out past Pioneers Park and then over to Denton with a good sized group.
 

It was Avery's last ride in Lincoln, so a number of us ended up at Las Margaritas for a farewell party. Good luck, Avery!


Saturday morning, I went downtown to watch friends race - starting with Adrian and Father Tucker in the Cat 5 race.


This guy was a definitely a crowd favorite. Not sure what was in the rear rack bag - a six pack? Takeout from Runza?


Later in the day, my wife and I rode down again to watch the rest of the races. Another great moment - when the Cat 4 men's field was lining up to race, and was addressed as "Lady and Gentlemen" and the whole field turned around to look at Janna.


By the way, this is what happens to you after racing two back to back crits:


Congrats to Adrian, Father Tucker, Loup Garou, Janna, Kim, Megan M, Megan N, Anna, and mountain bike guy for their performances in the races on Saturday. You were all fun to watch, and inspired me to get up early this morning to fight a 25 mph headwind out to Cortland. Also, thanks to Kew for the cookout Saturday night - good friends, good food, and a great time!

Avery's Last Ride

Tonight's teamFIRE ride will be Avery's farewell to Lincoln ride.  There is certain to be a post ride gathering of some sort - don't miss out!

Remember that the ride starts at 6:00 tonight, and will leave from the bench.

Weekend Rides

I headed out to the Saturday Wilderness Perk ride - considering the perfect weather, it was a small group - me, Gravy, Avery, and Todd. We rode through Sprague, Crete, and Denton for a nice 50 mile ride with very little wind to deal with (for once). Gravy was nice and pretended to want to go slow so that I would have someone to ride with once Avery and Todd took off on Denton road. Avery is leaving Lincoln soon to move to Seattle - we need to have a good luck party after one of the Wednesday rides soon.

On Memorial Day, I got up early and went to the bench to meet Adrian for what we thought was going to be an easy spin - he was sore from crit training and I had slept very little the night before. When we got there, we found out that a bunch of racers were showing up at the same time and place. We started our ride with them, until they dropped us out by Wal Mart. We continued through Bennett and hit the rollers - Adrian made me sprint up a few hills, but other than that it was a nice, relaxing 40 mile ride. Remember - it's a recovery ride, Adrian :) . Interestingly, it seems that I end up averaging the same speed whether it's a solo ride, a group ride, long ride, short ride, hard ride, easy ride, whatever. Oh, well - time to cook some brats and enjoy the evening with neighbors. Hope everybody had a good weekend.

Memorial Weekend rides?

What is everybody's Memorial Day weekend ride plans? Wifey is outta town -- so I've got full-time dad duties. If if I'm going anywhere it'll be with Burley in tow. Maybe I'll cruise down to the Saltdogs game in the bike/burley... hmmm...

How about you?

They Have Pie!!!

Gravy, Kew, and I headed out into a 20-30 mph headwind on Sunday afternoon for some miles. After stopping to catch our breath at the Roca turnoff, we decided to bite the bullet and headed out to Cortland. We stopped at the new bar and grill in Cortland for some lunch, but they were only offering an all-you-can-eat buffet. However, in a cooler against the wall - they had PIE!! Fresh, homemade, served warm with some ice cream, the perfect mid-ride treat. This will need to be a regular stop from now on. After the pie stop, we headed back to Lincoln with a nice tailwind, which resulted in 40+ mph speeds down the hills. Good fun, and a nice reward for braving the headwinds on the way out.

Here is a pic from the end of the ride, I can't figure out if they are trying to get me to pull through, or if they are doing their best Preakness imitation.

Ride Sunday?

Looks kinda windy on Saturday - and out of the northwest. I have no interest in heading north into the wind (see the previous post), so I think I'll go for a ride Sunday afternoon. Any takers?

Be careful!

I am by nature kind of a cautious rider anyway, (too new to the sport to trust my skills completely, and too old to be reckless), but recent events make me pause and consider the nature of this sport. Most of you are aware of Ron N.'s meeting with a car last week which resulted in a number of fairly serious injuries, and last night the teamFIRE ride was cut short by Kaelly's encounter with a section of road on NW 12th that was horribly patched by some road crew that though it appropriate to leave a 10 foot long, three inch high ledge at the edge of the patch running parallel to the road - and right on the other side of railroad tracks, which only made this section harder to ride through. Her forearm was hurting her pretty badly, and we waited until someone could come and take her for x-rays. Hopefully it was just a bad bruise.

Ron was hurt in the same area of town, when a car following another car which was pulling a boat hit him on a road where there is no room to bail out. From now on, when there is a median without a shoulder to the right (or anything else that narrows the lane so that a passing car has to stay in the same lane with me), I am going to take the lane until the road widens. If the car has to wait, too bad. On the south end of town, that situation exists to a degree on 14th street - although there is a little bit of shoulder there.

Anyway, be careful - especially out north. Hopefully the normal weather pattern will assert itself and start blowing from the south again.

Dance at the DelRay

Come and dance to the Southeast High School Jazz Ensembles from 7-9 p.m. tonight at the DelRay Ballroom in the Haymarket. No admission charge - just come on down and have some fun dancing to music from famous big bands - Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Les Brown, etc. This is a project we do every year to give the jazz students the opportunity to play for dancers, and to give them a chance to play some of the music that is associated with the big band era. It is more fun for them if lots of people come and dance, so hope to see some of you there!

Happy Mothers Day!

Late by one day, but here is one for all you mothers!

Special guest on our ride to Cortland...

Well, he wasn't actually riding, but a certain someone did gush over him quite a bit so it kind of felt like he was along.

Finally

I finally had a Wednesday night off last night, so I could go to the teamFIRE ride. It was so great to also finally have a nice warm night on which to ride - reflected in the 20-25 riders who showed for the ride. The wind was out of the northwest, which is a bit unusual, but we headed south anyway on 14th street. Jendeluxe was running a bit late, so she met us by the RR tracks, and we cruised at 23-24 mph (with a tailwind) out to Saltillo, which we took west to SW 12th, and then bucked the wind out to Pioneers Park. The group had split up quite a bit by then, so at Denton road Kelly B. and I dropped out of the lead group and regrouped with the others. The second group then headed to Pioneers for a lap, after which Jen, Kelly, Matt and I booked it back to Old Cheney while others took the bike path home. It ended up being a very pleasant 30+ mile ride in beautiful weather. It was still nice and warm late in the evening, so in order to keep the true spirit of teamFIRE alive, Jen and I headed to Las Margaritas to finish the ride. Hopefully more of you can join us next time :).

Notice the complete lack of weenie or wussie accusations in the above post. I feel I am showing great restraint in this.

Nacholicious

The elusive Gravy and I rode out to Eagle to chow down on some nachos and brew Saturday night. The nachos were fantastic, the beer was frothing and cold and the ride back seemed to take only half as long.

We ended up having a nightcap or three while watching the Celtics-Bulls game, where I also pontificated on running vs. hitting a 90 mph fastball. It was intrigueing conversation, to say the least.

Great ride, Gravy. The rest of you are weenies.

Distracting Trumpet

FAC tonight!

meeting after work (5-ish) at Yia Yia's. Be there or we will talk about you.