Friday was a little solo jaunt to scope out road, gravel, trail conditions. The gravel was still snowy, but rideable...the trails not so much...not even the rail trail. So it was a 65km ride on road and sketchy gravel....and a stiff breeze. A nice warmup for the ride I had planned for Sunday....a CoachRob 'let's hurt the Metis' ride. And I managed to convince a group of friends that it would be fun times.
So eight of us headed out on a sunny Sunday...Mark, Jenn, Fig, Burnsy, Giant, Seth, Jaimie, et moi.
Can you tell who is who??
Better yet...can you tell the diff between the pics?
Blaze wanted to join, but couldn't....he was busy with some book learning thing...learning how to lead old guys through 24hr races, or something. Or he was just busy gazing at his latest wall hanging...
Unglued wanted to join too, but couldn't or wouldn't ... busy doing some realty, lawyery, family thing...or something.
Oggie didn't want to join and didn't care...
Anyways...we headed out past my favourite neighbours...
And we managed to piece together some fun gravel along the road....the trails/railtrail were still not rideable. The only issue we had was my persistently leaky front tire. Then at about 60km in Mark, Jenn, and Burnsy had to bolt off. Something about kids and family being more important than sweaty mountain bikers.
And that was about when Fig's world started to fall apart. He was running out of steam fast...I'm not sure if it was his yapping, or the cycling but he was running low on energy. And Giant, Seth, and Jaimie kept putting the pressure on...attacking every hill like it might flatten out on them if they didn't climb it fast enough. I dropped back a couple of times to enourage Fig and pull him along.
At 80km we made it to the first real stop to refuel...
No...NewfieSteve wasn't there...just his stuff...
Hoping that Fig getting more food in him would help replenish his waning energy stores. (At least it became quiet cuz Fig was even too tired to yap...that's when you know he really is hurting!)
About 15km further we stopped to refill water at a natural spring...
At this point we elected to cut out a hill 20km gravel loop I had planned...in hopes that Fig would survive to the next food stop.
This time Giant dropped back to help drag Fig along....and at about 110km we made it to Dar's bakery in Moffat. Fig downed about 4 energy bars, cliff blocks, and anything else sugary within 20 ft of him. The rest of us grabbed a coffee and a buttertart. Then Fig took off ahead to gain some ground of us while we finished our coffees and chatted with some locals.
Then it was the final blast towards home...where after 142kms of fun, sun, roads, and gravel, Lois had a feast of Mexican rice waiting for us...and Fig staggered in to share his home made cider!!
And while we were out Jany stopped in to visit with Lois and to drop off her latest work of art she made for me which is now up on my Jany wall of fame...
So...just another awesome weekend...let's do it again next weekend. Heck...let's do it this afternoon...over +10 degrees today...maybe spring really is finally here???
Stay posted!
St. Patty's!!!
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