slightly disappointed

I'm actually a little disappointed in yesterdays ride. Don't get me wrong, overall it was fantastic but it was still missing just one key ingredient. Death, there was no death or dismemberment. Most rides should never ever have anything in the lines of this but there are those rare occasions when the planet aline and every other myth and legend come true. This was one of those rides.

Like any other group ride Tristan was his normal unfashionably late. Once the first round of smack talk finished it was off to the hills of Oro. I had a good route in my head and with what would be clear roads hopefully it should have been an incident free ride. Of course what fun would that be, T and I opted for cross bikes with cross tires. Jacob on the other hand felt that the roads would be clear enough to ride his very pretty and new TCR with very non grippy on snow type tires. Oh wait those are called slicks. Everything was fine even after the first climb where we expected to drop Tristan and watch him die by way of the cougar. Didn't happen.

As the usual turn to the left happened so did the sketchy roads. The roads were great if you were riding the proper bike, some were not. As Tristan and I rode ahead I kept waiting for that wonderful sound that carbon, bones and ice make as they collide together. This continued for a good portion of the ride, that sound never happened. Jacob avoided death. The crash wouldn't have killed him but the potential broken bike and broken bones would have made him incapable of continueing on, a Top Gear rule came into play. Some may know it, for others. If one of the group breaks down in any way, leave him it's not your problem. A broken lobby part would have made him easy pray for the local cougars. Unfortunately Jacob managed to stay up. Time to move to the next in the group.

That would be me, don't worry there are Tristan stories to be told. Mine was pretty simple. Legs felt great most of the time but my bike started to make this very strange clicking noise and attempted to shift it's self a couple times. Then I dropped a chain on the steepest part of the 4th line climb. Against my better judgement I jumped off and ran the rest of it, I again still feel that running should only be done when being chased and survival instinct kicks in. Refer to the Top Gear rule. Back with the two and with my chain on I continued to get weird noises out of my bike. As we made our way to the next steep section of yet another good climb we all figured my chain had a frozen or bent link. Some how I made it to the top and amazingly enough everyone stopped long enough for a quick once over on the bike. Yep, broken link. Not fully broken but almost amazed it held together. Hi tech fix of rotating the one side of it back in line and some very smooth pedaling. For some miracle reason the bike started to feel better. It continued to climb fine and I held on with no problem considering all the effort that was used riding with both my fingers and toes crossed for the rest of the ride. I didn't die this day either.

On comes Tristan, right from the start we tried to kill him. Attacked on every climb in hopes of a complete blow up that would leave his now sobering up and starting to train again no muscle definition body on the side of the road making him easy prey for what ever animal wandered by. Over and over again we tried, and over and over again he managed to hold on. Attempts to blind him with salt in the eyes failed also. Those who don't ride with glasses are fair game on wet roads. Even this tactic couldn't crash him out and the salt in the mouth probably helped him from cracking. One last attempt was made on the home stretch. "Jacob how does your bike handle road kill?" " No problem!" A few seconds later the TCR is air borne over the dead squirrel. A half second later was the scream that would make you think we had a 11 year old girl riding behind us. This unfortunately was not followed by the sounds of metal on pavement. Tristan's limited bike handling skills have improved and some how avoided the black furry landmine. Again no death.

Rolled back into the driveway with a 2:15 ride and 2000 feet of climbing. Not a bad start to the outdoor season. More of that to come, right now it's that grown up work time and more coffee. More thrills tomorrow.