Friday morning started out with rain – enough to push back the start time for our ride to 11:00 AM. Several of the “regulars” were there this morning, along with some tandem teams that had just arrived for the Florida Tandem Rally. There were going to be two groups riding the shorter loop; one “fast” group and one “slow” group. We overheard the leaders of the fast group say that they were going to keep the pace at around 18mph for the slower riders, and figured that meant us. (It also meant we could ride with the fast group.)
This lasted for about one third of the ride, and then the pace just kept picking up, bit by bit, until we could no longer keep up. To make matters worse, a poorly worded cue sheet had a few of us stragglers turning onto a circular road 2 miles before we were supposed to… so while we’re riding in a clockwise direction, the main pack of tandem cyclists went whizzing by us in a counter clockwise direction… smiling and waving (and no doubt wondering why we were going the wrong direction).
We probably lost a mile of total distance, but in the end it was still a good ride… relatively fast for our abilities, but nice to know that we could keep up with “the older kids” at least for a little while.
I’m writing this at 2:00 PM (don’t know when I’ll be by a wi/fi hotspot to post it). The official registration for the tandem rally begins at 3:00 PM today, and we’re expecting Valerie’s sister and grandmother to show up here sometime around 4:00 so they can all visit with each other. Tomorrow comes the longest ride of our stay, weather permitting!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment