The New Guy
Last Saturday I put aside my fear of humiliation and rejection to attend the Saturday morning ride with the bike club. The forecast said 48 degrees. I couldn't bear the though of settling for a 45 minute spinning class, or worse, NOTHING. Bob, the spinning class instructor who has been so positive and encouraging since December had tried to talk me out of participating. He said that the riders now are all hardcore. After April 1st, more people will come and there will be two groups. In spite of that, I decided to show up and see what happened. The first thing that happened was that Jill (author of the email below) almost didn't let me go because I was in shorts, and they were all dressed in many (coordinated) layers of cold weather gear. She even asked the other riders if anybody had any tights or knee warmers.. "I've got to get something for this clown!" she snorted. I assured her that I would be fine and she finally let up. One guy was all excited about my bike: "Where did you get a Bodacious?" he asked me. I told him that I got it from the source, and (briefly) told him that story. Another guy said that he used to paint Bodacious bikes, and we deduced that he did, indeed, do the paint job on mine. The ride went very well. I was nervous about etiquette, and if they wanted me to pull or not, but most of the time, I was in a lead group of between 3 and 5 people and the rest of them were too far back to be concerned with. I got lots of encouragement from Jill and from the other guys. One guy who knows me from spinning class, Ken, said he never would have thought that I could hang with the group, much less stay at the front. I was very happy with the whole experience.
Below is the email that Jill sent out to the whole club after the ride:
Okay, I am not going to get into the habit of writing up ride reports for every piddly training ride, but too much fun stuff happened yesterday for me not to share.
11 riders gathered in the warmish fog to venture out for the Sat ride. There were some usual suspects missing, but that was balanced out by a few new faces: Phil S and Jim Y from the MTB contingent and completely new guy Darren. Actually his name is Rob, but Z introduced him as Darren and that is his new nickname. In cycling, you always hope for a cool Italian moniker like "Il Gatto" (the cat) or "il diablo" (the devil), but sometimes you just get "Darren." Life can be cruel that way.
Anyways, Jim H forgot his shoes, so the ride started without him. In his absence, Phil took over the honors and fell in the Ryders Cup parking lot. Although it was a sprawling, noisy fall, it lacked some of the screams perfected by H, and therefore was missing some overall panache. I was only able to give it a 5/10. Having gotten the perfunctory horizontal tribute out of the way, the ride commenced.
We ended up doing 36 miles, 2:30. The ride started out at about 40F in the fog, but quickly got warm, then cold, then warm, etc. There was a strong south head wind. Z took some monster pulls on the front and I can't wait to see his spring tt time this year. We introduced quite a few people to Muzzy Hill. The only thing suckier than going up Muzzy on your road bike is going up it on your #30 cross bike. Tony said that he didn't even realize it was a climb due to the fog, but as he pedaled through the carnage of an 18% grade, he quickly figured it out. A newly svelte Jim Y was one of the front runners up the summit. After a brief rest at the top, the ride continued. The ride quickly deteriorated from there with spitty rain turing into a steady, driving rain. That quickly mixed with the salt and road grit to form a nice muddy mess. 10 degrees colder it would have been an epic ride in terms of suffering. Z and I briefy conferred during the ride, and due to the temps hovering around 50F, we could only give it a 7/10 in terms of sheer misery. (You know the progression: This is great, okay conditions could be better, this sucks, I'm selling my bike when I get home) Darren and I rode the Z train back into town. I should mention here that Rob did himself proud and had a great ride. It's not too many cyclists who can jump into a Sat ride, especially on his first outdoor ride, and hang, let alone spend the time on the front like he did. Did I mention his downtube shifters? Well done Darren!
That pretty much concludes the ride report, but I feel compelled to share something about one of our riders I think you should all be aware of. In general, I would keep this to myself, but when you stumble across a character flaw of this maganitude, I feel it's my duty to make the team aware of it. At first you think Dave S is this sort of quiet, nice guy, but actually he isn't. By way of example: Tracy met us at the coffee shop after the ride. After removing most of the mud from my face and molars (thanks to Z's magic rear fender that doesn't stop squat), I quickly parked myself next to her so we could catch up. Dave was hovering nearby, so I took the opportunity to introduce him to Tracey. I said, "Dave, this is Tracey" and he goes, "Oh, is she your daughter?" Yes he did. His faux pas was compounded by the fact that this was done in front of both Z and Radack, who wasted no time in commencing my torture. Joe sent me a txt 30 seonds later where he said he was going to change his usual pet name for me "little sister" to "big mama". Oh yes, I am never going to live this down. Anyways, just wanted to let you know what kind of person Shoen is so you can steer clear of him. I also saw him kick a puppy on the ride.
That's about all the fun I can stand for one day, have a great week everyone!
Jill