Daylight Wasting Time has finally ended. The rainiest March in history was now over, but things haven’t changed much so far in April. My plan for today was to ride Eddy in to work, up the mountain after work leaving my backpack at the office, and then home after the ride and pick up my stuff later.
Adam talked JB and me into starting a little early so we all rolled out of the parking lot just before 5 o’clock. JB was on his touring bike with panniers so I thought if I had trouble keeping up with him then I was really in bad shape. We encountered a guy in a Pegasus jersey on Walnut Avenue and he rode with us for a while without saying anything.
At the Gate, JB decided to take off his jacket and then Pegasus guy left us. So the three of us left the line at the same time. Adam is really frisky because he just upgraded to Cat-2 and is racing the Sea Otter Classic P-1-2 circuit race alongside the likes of Gord Frasier. But we all stayed together until the double dips where JB drifted off the back. I stayed on Adam’s wheel for another half mile until I was well out of JB’s site and then I settled down into a sustainable pace, and Adam did a long interval – one of those where you pedal too big of a gear for too long. Shortly after that the Pegasus guy came back down and we all figured he was a flare.
About half way up the Bump, I saw Adam coming back down. Earlier I had joked that he could literally ride circles around JB and me with his intervals, and it seemed that was exactly his plan. He kept on going until he got to JB and then did another interval back uphill until he caught me near Clavicle Cracker and kept going for a little while before he turned around again. I hadn’t seen JB for quite a while so I was sure I wasn’t going to be humiliated and that gave me a little satisfaction, but I wanted more… I wanted to not let Adam pass me a third time so bit the reins and pounded the last couple miles.
Up near Big Shady Oak I caught sight of a few straggler Diablo Cyclists, and passed them right at Chainbuster. Right at that time Jay K was coming down and did a U-turn to ride back up with them also but when he recognized me he went with me instead. We talked about Performance Bicycles, De Ronde Van Vlaanderen, the Devil Mountain Double, and Tom Boonen. I got to the Junction with an ET of 45m… pretty bad, but better than JB who came in at 50.
At the Junction I noticed how many people had different bikes for the wet weather. Just about everyone except Adam (who had his ultrabike and race wheels; btw the only reason he didn’t pass me the third time was that he had a spoke come loose and had stopped to investigate). Diablo Cyclist Brian asked me about my Merckx because he’s been thinking about getting one of the Merckx 7-Eleven re-issued frames that are coming out. http://www.bikyle.com/images/Merckx7-11frame.jpg Brian asked about the head tube angle and other frame specifics but I couldn’t answer his questions – so I just told him that I really liked the way it handled and let him ride it around a bit. Brian you’re surely welcome to take it out for a long ride whenever you’d like – I’ll even put on the sew-ups for you.
On the way back home I noticed that the good old reliable Conti 2000’s had developed a sidewall split so those sew-ups may be on sooner than I expected. For now though, I put on the Conti UltraGatorSkins I got at Performance last week. Watch for the ride review on those.
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