Monday night small ring ride
I also wrote a tighter, more concise version of this story—with a slightly different slant—titled While my shoes finish baking… on the Bicycling Love Forum. I almost think I like that version better.
A couple of weeks ago as I was lamenting the passing of the winter season Tuesday Night Urban Assault ride, when I found both Park Ave Bike Shop and Full Moon Vista Bike and Sport have in-season Monday night rides, both called small ring rides.
This is a concept I can deal with. Chance are very good that I won’t be joining Full Moon Vista’s Thursday Night Big Ring Ride.
I had popped a spoke this afternoon and swung by Full Moon Vista to see if they could replace it. Both Kyle and Seana (who leads the ride) asked if I’d be joining them. “Of course!” I replied.
After Kyle replaced the spoke and trued the wheel, I scurried home for a quick dinner (bike fuel). The postman had left my order from ebikestop.com containing my replacement Ultra GatorSkin tire, so while dinner was cooking, I swapped-out the crummy front tire I’d been using since Wednesday.
At 5:45 I headed back to the store to meet up for the ride.
Boy, what a difference the GatorSkin makes. It’s amazing how a tougher tire can also ride and handle so much nicer. I don’t know how they do it, but it work. There was a definite transition point with the old tire when heeling over into a turn. With the Gatorskin on the front, it’s just a smooth rolling over. The ride quality is difficult to describe, but it’s a tremendously more plush ride.
With 25mm GatorSkins on both ends of Yellow Bike, it rides nicer than Bike does with 32mm Armadillos and front suspension. I’ll report back on puncture resistance between the two, but everything I’ve heard says they’re comparable.
Seven of us rode out tonight. Thunderstorms were in the forecast and a line of them were bearing down on Buffalo when I checked the radar before leaving home.
We left the store and headed towards Corn Hill, where the TNUA ride starts. The ride is billed as “conversational paced”. I was pleased to find this is true. After all the miles I’ve put in this past week, I needed a ride that never got me breathing hard.
We noodled around Corn Hill, then hopped on the Riverway. The TNUA almost never rides the Riverway, instead we hammer along on the parallel streets. It was really, really nice riding along like that. I got to chat with almost everyone on the ride.
One guy I avoided simply because he weirded me out. First, he was indiscriminately firing off snot rockets, then in the middle of the group on a six or eight foot wide bike path, he starts doing one-legged drills. The snot rockets made me give him lots of space. The one-legged drills made me feel unsafe riding in the same group.
We passed through the park and took the park road south across the canal and the Interstate, to the half-mile “crit loop” we played on a few times during the TNUA. The weird guy took off like it was a hammerfest, while the other six of us rode along shooting the breeze. It was fun.
Seana asked me about Yellow Bike, why I bought it, what I’d done to it, and what my intentions were. I stopped short of telling her it’s the first step on the way to a Seven Axiom SG, lest it seem like I’m a poseur or interested in Sevens only because they’re expensive.
She did say she liked my bar tape. “Thanks,” I replied. “I wasn’t sure if it marked me as a newbie or something.”
“No,” she told me. “It goes with that frame really well.”
Just then, the first spits of rain hit. We turned back toward the city. We cut through a parking lot to Intercampus Drive to avoid the hill on Wilson Blvd through the U of R campus. On the other side, we took Wilson north to Ford Street, as the winds began to howl. The trees are 75 to 100 feet off the side of the road, but still we were pelted with flying lumber. It was like the trees were filled with monkeys all throwing sticks at us. And hitting us too.
Then the skies opened up. We were drenched in the next 50 feet. Coming up on Ford Street, the rest of the group headed back to the shop, while I bid them good bye and headed home.
That’s when the hail started. Boy did that sting. Yow! Still, I had to laugh though. Here I was dressed only in lycra bike shorts and a t-shirt, in April, stopped in traffic waiting for a stoplight, while being pelted by hail. And you know, it was fun.
Meanwhile, traffic was respectful, perhaps a little too much so. One car stayed behind me while I wished they’d pass. Between the rain on my glasses and the water in the road, I couldn’t see any debris or potholes. All I could do was hang on, keep pedaling and hope I didn’t hit anything that would pitch me off the bike in front of that car that was trying to be polite.
After I got home and hung up Yellow Bike, I literally poured water out of my shoes into the kitchen sink. And the hot shower sure felt good after the cold one.
