Sometimes yer a playa, sometimes ya get played

Today's ride was definitely one of those rides on which everything seems to go wrong. Mostly I blame Chris, since Dr. Oishi hit me up this morning for a mid-afternoon ride, and as I haven't done any riding lately (other than the couch), I succumbed to his peer pressure. (He really had to twist my arm, I promise.) Excited to hit the trail, we loaded up our matching big-wheeled bikes and headed to Beaverdam.

Not two minutes into the ride my tube came popping out of my back tire like the top button after Thanksgiving turkey. Unlike last time, this time the tube got caught up in the chain and punctured. We stopped for a quick tube swap only for the valve stem of the spare to pull out. Since I wasn't carrying a spare tube we were forced to patch tube number one, by which time the mosquitoes had located us and were enjoying a stationary meal.

Eventually we got things back together and headed out to finish (or really start) the ride. Undaunted by my earlier mishap I threw myself off the high side of a log ride, and then somehow sustained yet another flat toward the end of the loop. Not wanting to stop and patch the tube again I yelled at Chris to punch it and I rode out an ever-flattening tube. By weighting the front of the bike and thinking light thoughts I limped back to the parking lot.

Like I said, it was just one of those rides. Luckily Chris was a good sport about it, so there are no hard feelings. (I don't think.)

Actually, the high point of the ride was probably our discussion of some upcoming tomfoolery, as well as the possibility of getting a team vehicle. Stay tuned for updates.

two-parts to this story

Part 1 (the ride): Pirate and I met JD at Beaverdam this evening for a "night ride." With sunset at 7.30 and a ranger-mandated and -enforced notice to vacate the parking lot by 8pm, the night portion of the ride was brief. While short on the darkness, the ride did not lack for speed: JD and particularly Pirate were killing it tonight. Although Pirate claims to be of lesser fitness during the early part of this season, there was no evidence of this being the case this evening. A longer post may be forthcoming. Stay tuned for pictures.

Part 2 (over heard post-ride): We returned to D-town and ran into cyclocross specialist, all-around good guy, and materials specialist to Duke's efforts to produce an invisible cape (long story) Jonah while in line for burritos. It was great to see Jonah and hear about his goings-ons, especially as he and I had been out of town for parts of the last year. It was during dinner when I heard Pirate say "I've always wanted to do a race while wearing a stuffed bear costume," something I thought particularly worthy of sharing on this blog.

"I'm not a playa, I just crush a lot"

[Many thanks to Big Pun for today's title.]

Ali and I loaded up el truckadora and headed out to Beaverdam for a TMTB-sponsored night ride, where we met JD in the parking lot. (He'd already done something like four laps and one hundred pushups.) Ali was sporting some new bling, and we spent some time in the parking lot admiring it.


Unlike last time, rather than rolling out in a big group, we were able to spin around all by our lonesome, threading through the woods in fading light and beautiful 60 degree weather. In fact, other than the beautiful weather, the night ride was only really remarkable for how uneventful it was: just a really nice spin in the woods. Oh, Ali did get a little carnage, but nothing too bad:


I think he'll survive.

All-n-all, a good night: we were crushing, enough to make Big Pun proud.