Two Wheel Blogs

Time: 1:33
Miles: 30.0
Pace: 19.0 mph
Route: St. Charles flats

Riding Tunes

• Buffalo Springfield, RETROSPECTIVE: THE BEST OF...
• Neil Young, GREATEST HITS
• Mudcrutch, MUDCRUTCH

Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. It was never a question of "If...?" Rather, it was always only a matter of "When...? And the "when" was tonight.

I got lost on the Monday night ride.

Okay, "got lost" is a little harsh. I missed a turn. As a result, I added a few bonus miles to the ride.

I've not done this ride that many times. Last year, I think I rode it three times. And tonight was my third time this year. Worse, I've never ridden it frequently enough -- several weeks in a row -- to really learn the route. Heading into tonight's ride, I had a vague notion of the shape of the route, but tonight "vague" was not going to be good enough.

Foremost, I was just happy to ride. The forecast called for morning showers and the possibility of more rain in the late afternoon or early evening. So I was hesitant to rack my bike. I almost left it at home. But I decided to take the chance that the weather would be favorable. All morning, I felt like a fool as I looked out the window and watched the rain drench my bike atop my car. When co-workers asked if I wasn't being overl optimisic (read "delusional") by planning to ride tonight, I said "The day's not over yet. Let's see what the weather's like at 5:00 p.m."

And sure enough, in the early afternoon, the rain stopped, and the sun came out. When I went out to my car, my bike had dried nicely. "Let's ride!" The skies still looked ominous as I drove towards St. Charles, but other than threaten, nothing ever came of it. There weren't many riders there tonight, probably on account of the weather, and many of the usual hammerheads were missing. "Hm-m-m," I mused to myself, "If the pace is slower, I may be able to hang with the lead pack through the first big left turn."

We set out at 6:00, and a team of riders wearing red Momentum jerseys led us out and established an 18-20 mph pace. I hung a few riders off the front, and was pleased to be there. When doing a group ride, I feel like a a big steamship being escorted by a bunch of tugboats: their job is to push me out of the harbor, which I appreciate, and then they drop me and go off on their own. Suddenly, tired of the leisurely 20 mph pace, a few riders sprinted out ahead of the pack and took off. The pack took this as a cue to accelerate, which it did and which I tried to do. For a while, I was able to hang off the rear tire of the rider ahead of me at 25-26 mph. But I couldn't hold it and they were speeding up. So I backed off and settled into a pace I could maintain. Next time, I want to make it to the first big left turn with the pack. But not this time.

I was now riding by myself, something I'm used to and fully expected to do tonight. Farther ahead, I could see another rider who had hung with the pack, but could not maintain contact. "Maybe I can catch up with him," I thought. So I tried to pick up my pace a little. Just because I'm not with the pack doesn't mean I can slack. And I did catch him -- and passed him. I continued to ride alone, but was soon overtaken by another rider, and together we caught up with a third (I didn't get their names). We made the left turn that would take us on the road towards the Mississippi River, where you can see the bluffs of the Illinois shore looming in the distance. As we approached Rees Road on our left, I asked if this was our turn. One rider said he wasn't sure, as he had not done this ride that often. I allowed as how I hadn't either, and when I had, I was usually just focused on the front tire of the guy in front of me. We agreed it probably wasn't the turn and decided to go straight.

Big mistake -- especially as going straight meant eating the wind. It was an effort to keep the pace up to 17 mph, but we kept it there. The longer we rode, the more I realized "I've never seen some of this scenery before." When the two giant smokestacks of the Portage de Sioux power plant came in sight, that cinched it: we'd missed our turn. So we turned around and headed back. Now with the wind behind us, running at 20-21 mph was a breeze. So we were now back on track. Or so I thought. When we came to an intersection where I expected to turn right, we went straight. "No wonder I don't know this route better," I concluded. "People have their own versions of it." Maybe my riding mates were diverting from the usual route because we'd ridden a few miles out of the way. I don't know. "Don't ask. Don't tell. Just pursue." That's my motto. "And take your turns at the front."

And I think I pulled my weight today. I've often been the beneficiary of strong, better riders who have taken long pulls at the front, breaking the wind for me and allowing me to draft off their back tire. Today, I wanted to pay it back. And actually, we settled into kind of rotation. When we were riding into or across the wind, I would take the lead and pull until the next turn. When the wind was at our back, one of the other riders would take over, and I'd recover. In this way, I got a great workout trying to keep us around 18 mph into the wind, and I got to draft off the others as we ramped up to 23 mph sometimes. As I moved to the front to pull us into the wind Mudcrutch's cover of The Byrd's "Lover of the Bayou" came on. It was THE right tune at THE right time. A great driving rhythm, perfect for pushing the pedals.

[In terms of "Great American Rock & Roll Musicians," three of the top five slots have to go to Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, and Bob Dylan -- for the obvious reasons. You can argue about who deserves the other two slots in the Top Five and debate the next five who fill out the Top Ten. Right now, I'd probably throw Bruce Springsteen, John Fogerty, and Tom Petty. I really like Petty. He just has the knack for making perfect radio-friendly rock & roll that doesn't sound contrived or packaged for mass appeal. With always rock-solid backing from The Heartbreakers, he just makes damn fine American rock & roll music.]

A few miles from the end, we spotted a group of riders in the distance. Having seen them, I had to catch them. So I picked up the pace and kept it up until we had joined that pack. "We aren't working very hard," said the one woman riding with the pack. "That's okay," I said, "I've worked hard enough already."

The other times I've done this ride, the group I'm riding with has just finished the ride at whatever pace we were riding: no sprints. This group, however, was more playful. They liked sprints. They werenlt flat-out racing, but a couple of riders would sprint out, leaving the rest to respond. I didn't ride all this way to get dropped this close to the finish, so I did what I had to do. I did something I'd not yet done this year...

I shifted to the big chain ring.

"No big chain ring before Memorial Day," a friend of mine told me. So far this year, I'd been using the other two chain rings exclusively. But tonight I wanted to keep up, so I shifted to the big ring -- and it made a difference. I was able to hold on and finish with the pack.

Back in the parking lot, I was suprised to see we'd done 30 miles in an hour and 33 minutes. I thought our self-inflicted detour would have added more miles and time to our ride. But I guess we made up for it on the return, taking a route back that I could not retrace.

I hope to do this ride again next week. And if I do, you can bet I'll be studying every turn so that we never have a repeat of tonight.