The Wilson 100 Bicycle Ride......

Katydid and I rode the Wilson 100 bicycle ride again today. We've never done the 100-mile route, and I don't think it's likely that we will. We have ridden the shorter rides a number of times, and today we did the 65-mile route. This ride follows pretty much the same route every year, so it SHOULD be familiar to us. Only it isn't always. Because we didn't ride it YESTERDAY.

The past two years it has rained either at the last rest stop or just after we left the last rest stop. This year we got lucky. It was hot (and windy), but it didn't rain. The terrain was gently rolling (only it didn't feel so gentle toward the end of the day) and fairly rural. We didn't have any close encounters with vehicles. The only time we almost got knocked off the road was by a peloton of somewhere between 75-100 cyclists. I lost count at 34, by which time they weren't riding in pairs anymore, they were riding four and five across. They do this every single year, and I let it affect my blood pressure every single year. I did say to one girl, "That was pretty close." And then I lost count of the riders because I was too busy holding the tandem on the road.

I don't know who that group is, but they show up every year. The good news is they don't stop for rest stops, so once they pass you, odds are you don't have to deal with them again. I hate it when an otherwise perfectly pleasant ride is spoiled by OTHER CYCLISTS.

The last rest stop is staffed by a woman who is also in charge of one of the other rides we do (almost) every year, one that occurs in April. She has the most wonderful baked goods, not just the typical rest stop fare. And this year she had blueberry lemonade. That was some seriously good stuff. I just stood by the cooler, because I kept draining the itty bitty cups they had. I should have just filled up my water bottle.

I got low on water, mainly because the last rest stop was 20 miles (and a billion degrees) from the end of the ride. I had to go to my back-up bottle of water, which I had poured before we left this morning. It was like drinking bath water. Not refreshing in the least.

And now I'm going to stop complaining, because it was a good day and a good ride. Katydid had suggested we ride our single bikes, since she hasn't had time to train and she didn't want to hold me back. I said to her, "I'd rather haul you than wait on you," and I meant it. At least having her on the back of the tandem gave me someone to talk to. And our average speed was decent, considering we haven't ridden tandem much at all this year.

Now I'm going to put my tired, aching muscles to bed. I was worried about oversleeping this morning, so I compensated by UNDERsleeping. I woke up at 3:00, and I'm not sure I ever went back to sleep. Early to bed is just the ticket. Forgive my rambling.....

Tour d'Oconee......

Katydid and I participated in a bicycle ride today that was appealing for many, many reasons. First of all, it was only about 30 minutes from my house, so we didn't have to get up at the crack of dawn. Second of all, it was in our home county, where we both grew up and graduated from high school.

It was the first time this particular ride had been done, and that's always an iffy proposition. Do the organizers know what they're doing? Have they thought of the gazillion things that could go wrong? Are they prepared for the number of cyclists that might turn out on a chamber-of-commerce-weather day in Georgia in May?

I don't think the ride could have been run more professionally. Roads were well marked, the routes were absolutely gorgeous, rest stop volunteers were friendly and helpful (example: I heard a woman ask for a cup late in the day, and a volunteer said they were out. Then I heard the same volunteer say, "But we'll find you one." I didn't see the end of the encounter. I hope they didn't "find one" in the trash. Ha ha), and police officers were EVERYWHERE, even late in the day, to assist cyclists in crossing major roads and intersections. It was so cool to have them stop traffic to allow us to cross without stopping, even when Katydid and I were the only cyclists in sight.

The route started out flat and fast, and I should have known it wouldn't stay that way. (I actually DID know it, but I wanted to pretend the information I had was wrong and we would sail along averaging 16 mph for the whole ride. Wishful thinking.) It seemed that all the hills were at the end, or maybe we were just tired. We rode by the house where I lived from age 12 until I got married, we rode within sight of a little house where Sweet  Girl and I lived during a separation from my ex, and best of all we rode across the bridge that Jason and I jumped off on my 17th birthday (separate entry coming for that). I kicked myself all the way across the bridge when I realized I had left my camera in the car. I specifically wanted it today because I KNEW the route was going across that bridge. Damn it.

The t-shirt is noteworthy too. The route map resembles the outline of a lion, so the ride was dubbed "Tame the Lion." If I didn't have the shirt on, I would take a picture of it, so you'll just have to trust me. You can see the logo here and picture it on a white t-shirt. It's all about the t-shirt, mind you.  You can see the actual route we took, uploaded from my GPS, below.

Excellent, excellent ride. I hope this one becomes an annual thing.

Another Wilson 100 Ride.....

Only half of Team Chi-Chis rode the Wilson 100 today, the half that rides the same bicycle. But we wore our Team Chi-Chis jerseys, and we got a gazillion compliments on them, so the team spirit was there. Katydid and I rode the 65-mile route, mainly because we rode the 54-mile route last year and we wanted to do something different. And less wimpy. But not the 100.

Then I looked at my blog from last year, and we rode the 65-mile route then too. How soon we forget these things.



I looked back at the post I rode after last year's ride, and it is eerie how similar they are. Today was overcast and sort of drizzly most of the day, but the rain wasn't enough to be annoying. It didn't even require wiping off the mirror. But it did mean that I could ride without my sunglasses, which leave indentations on the sides of my nose and become quite aggravating by the end of the day. When we were at the last rest stop, the rain started pouring down, and we thought, "Uh oh, just like last year...." Last year we eventually had to stop and seek shelter because of thunder and lightning. But today the rain stopped pretty quickly, and we never actually rode in much rain. My feet got wet but we didn't have that stinging experience of riding in a hard rain.

The downside of riding on a cool day is that it's easy to forget to drink enough water. The heat isn't draining you like it does on a sunny day, but you're still losing fluids through perspiration and wind. I heard many, many people talking today about their leg muscles cramping, even the die-hard century riders who finish in the same length of time it takes us to ride 65. My legs felt just a tiny bit like they wanted to cramp, and they were KILLING me during the post-ride meal. (Not a good day to forget to take my potassium. Along with all my other medicine. Duh.)

But I came home and had French onion soup for dinner in an attempt to replace the sodium lost during the ride, and my legs feel better. They still hurt like hell, especially in the knee region, but at least they don't feel like they are going to cramp.

An early bedtime is definitely in store for tonight. The only bad part about a Sunday ride is I don't get enough recuperation time before starting a new school week. Oh well....

Catfish Memorial Ride....

Katydid, Rozmo, and I rode today in a bicycle ride called the Lewis Grizzard & Catfish Memorial Bike Ride. It was named for late great Lewis Grizzard, a sportswriter-turned-humorist whom I loved because he was unabashedly a UGA Bulldog fan all his life. Catfish was his lovable black Labrador retriever, the topic of many of his columns.

I was slightly disturbed when I went to the Lewis Grizzard website and found there a list of upcoming appearances, since Lewis died in 1994 at the age of 47.

The bicycle ride today was in his hometown (or at least the town he grew up in), Moreland, Georgia.

It was a perfect day for riding. Skies were overcast, keeping temperatures down, no wind, and no rain, unlike our LAST bicycle ride. I didn't hesitate at the decision point for which route to take, not even blinking when we chose the 66-mile route. And I didn't regret it one time. Well, maybe the last mile, since it was one mile further than the "two miles to the finish" that was painted on the road. But I would have hated that last mile no matter WHICH route we rode.

My personal decision to ride the longer route was based on three things: perfect weather, the Atlanta Falcons had a bye week so I wasn't missing a football game (well, I was, but not the hometown team), and I don't have to work tomorrow. Poor Katydid - On the back of the tandem, she's pretty much bound to my decisions. But luckily she usually agrees with them. I don't know what we'll do if she ever DISAGREES.

Katydid and I were on the tandem, and Rozmo rode with us to the bitter end. We were the last three people in, something that used to bother us but doesn't anymore. We left late, we dawdled at rest stops, and we're just dang slow. But Rozmo, being the terrific friend she is, stayed with us all the way, even though she could have finished much earlier if she hadn't hung with us, and we were just happy there was some lunch left when we got back.

After a 66-mile bicycle ride, dinner consisted of three kosher dill pickle spears and a small bag of pretzels. I crave salty things after a bike ride.

If I hadn't forgotten my camera, it would have been a perfect day altogether.

Wearing My Heart on My....

........Bumper?

It occurred to me one day when I glanced at the back of my car that a casual observer would have no trouble identifying where my (many) allegiances lie.

This magnet is unique because it not only says "SAILORS" instead of the usual "SOLDIERS," but it also has the nickname of Sweet Girl's former squadron. This was a fundraiser for her squadron's welcome home party following the first deployment she was on. Mine got washed off in the car wash once, and I went back and insisted the young attendant go find it. He first brought me back a generic red, white, and blue one, and then I marched right back down to the car wash bay with him and found the one that was mine. He didn't understand what the big deal was about having THAT magnet.


This is my newest decal, and I don't know if Hubby has noticed it yet or not. Not only do I think he secretly harbors some motorcycle envy because he ONLY rides a Honda, but he's also fundamentally against decals and bumper stickers in general. He thinks they attract too much attention and might cause a nice policeman to write me a ticket who otherwise might not have noticed that I was going 85 mph on the interstate except for the screaming messages on the back of my car. Whatever. He once removed three bumper stickers from my car BEFORE WE WERE EVEN MARRIED because he said they might get me in trouble. He may have a point, however. Years ago I was headed home from school, and a policeman got behind me. I was in town, so I wasn't speeding, and I knew I hadn't broken any laws or anything. I changed lanes, he changed lanes. I pulled into the convenience store parking lot, he pulled into the convenience store parking lot. I got out of my car, he got out of his car. He walked up to me and said, "Do you mean to tell me you actually jump out of perfectly good airplanes?" He had noticed my skydiving bumper sticker that I was so proud of at that time. I think he wanted to write me a ticket for stupidity.


Kind of ironic, then, that Hubby was the one who put this decal on my back window as soon as we brought the SUV home with us. It's quite faded and peeling off a little bit, but it will have to do until we find another one. I neglected to take pictures of another decal that's inside the back window. It proclaims that I am an alum of the University of Georgia, not JUST some random fan. I think I'll put three of those suckers in the back window, one for each degree. But then I might actually feel guilty enough to join the alumni association, which so far hasn't happened.



Just in case someone misses the Bulldog decal, this is my trailer hitch cover. On the advice of my good friend Wilson, it has a lock on it. Apparently a common activity among tailgaters is to steal each other's trailer hitch covers. The things drunks will do to pass the time before kickoff. I've never pulled a trailer in my life, and it would be dangerous for me to do so, but I do have to remove it when we put the tandem rack in the hitch. Getting the lock off this hitch cover is a real bitch.




This isn't technically an example of wearing my heart on my bumper, since it's on the front of the car. My same good friend Wilson told me not to buy the mirrored tag because it was "ghetto." But even he had to admit that the letters matched my SUV perfectly, and it looked good. It's so shiny, you can see my Native American moccasins in the reflection.



This decal is actually two in one. Not only does it identify me as a cyclist who rides in BRAG, but it also depicts a tandem bicycle. That's Katydid on the back. Doesn't it look just like us? I keep telling her she's going to have to take her turn as captain one of these days. She can shift gears and brake just as well as I can. And she probably won't take the chances I do, so we'll automatically be safer. She would probably never have to hear me scream from the back, "If you ride across that ditch, I'm going to KILL you!"



This one is another two-fer. The frame around the plate identifies me as a Navy mom. I'm hoping that may come in handy someday if I ever DO get stopped by some patriotic patrolman. Maybe he'll even be a veteran. I also bought one of the specialty plates honoring cyclists in our state. God knows we don't get much honor when we're actually ON the road ON our bikes. Hubby thought I was going to buy the specialty plate for teachers in Georgia. I would have, but I didn't agree with where the money goes. The extra funds generated by the educator specialty plates go toward teachers who have been injured (presumably by acts of violence, I guess) in the course of their jobs. Not that I disagree with those teachers receiving extra compensation beyond what they would normally get, but I think it just helps such a small population. I'd rather see that money go into a pool to pay for sick leave for teachers who experience catastrophic illnesses or injuries, either to them or their family members. Many teachers have to exhaust their sick leave caring for parents, children, etc., and then they can't actually afford to be sick themselves.

I think this one almost sent Hubby into apoplexy. Not because it's Georgia Gymnastics, because he has accepted that as a relatively harmless obsession of mine. And it rarely has to involve him. I only drag him to one meet a year, and he insists on taking a flask into THAT. No, what nearly sent him over the edge was the fact that this was on the painted part of the car. It looks like a decal, but it's actually a magnet. When it had been on the car for a couple of days, I said to him, "By the way, that's a magnet on the back of my car, not a sticker." He replied, "Oh, I know. I already checked it out."

Men are just weird.

Crazy Dream #2.....

Last night I dreamed (dreamt? I hate that word) that I was riding a bicycle with one of my students, whom I'll call KK. I suppose we were riding the tandem, and Katydid will be pretty pissed that I let someone else be my stoker, even in a dream.

I have no idea where we were, but there was a huge DOWNhill. And it led to an even steeper downhill. And the road merged with another road on a blind curve, and we went flying down the hill and into the other road without me even being able to see whether or not a car might have been coming. The pavement was wet.

I remember screaming to KK, "Hold on!" As if she had a choice of doing anything else.

I told KK about my dream today at school. I think she went to get her schedule changed.

Sore Sitter-Down.....

Now that I have a brand-new Harley (see yesterday's post), I only hope I will be able to ride it to school tomorrow. After the 170-mile round trip yesterday to get it, I was a little sore in the sitting down place. Then today my sister and I did a 54-mile BICYCLE ride on the tandem. The weather was perfect (well, a little hot at the end), and the route was nice. The only complaint I would have is 20 miles before the FIRST rest stop, and then 20 miles between the LAST rest stop and the end of the ride. It was a very rural route (excellent from a traffic viewpoint), so it's not like we had the choice of stopping at a store. That's a long time to go without a potty break, and I ran out of water. I tend to panic when I run out of water. I probably won't ever die from dehydration on a bike ride, but for me the THOUGHT of being out of water completely overtakes my concentration and I obsess about it. I almost stopped at a fire station and asked the folks there if I could fill up my water bottle. Surely they couldn't have turned me down, could they?

It's been a wonderful weekend, but I confess that I didn't get a lot done in the school work department. (That's not really unusual for a weekend, however.) Nor did I do laundry (in progress as we speak). Nor did I vacuum and mop (can wait a couple of days). Nor did I clean out the refrigerator (note to self...don't open some of those bowls). Nor did I go to the grocery store (oops.....this one may cause a problem). Not to fear, I try to keep an emergency frozen pizza in the freezer for occasions such as these.

Apropos of absolutely nothing..... (I love saying "apropos").......

On the way home from the bike ride today, I saw a bumper sticker on a car that said, "Happiness is a Tight ______." Insert 5-letter word that means cat and is often used to refer to the female genitalia. I HATE that word. Always have, always will.

I was so offended. And I'm by no means a prude. I believe in free speech, yada yada yada, but I think that's going too far. What kind of person SELLS stuff like that? And what kind of person BUYS stuff like that? And what kind of person drives around in a car with that message on the back bumper?

I tried not to generalize about the man driving, and I tried not to chalk it up to his being from a county in our state that has received much negative attention on the news lately and whose public school system just lost their accreditation.

I don't usually stoop to road rage, but this one nearly got the best of me. Sigh.

Favorite Cycling Pictures...

After 17 years of cycling, I have tried to train myself to concentrate more on the journey and less on the destination. The rides I do are not races, but it's sometimes hard for me to quell my competitive nature and relax. Not that being competitive in this case would do me any good; I'm faster than some but slower than many.

Occasionally when I'm riding along I'll see a cool scene and think, "That would be a pretty good picture." It might be a guy riding along in a Popeye t-shirt (hubby and I have an inside joke about Popeye) or it might be the mist floating over a meadow in the cool of the early morning. Or a swamp. I have a thing for swamps.

But it's hard for me to make myself stop and actually take the picture. Especially now that I ride a tandem with my sister. First of all, starting and stopping that thing isn't the easiest thing in the world to do. Sort of like stopping off at a convenience store in an 18-wheeler. Secondly, I feel somewhat GUILTY. Because I'm the captain, therefore controlling the gears, the brakes, and the steering, and if I stop.........well, she has to stop too. And she may not want to stop. On some days if I stop I'm afraid she might not get back on. If SHE were the captain, I could sit in the back and just snap pictures to my heart's content. But so far I haven't been able to talk her into that.


Therefore I am proud of myself when I do take the time to stop my bicycle, take off my gloves, take off my sunglasses, dig around in my bag for my camera, and take a picture. I try to ignore the fact that while I am stopped, many people zoom past me, and they'll be the first ones to get to the shower, the food, and possibly the beer.

This picture begged to be taken, and I stopped although we had just left a rest stop not long before. It's a prison cemetery in South Georgia, and on the crosses are only numbers, not names. Prison officials were afraid that the families of victims might desecrate the graves of the prisoners interred there, so they designated them by number only. I found that very moving.


This is one of my favorite pictures, one that also begged to be taken, but for a completely different reason. I had no choice but to stop and snap a photo of this sign in a pasture we rode by on one weekend ride. Whoever put it up obviously put a great deal of time and money into it. I laugh every time I see it.

Team Chi-Chis!!!!

Here are the charter members of Team Chi-Chis at Rest Stop #3 on the Covington Century. Man, was it hot. Whose idea WAS it to do this ride in 95-degree weather? And where did all those people come from? One year I actually parked IN the parking lot. This year we had to park about 1/2 mile away and hike to registration and back.

Riding a 50-mile bike ride is a lot like childbirth. (I know, I've also used that analogy for a lot of other things, like writing a dissertation.) In the middle of it, you're wondering "What in the Hell was I thinking?" And then when it's all over you say, "Well, that wasn't so bad." And then before you know if you've lost your mind and signed up to do the same ride again. Or another similar one. Okay, I realize I've just given away the fact that we did not, in fact, turn at the 80-100 mile route. But the sign made for a good picture anyway. If I had thought at that rest stop that I still had 60 miles to ride, I would have just slit my wrists. Even 10 to go at that point almost made me cry. But those last 10 weren't nearly as bad as the 16 between Rest Stop #2 and #3. We had some relatively minor mechanical issues with the tandem today, but we were able to resolve them with Rozmo's help.

Bless my sweet husband for buying steaks for tonight. Normally we go out to eat on Saturday, and normally I am more than happy to do so. But tonight I just wasn't up to it. Bless him for knowing that. I just wasn't into the whole hair, makeup, and what-do-I-wear stuff tonight. I had a short nap, two beers, a refreshing swim in the pool, and another beer with my steak. Thank goodness I can sleep in tomorrow morning.