Spring Tune-Up Saturday.......

It is still Saturday, isn't it?

It's been a long week today.

I had a friend dilemma today. In fact, I had two. With the same friend.

Rozmo and I started off today with the idea of riding 69 miles (but the ride is always longer than it's advertised, so we knew we would get at least 70).

After Rest Stop #2 is when I had my first dilemma. We were several miles down the road when Rozmo realized she had left her water bottles behind. Plural. Both of them. Which meant she would have to go the entire distance between rest stops with nothing to drink. And there were 21.6 miles between two of the rest stops. Besides. Rozmo is not one to sacrifice water bottles that cost $12 each, so she turned back. My dilemma was whether to turn back with her (she said I didn't have to) or go on without her.

I debated just long enough that when I decided she would do it for me and I turned around to go back to the rest stop, I had to ride like hell just to catch her. We had a tailwind in that direction. Which meant we got to do the HEADWIND part of that stretch TWICE.

Since we now had some extra miles, that meant we would be near 80 miles, and Rozmo got the idea that if we were that close to 100, we should do some EXTRA miles and get the century. The prize for that feat is a 99 cent piece of cloth proclaiming to the world that you have ridden 100 miles on your bicycle in a single day.

I'm over the bandanna thing.

We did backtrack a few miles, but Rozmo realized that would mean going up and down (mostly up) some of the same hills we had already done. Then she got the idea that we would get into camp, then ride back toward the last rest stop just far enough that we would have 100 miles. I told her there was no way she would get me back out on the road once we made it to camp, and we had better put in the extra miles before we got back.

I would like to think my amazing power of persuasion forced Rozmo to see reason, but I think it was more likely the wind.

Did I mention the 30 mph winds we had here for most of the day? And you would think they would have been tailwinds for half the ride, since we rode in a circle, but that's not how it works out. It's ALWAYS a headwind. Except for the times it's a crosswind that will push you and your bike into the other lane on occasion.

I hate wind. I will never take up sailing or kite-flying, because that would require that I occasionally see the benefit of the wind, and I'm committed to hating the wind forever.

We rode a total of 86 miles, and you would think it would have been easy to ride "ONLY" an additional 14 for the self-satisfaction of saying we had done a century.

You could think that, but you'd be wrong. I'm okay with the 86 miles we did.