8 days

That's how long it's been since I've been on a bike......and 8 days ago wasn't a long ride. Luckily I still remembered how to ride. ;-)

The morning started out dry and reasonably nice. I was itching to ride and luckily some others were thinking the same thing. By 10:15 AM 3 of us started out from Butteville. Consensus was that 62 miles sounded good, and that our Keizer Metric Century might be as good as any, though there was some talk about modifying the route a bit. I wasn't the instigator so let Bill lead. As it ended up, despite what he stated earlier he really didn't know where he was going! So we found ourselves riding on a busier than optimal road through Woodburn. I left for the ride this AM on very short notice and failed to lube my chain. I had cleaned it after the last ride and was going to re-lube it after it dried. I had chain lube along, but with the rushing around, I forgot until I was about a mile from the start. I stopped at the Bi-Mart in Woodburn and picked up a bottle of penetrating oil and applied it to my chain. Marcie's chain was in dire need as well so I lubed her's too. From there I jumped in the lead and led us east out of town and out of the traffic. We turned south and trekked to Mt Angel, then over to Keizer. (click on map for full size)
At Keizer the sky that had been darkening on us throughout the ride finally started to drip. I had my goretex raingear along as well as my shoe covers. I stopped and put them on. The others admired my preparedness........and wished they had thought to bring wet weather gear along. We pedaled back northward. We had about 2.5 hours to cover the ~25 miles. I thought that should have been plenty of time. But alas, my Marcie was running low on energy. I tried to pull her along by having her draft me but she couldn't even draft along at 13 mph. About half way back to Butteville I finally decided the best course of action would be to ride on ahead, get my pickup, backtrack and sag them in. Bill, being the chivalrous guy he is, held back with her while I rode on.

I got to Butteville at 4:30PM, time to be off the road with the cloudy skies and rain contributing to generally poor visibility. I quickly racked my bike and drove back along the course. I found them still out about 4 miles.

Loaded Marcie and her bike, Bill said he wanted to ride in.

We all reunited at Butteville at 5:05 PM, high time to be off the road.

Marcie had a flat within the first two miles but other than that no delays, just a slower pace than we should have had with a 10:15 start to get back in at a reasonable time.

Even with those issues it was a good ride today. Felt good to be back on a bike!



............BIKE............LIFECYCLE.........TOTAL
Today.......63...............0.................63
Jan........197...............0................197