A Bread & Butter Ride

If anyone was listening to the conversation in my head last evening, they would have wagered a small fortune that I would have stayed in bed this morning, and slept in instead of riding the bike.  There were predictions of serious thunderstorms near our ride time.  I was feeling exhausted and sleep-deprived.  I got to bed late.  My plate at work was very full and demanded some early work.

It all came down to my bladder.

I know, that’s not very nice to say, but I had to get up, and once I was up I noted that it was not thunderstorming (yet), I felt mostly refreshed, and I knew that a ride would prepare me well for the work that lay ahead.

There were five of us out.  That’s pretty slim pickings for such a nice morning.  We set a quick but comfortable pace.  No one was interested in pushing it.  We talked, we laughed, we each spent some time trying to keep up with the others.  We had one of those nice rides that builds base miles and challenges no personal records.  I call them bread & butter rides.

Other than the conversation and zoning out at times, the only other things I noticed this morning was that blackberries are starting to drop from the trees and I notice a lot of cardinals out in the pre-sunrise time.  They seem to be some of the first birds out and about.

We did have one near miss with a car.  As we were getting ready to cross Severn Way (a dangerous intersection mostly because of poor sight lines) we heard a car to our left before it came through the intersection at a speed that I would guess was higher than the posted limit.  Dave swerved hard to the right, the car swerved into the oncoming lane, and the rest of us were able to stop short of the intersection … barely.  This is reminiscent of what I wrote recently about cycling and traffic signals.  Had we stopped at our stop sign before proceeding through the intersection as directed by the traffic signals, one of us would have likely been hit by this driver because of the excessive speed through the curve in the road at that point.  No harm came to anyone this morning, but it was a great reminder how dangerous this can be.  Flesh and bone are no match for a ton of steel.

This Ride: 22.2 miles
Malaria Campaign: 224.9 miles
Funds Pledged: $62.97
Contributed in support: $100