Thursday August 6th Ride Report

Had another great ride this evening, even though it didn't look like we would . It was raining and thundering right up to the time we were ready to leave. The rain stopped, the clouds disappeared and the sun came out. What a beautiful evening, 74 degrees and a triple rainbow.

Nicoll, Hammer, Duane, Sean and myself did the three man loop again this evening. Duane and I had a pretty hard ride the on Wednesday and Nicoll had raced so the fact that hammer and Sean had fresh legs so I new that we were in for it. We had a great ride. Lots of attacks and some good, hard pace line riding. Of course close to the end I was spent and hammer was being his usual relentless self so on the final part of the last climb I just let him Sean and Nicoll go and turned back down the hill to finish of the climb with Duane. My heart only gave me a bit of trouble during the ride this evening but nothing that affected my riding. I had the most trouble once we got back to the shop and were just standing around. I know it was a good ride because I know I had nothing left, Duane looked like a zombie sitting on the couch and Sean lost his balance just standing there.


If cats have nine lives how many do cyclist have??????

So we are cruising out Bethel Church Road and had just passed the church and descending back down to 286. There was allot of chatter and we were riding side by side, which by the way is legal here in the state of PA. Now you must understand this isn't a very busy road and rarely see more than a car or two any time we ride it. So as I said we are just cruising along when I notice this mini van pulling off the road and coming to a stop in the burm. I look to my right at Sean and to make sure of our location on the road, I look back toward the road ahead and catch movement out of the corner of my eye. I look to my left and just in time to see the mirror of a car literally 4 inches from my leg. This totally caught me by surprise, but also explained the reason for the mini vans actions. I must say that this rally startled me but fortunately I held my line and let the imbecile continue buy. The whole incident really set the group off so the chase was on and we caught up to the lady at the intersection of 286 and yelled and screamed, pointing out the fact that she had really not made any headway buy passing us then we continued to pass here and get in front of her again, which made us feel better but probably had no effect on her. As she passed us i reckoned back to my early days of riding when a friend of mine, Spa-Man, carried a small bag of rocks with him for just such an occasion. This state really needs to do a better job of getting the word out about cyclist rights on the road. My only regret is that I did not have my camera so that I could post her obese mug and license plate number all over the net.