Monday, February 1, 2010

Thirty Five with Friends


I had to beg off on a nice 60 mile ride on Saturday. Still too wrecked from the mtb ride on Friday. Yesterday I got in a beautiful 35 miler led by Mica at HWs. A new route that took in a lot of familiar ground, and some new additions that kept it interesting.

The pace was slow, as Mica was recovering from leading the ride I bailed on, so he kept to the advertised pace, but was cool with letting me get out front and hammer a bit in spots. I like routes where you can see ahead far enough to see the group ahead and not have to be checking the route sheet all the time.

We stopped at the Mirabelle Cafe, a new venue for us, and they have great food. Their service response was pretty confused and I had to wait for 30+ minutes to get a fruit tart, so we will have to work with them to help them understand that riders like good food, but it is also ride and recovery fuel, so it needs to appear quickly. I'm very hopeful this will be a great new resource for ride endings that is only 4 miles from my front door.

Here's an experimental shot of the group where I used the diagonal to get more peeps in the pic. It works really well if you don't use too much angle. I used about 32 degrees, so had to use MS Office Picture Manager to twist it back horizontal. I'm the one holding the camera, so no proof of life here, but everyone else is in the pic.

Njoy!

4 comments:

Gotta Run..... said...

What a nice recovery ride and only 4 miles from your house….jackpot!

How in the world did I miss your previous post. What great detail on the ride and no joke about your legs being trashed. Mine would still be!!! One thing – you need to have others take a few pictures of you. We need proof that you were really there.

Rachel said...

Great pic. Nothing better than a nice long ride with friends.

Grey Beard said...

Working at home, well, when I'm working anyway, or sitting at home waiting for an assignment, I get a little stir-crazy, so it's a life-saver having my cycling friends to socialize with. Nice to have you here again Rachel. Hugz!

I hear you Robin on the photos. The only reason I got that one was because when Mica stopped to explain the hill repeat course (they did a once-up) I asked if anyone had a camera.

Sara did, but when I tried to take a pic her memory card was full, so I deleted a few pics I hoped she wouldn't miss and made some room. When handed Joel (blue on the far right) the camera so I could be in the pic, the memory was full again. It was cool that Joel and Sara's group joined our group so by the time I took the photo we had 13 riders.

Somebody actually did take a few pics on the mtb ride, but never posted them to the site. Looks like I need to start bringing my big clunky camera. It takes fabulous pics, but that lumpy fist-grip thingy just wouldn't feel good getting shoved into my kidneys in a fall. Maybe I can find a good place in the CamelBak.

Any camera suggestions?

Anonymous said...

After a good tough ride the food better comes fast!!!! I think you need to demonstrate that to the cafe:-) Not sure how exactly; maybe just yell how starving you are (I wouldn't have a problem with that!)