Saturday, July 21, 2007

Bigun Lonely...

Mrs. Bigun's been gone to see her family up in North Cakalakie - been gone since Monday. At first it wasn't too bad, but I'm ready for her to be back home. Since I got out of the Army, I don't think we've spent even this much time apart - and that's been darn close to 10 years now. Bigun misses Lady Di.

Our pets miss her too - I don't think they know wassup, just me around feeding them and taking them out. I'm sure Di loves on them more than me - so they must be in Di-withdrawal too. We expect her home on Sunday - but it will probably be late Sunday, so the Bigun's got to go one more whole day with the empty house and no Mrs. B. Darn.

I thought it was going to be a cool day - get in a really hard bike and then finish up some work from the week. We had some early rain days, and it's just not easy to cut in the rain - or safe! Yesterday we had 3 people in the Tampa Bay area get struck by lightning.

I met up with Mike (Slowrider) and a couple of his friends, one had just come back from the Death Ride in California - sounds like the ride was aptly named - 16,000 feet of climbing in 120 miles....anyway - we were slated to be wheels up at 7:30am and all was well. These guys are little and light. Good climbers. And do you believe, after a few hills that I had to fly to catch back up to them after, they had the nerve to want me to pull on the flats?!?!?! I did of course, but a break would have been nice. I just couldn't show weakness or pain or suffering - they may not have invited me back!

So it's one hill after another, as you can see from the Garmin Chart - it really never lets up (I would guess that the "flats" I was referring to were around mile 12 or so..?..). I'm chasing them up a particularly nasty hill and I'm losing sight of them, so I stand in the saddle and "ping" - I can hear the back spokes making all kinds' of noise - but that's pretty regular in the hills - except this time I can hear the rear brake rubbing hard as the wheel goes around. I look back and see my back wheel is ALL out of true. Kinda scary when your miles away from nowhere. I got to the top and stopped to check it out, and still didn't notice that the spoke had broken. I opened up the rear brake all the way (fun in these hills) and hope the guys waited for me.

Luckily they had - about a mile up the road they were pulled over. Mike spotted the broken spoke right away..."so that's what happened". We couldn't pull it out, so we wrapped it around the adjacent spoke, and they were goading me on to continue with them - the plan was for 70 miles. I just couldn't see pushing hard up another hill and making it worse, so I opted for the parking lot - just didn't realize I still had a long way to go on my own. The difference was, on my own, I could take my time and not drive the rear wheel with a lot of power - which I did, and made it back with all of my fingers and toes in tact. At an average pace of 16mph, well, I really took my my time coming back - we were right at 18.5mph average when the spoke broke, and those guys showed no signs of letting up.

That's about as much hill climbing as I get in with my 82 mile Suncoast ride - which I can now painfully tell is not enough climbing. I need to re-do my training schedule and hook up with this crew every Saturday morning. Mike says that when the group is bigger, they really go after it - um...what was that today then?

9 comments:

The Stretch Doc said...

musta been da warm up series today..

rockon`

Tea said...

I'm going through Di-withdrawal too...no emails, no posts, no blog updates.

S. Baboo said...

Hills are your friend...now stay off them because the more you ride them the more I'm gonna have to ride them!

I hate it when Misty is gone.

Di said...

awww, you made my whole week Honey!
Tea, you are so sweet too!! You guys are awesome. I have missed checking up on everyone. Hopefully i can catch up this week. It's been lonely for me too!!
;)
di

Oly said...

Yup I know what you mean, all the days I say under my breath that I would like some peace and quiet (space) and then when it actually happens I instantly miss the hoopla of life.

greyhound said...

Mrs. Greyhound. Gone. Until August.

**sniff**

Unknown said...

we are ALL in Di-withdrawal!
Sorry for your bike snafu - spoking out sucks big time!

bigmike600 said...

I too suffer when my wife is gone. Even when she gets called into work nights and I have to sleep by myself I toss and turn all night.
You are like the 4th person I have heard of breaking spokes in the past week. Not good. Glad you didn't have to resort to carrying it. Sounds like those guys give it pretty good on the bike. Might be a great opportunity for you to ride with them. Glad to hear they are the kind of guys that will occasionally stop and wait for others. Good group. We all miss Di too. Hope she has some good pictures.

SingletrackJenny (formerly known as IronJenny) said...

Welcome home Di!!
xoxoxo
I gotta post pics of my new art wall for ya...