Great Day for a sweet little Metric Century!

A smooth Sea never made a skillfull Mariner

 Cure Chasers overcome adversity and have a great time,,, all the time!


Getting ready to leave my house at 5:45am this morning for our 60 mile training ride set to start in Carmel on the Monon Trail, at Bub's Burgers and Ice Cream this morning, things were looking great!  The weather was perfect, overcast, not to hot, I was ready ahead of time due to last nights preparations, out the door ahead of schedule with Starbucks on my agenda on the way to my ride!


Then I turned the key on my Ford Cure Chaser dedicated SAG vehicle and things started to go downhill.


Nothing!!  No interior lights, no ding, ding, ding warning me that I have my key in the ignition, all dressed up in my Cure Chaser costume and no way to go!


Fortunately the lovely Melissa had got up at the same time so she volunteered to help me jump my truck, which I tried to start by letting it roll down the drive and dumping the clutch, still no go.

Victim of Borrow and Switch

The next thing I found out was that someone from Melissa's work had swindled her out of a practically new pair of jumper cables.  She had been kind enough to lend her jumpers to a massage therapist who returned a jacked up broken and corroded pair instead,,, no good dead goes unpunished.


No problem, it only cost me a few minutes figuring this out, so I got my better pair of cables and eventually due to not being able to get a good jump off of her car, had to decide to switch vehicles and take the swaggin wagon instead (my Dodge Stealth Conversion van).  This involved waking my sister up to move her car.  Pushing and Parking the Ford Pickup in the street in front of my house and transferring the contents of my pickup to the swaggin wagon.


Finally at 10 minutes before 7, I'm on the road.  No coffee, late and just doing what I can.  I had stayed in touch with the crew to let them know that I was in a spot of bother, but that I would be there as soon as I could.


7:30 am unloaded, saddled up and we are on the way,,, The team was very gracious not to give me to hard of a time and we rolled.

Morning nutrition

 7:35 am realized that I forgot both of my fully loaded water bottles at the Van, but not to worry, Jimmy Shugars  had a children's size Camel Back that he was happy to loan out so that they didn't have to wait any longer on me.


The weather was perfect, just a few sprinkles, nice temp and great company!  We got to do a little cyclocross on the Monon, gravel, sand, deep gravel, loose gravel, washed out ruts and finally grass, before we ended up on the MS route (MS for Michael Schwab - someone was kind enough to put my initials on this route, so that we had clear direction)


We made it to Cicero in great time, Edson Ortega had never been there before and commented what a nice little town it was.  I have to say that I agree!  We stopped for coffee and to get the water situation under control, as I had been rationing until we could get my supply up to snuff. (stuffed a bunch of Nestlé's water in my Jersey pockets put my quad espresso Americano in my 2nd water bottle holder and we headed north to Arcadia! 

Kevin Garner USA Cycling Level 3  Coach

We had not gone far before I realized that they had not put the small Americano in my Medium Cup but had filled it all the way to the top (just trying to be kind to me I am sure) but the net result was that I got hot coffee all over me.  I'll have to say that certainly does wake one up :)


We really were still making great time, the SAG stop had been relatively short and we didn't realize it but the wind had been at our back all day, so we were sailing!  Then the pavement disappeared.  We talked it over  and decided to forge ahead on the planned route.  I have to say that we did a lot of gravel riding today on our road bikes and everyone on the team handled it like pros!


Finally we reached our northern most point and turned to head back to Bub's.


We hadn't gone 2 miles back south when Kevin Garner and I noticed that we had lost Edson and Matt Weaver. We stopped to wait while Jimmy Shugars, Gary Martindale and Tony Gabriel rode on.  We figured it wouldn't take long and that we would work together to get back in the group.


But we soon realized that Matt and Edson were not coming and started riding back on the route the way we had just come.


It wasn't long until we found them!  Matt had broken a spoke, that put his wheel way out of true so it was seriously rubbing on his brake and almost to his frame.  After some quick mechanic work that involved the use of a knife to surgically remove a sensor that was no hitting a spoke and totally releasing the rear brake, we were on our way again.
The lost squad gave me a call looking for us but we did not figure out until much later that they had gone off route and were waiting on us at a location that was not on the way back to Cicero.
So we made arrangements to meet back at the coffee shop and subway strip mall in Cicero arrived and waited for about 5 minutes before the lost boys showed up.
This was when things got exciting,,, I'm not sure what Jimmy Shugars did in that Subway, but he was in a real hurry to get in, took a long time to come out and said he was pretty sure that we were banned as a team from ever going in there again.

The Lost Boys

In our haste to get out of there with this news, Gary crashed his ride in the parking lot, in an unfortunate declipping accident,,, ,on the take off?  He lacked the common decency to stay on the ground long enough for me to get a picture and document the incident, but the good news is that his bike was unharmed in the fall... oh yeah and Gary was unharmed as well aside from some serious bruising to his pride.
Finally we are on the last leg of our trip.  About 5 miles out Gary realizes that his bike may have been unharmed in the meeting with the pavement, but one of his cycle computers was now permanently off network and likely still lying in the parking lot in Cicreo.
No ride would be complete if someone didn't have a flat and Kevin came through just before we got off the graveled part of the Monon.
He had driven to Cincinnati the day before to pick up a brand new Trek Madone road bike. (BTW it looks like a sweet ride) But now he has to take it back because he apparently pinch flatted and we had the icing on the cake for our ride.

Kevin Garner fixes flat tire

 

His new bike has an interesting idiosyncrasy with the rear brake mounted on the bottom of the frame instead of just under the seat. This IMHO makes it a lot simpler to change that tire as you can turn the bike upside down and the brake is right there to release, so you don't have to forget about that step or putting it back when you put the wheel back on. (we never figured out how to release it, so we are hoping it still works,,,, maybe it self adjusts. this needs more research)
With all the adventures of the day, we arrived back at the starting point shortly after noon and no one had time left in their time bank for the day, so we all headed home instead of to Blu Moon for coffee and brunch, with the promise from most of our riders to meet again for Blue Tuesday!
In order of contribution
Late for Ride - Michael Schwab
Most forgotten gear - Michael Schwab
Broken Spoke Award - Matt Weaver
Lost Boys - Tony Gabriel, Jimmy Shugars, Gary Martindale
Parking lot Crash - Gary Martindale
Flat tire Award - Kevin Garner
Best/Only new Rider - Edson Ortega ( this was a long ride for Edson, he has also come a long way since I first met him - great job Edson)
Great job to the whole team for working together, taking care of each other and being great guys to ride with!
See you on Blue Tuesday at SWW!
Michael