A couple of weeks ago, the official 2010 training season for the MS150 kicked off with a charity ride out in, wait for it, the Katy prairie. The ride benefited the Jersey Village Gold Dusters drill team, but I couldn’t help translate this into Gold Diggers. Cue Kanye West, I suppose.
If you haven’t ever done it, riding on the Katy prairie is pretty flat (it is a prairie, after all), and that means wind. Depending upon local weather, the wind can either be from the north (brr!) or from the south, but there is usually at least a little bit of it. On this particular ride, there was a lot. Like “riding in a paceline and redlining” lot. I had caught up with some of my West End friends, and proceeded to get dropped about 20 miles in.
One “entertaining” occurrence, though, happened trying to get into rest stop #1. RS#1 was in a park to the left of the route, which required that you make a left-hand turn onto a second road and ride a half-mile until the proper park entrance. After we turned off the main route, I spied an unoccupied portalet in a satellite parking lot before the rest stop proper in the main parking lot, so I peeled left early — on this secondary road.
“Whoah!”
SCREEE…
“Whoah!”
….EEEE…
“Oh my god!”
…EECH!!!
Apparently a woman had decided to HAMMER into the rest stop (a definite etiquette/safety violation) in the oncoming lane (a definite etiquette/safety violation) without announcing her presence with the requisite, “On your left!” (a definite etiquette/safety violation). I heard her back tire skid a bit, so I widened out my own turn and braked, fearing that I was either about to get T-boned or I was going to hit a metal gate post because of this idiot.
Fortunately, she tightened up her turn enough and sloughed off enough speed to both avoid hitting me and allowing me to avoid the gate post. Without a word, she takes off towards the rest stop (winner!). I, on the other hand, am on a “mission from gahd”, and move smartly to the still-unoccupied portalet.
Battling Yarik for Supremacy
Yarik strikes again. Sorry, let me re-phrase, YARIK strikes again, as in “Yet Another Ride In Katy”. For whatever reason, the wind and the cold doesn’t seem to scare people away from charity rides the way hills do, and so the charity rides in Katy seem to get a much broader cross-section of the cycling public, and by “broader cross-section”, I mean stupid people. Unfortunately, this also means that people tend to put a lot of rides out in the Katy prairie (like 2/3rds – 3/4ths of the training rides), forcing me to come up with acronyms to describe what has become a relatively indistinguishable, and yet continually sub-optimal, experience. Like CSI: SKU, but in real life.
This past weekend was a ride benefiting the Faith West Academy athletics department, and while it, too, included Yarik in the cast, it also included a nice 20 mile leg between Burleigh and Bellville, with lots of great rolling hills. Attack! The only downside, of course, is that it was 35 degrees when we started, and it didn’t really get appreciably warmer until after 1pm. This presented a bit of a challenge because I was under-dressed. As a result, I had to ride fast enough to keep warm, but slow enough not to get sweaty. Sweaty won, and I lost. Whenever I stopped, I quickly cooled through perspiration and evaporation, making my wind breaker a mess.
However, I did finish the full 70 miles and added a “long” Taco Ride (~40mi.) on Sunday morning for my first >100 mile weekend in a while. That felt good. Very good. Saturday I am driving SAG for the ExxonMobil/Chevron training series, and Sunday is a ride to make me happy: the Tri-County Hill Hopper in Warrenton/Round Top (BFE to you city folks, but lots and lots of hills!). I am TERRIBLE at climbing hills, but I do so love doing it.
It’s for the Children…
Some of you might have seen that I officially launched my fundraising efforts for this year’s MS150 campaign. For those that did not see it, here is basically what I wrote:
Of all the worthy causes out there that you could support, the fight against Multiple Sclerosis is one of them. If you ordinarily support the MS Society, then please consider doing so through my link. If you support other causes, then good for you! If you are looking for tax deductions for 2010, then this is one way to do some good and avoid sending as much cash to Uncle Sam as you otherwise might.
I’m not saying that Multiple Sclerosis is so dire and awful of a disease that you should exclusively focus your philanthropic activities solely towards its eradication. Really, there are other awful diseases out there, and we should be working toward cures for all of them. In fact, I’ll ride the Tour de Pink (breast cancer treatment) and the Tour de Cure (cure for diabetes) again this fall, and I may even ride the Tour das Hugel (cure for hills), if I’m in shape enough come mid-November. If you want to link some of your charitable giving to my cycling, then I’m definitely interested in cutting a deal!
That being said, the Lonestar Chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society puts on one heck of a bike ride between Houston and Austin. When I originally started riding, I had a plan to “just finish” the shortest route. In year two, I was going to see about doing the slightly longer course, avoiding the “challenge” route. In year three, I though that I might try the challenge route. Based upon almost a year’s worth of training, we’ll cut out the middle-man. This year won’t be fast (15 – 18mph average, depending upon wind), but it will be 180 miles of every hill on the course.
Please consider supporting a rider, and if you run out of riders to support, consider me.