Five of us showed up to brave the cold. It was going to be my first ride on a brand-new derailleur since wrecking the old one on the Big Peach. I took my bike off the rack and leaned against it to start setting it up for the ride. I got back in the car to change and when I got out, I saw that the wind had knocked my bike over derailleur side down. It had a new scratch on it before I ever rode it, and the hangar was bent enough to knock the shifting out of whack.
I was able to hand bend it back to almost looking straight and use the sram axs micro-adjusters to get my full range of gears, almost. It wasn’t that bad, other than not being able to have nice things. I was able to set that aside and enjoy an awesome ride with some great folks. It was 42 when we started, with a feels like of 39. It was supposed to get up to mid-50s by the end of the ride and I was looking forward to warm sunshine, but it got pretty overcast halfway through and stayed nippy.
After this ride I quit dreading riding in the cold weather. I never can stand the thought of it but did a pretty good job keeping myself where I wanted to be temperature wise. I wouldn’t have thought, but I am more and more comfortable in the cold with just wind resistance, and maybe toe warmers if it’s less than 50, excluding any other thermal. It felt good to run a little cool, to the extent picking up the pace or climbing a hill would make you perfectly warm and not hot.
This is a great route for its long stretches of straight ways. It has some climbs to it, but on both the south out and the north back, along the straightaways, there are several long descents that are super fun to fly down. The dirt was in great shape, having had a good hard rain earlier in the week. No mud, just shiny red hardpacked clay under a thin layer of sand.
I met a new route pet around mile 30 in a brown and white palomino looking horse that ran up to the fence when I whistled at him. I didn’t have any food to give him but I did get a couple of quick pets in and got a selfie with him. I wish I had caught it in the picture, but his right eye was very light, almost grey, blue but his left eye was dark brown.
I need this one to convince me not to hibernate all winter, thanks to everyone that showed up, it was a blast.