This was a bad year for leading rides.
Take the January Ride. This is always pretty iffy since I like to lead a ride through Carlisle, but Carlisle does not salt the roads as near as I can tell. So after a snowstorm the road conditions in Carlisle can best be described as “packed powder.” I gave up riding a road bike on snow a long time ago when mountain bikes were invented, but there are always some brave souls who show up on road bikes, and it becomes an adventure rather than a ride. This year, the weather contributed by being pretty miserable. I think it was in the 30’s and drizzling. The day before I had had a conversation with Ken, who was berating me for starting the ride at a different time than all the other rides. I replied that I didn’t mean to, but since it was in print, I showed up at 10 rather than the usual 10:30. It was true I had scheduled a different time for my ride, but I did several years earlier, and it became clear that Ken had not actually checked the WheelPeople. Neither did I, so when I showed up at ten, there was no one there. Not that there was a big crowd, but I know at least Peter B showed up and found no one there. Needless to say, Ken was in the doghouse after that.
Then there was the August Apple Pi ride. Seems hurricane season came early this year, and my ride coincided with torrential downpours. This time I was there on time, but no one else was.
Not to worry, I reran the ride end of October, and guess what, not only was it raining, it was cold, perfect hypothermia weather. This time I actually got two hardy souls who wanted to do the ride, so I did the speech (didn’t have to spend too much time on the “ride single file” issue), gave out maps and sent them on their way. I had told Janet, my coleader, not to bother coming out all the way to Bedford if it was another washout, I would start the short ride which started a half hour later.
I had forgotten to bring a watch, so I had no idea what time it was. Since it had started raining more seriously now, I started riding in circles around the parking lot to ward off hypothermia. I determined with the one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi method that it took approximately 30 seconds to do a slow lap around the lot. I figured I would do 20 laps and then take off. Of course, as I started getting colder, I started riding faster, which threw that calculation off. So I stayed until what I thought was 10 o’clock and headed home.
So the tally for the year is three rides, two riders. This may be a new CRW record.
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