monument to monument wrap up
- 5 of us left baltimore at 8:15 AM. There were many no-shows. they got caught be fear, reason, or the aftermath of the previous evening. 1 fixed gear, 4 road bikes.
- met up with 2 members of the SSOFT in Elkridge. 2 more fixed gears.
- met up with a random guy rolling on a really nice seven road bike in Laurel. He asked where we were riding to, and decided to join in.
- took this picture @ a 7-11.
- In College Park, we lost our first rider (pre-planned). Jen parted ways and hopped in my pre-stationed getaway car and drove back to Baltimore.
- in DC we about doubled in size. all but one on fixed gears (2 more SSOFT members, they rep hard). I suspect that Steve will probably write something up about it.
- DC riders were fresh and ready to go, some baltimore riders (especially me) had a little less vigor and vim.
- lost our second rider to some non drive side crank problems in beltsville.
- made it back to Baltimore later than expected. Some riders, and by “some riders” I actually mean just me, were totally fried and rolled in the last 20 miles at a snail’s pace.
- Brewer’s Art French Fried made everything better.
- DC folks hit the road at 7 PM hopefully not too much darkness on their way home.
CUE SHEET FOR SUNDAY’S RIDE FINISHED
Here’s the link.
24 hours of Big Bear 2008
1st time in a 24 hour race. Anyone who has ridden with me knows that I am a mediocre mountain biker on my best day. The following thoughts occurred to me as I completed my first foray into 24 hour racing:if you don’t feel like reading, here’s a video of the lemans style start from my helmet cam. I wanted to record my first lap, but I forgot to delete old footage so I ran out of memory pretty quick.Friday evening:
- Well Joe and Julie of Single Speed Outlaw say that it’s not so bad. Julie warned me about a tricky descent and how I need to just let go of the brakes and trust it. I met internet celebrity Joel Gwadz, and he said that it’s an easier course to race than to ride because you want to keep your momentum up on it. I guess that makes sense.
(more…)
Route for Monument to Monument ride.
things are coming together nicely. I’m getting a lot of “probably” responses and a lot of “I’m totally doing this” responses. Hopefully, those will turn out to be true. But honestly, everyone will probably have a good time regardless.
If you’re interested in coming out for this, please drop me a line at jim (at) charmcityvelo.com . it will give me a general idea of how many cue sheets to print out.
If you would like to help, the best thing you can do is tell people about it. print out a flyer, hang it in a bike shop, stick it in the spokes of a parked bike, etc. I’m pretty swamped with work, but that should die down soon and I will be able to put some more time into getting the word out.
Here’s the tentative route from Baltimore. If you’re going to do the ride, please take a second to check it out, maybe trace it with a google map. I’m sure people will be more than happy to help if anyone has a mechanical or gets lost, but since this is an unsupported ride, it’s totally worth it to review the route beforehand. Here is a preview of the route, I will make sure that there are pretty cue sheets and all that business.
click for the route.
