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Showing content with the highest reputation on 01/16/2021 in all areas

  1. I believe that we are uniquely prepared for our life’s work. The inverse is we get the work we are prepared for. Just yesterday I was helping a colleague new to bicycling understand why she needs to drop into low gear and spin. The conversation turned toward “the hills in life,” and I believe it is true that bicycling hills has uniquely prepared me for settling in and turning the pedals when the work gets steep.
    8 points
  2. I gotta say my hardest rides were races back in the day. Some of those crits were just on the rivet for an hour with a couple of prime sprints thrown in for fun. When I progressed to a point where I was placing and consistently top 10 (and one win!) I would finish so wasted I couldn’t stand up for several minutes. I remember sitting in the street just heaving trying not to throw up and seeing my quads throbbing. My hardest overall physical & mental efforts were not on a bike but during marathons and military training. Going all day long for miles & miles with 100 lbs of gear on you is a total physical & mental drain. The police academy had some tough moments but not as bad as the Army.
    8 points
  3. Hardest... I've been riding a while so how to decide... The longest? That would be the Jersey Double. If anybody tells you New Jersey is flat, they're a liar. Worst crash? Then the century where I crashed at mile 93. Afterwards I couldn't swing one leg over the saddle, but could manage the other. Rode the last 7 miles, as I found out later, with a fractured pelvis and a fractured rib. Most nettlesome? Then the century where I flatted 5 times, including twice on the front wheel of all things. It seemed like I'd never get to the end of that ride. Loneliest? That's the local bike club ride where the riders gathered together after the ride but decidedly and pointedly ignored anybody who wasn't part of their regular clique. Most frustrating? The century where my rear tire sidewall blew out just before mile 70, and the SAG support had already left for the day. I duct taped the tire up, took off the rear brakes, and rode until mile 97 when a sliver of glass punctured the rear tire. At that point I had to abandon and take a lift back to the start. Abandoning so close, now that was hard. For this year anyway, the most difficult for me was the ride to Lake Desolation. Riding up a 4 mile hill, in the dark, on my touring bike towing a loaded BOB trailer became a mind over matter situation for me. Fortunately I have no mind, so it all didn't matter, and I made it to the top eventually.
    8 points
  4. Mentally and physically, I remember one century I just didn't want to finish. All was going well until mile 95. My butt was on fire, I just wanted to give up. I didn't and felt good about finishing. I've done 10 or so centuries and have finished all that I've started. By far the hardest thing I've done on a bike was ride up Mt. Washington. I didn't prepare enough for it, weighed too much... I remember looking down at my power reading and saying, that can't be right, I can't ride that hard. 2 hours of that finished off with a few hundred yards at 20+%... ugh. Again, I felt great that I did it.
    7 points
  5. Every time you spout off about being willing to change everything, I suggest you reconsider and read that book. I've suggested it at least five times to you. You never pay attention to what I say, I should be your girlfriend.
    7 points
  6. Trans-Iowa. 336 miles, it took 33 hours. 30 mph winds, thunderstorms all night. Temps dropped to the 30s overnight and I did not bring pants. One guy I rode with dropped at 6:00 am(26 hours and 270 miles into the race). He crawled into a ditch and slept. We had to leave him behind. An hour later the other guy I was riding with said go on without me. He didn't finish. I opened a can of coffee that I had been carrying all night and it exploded it my face. When I finally made the last turn and had a tailwind for the last 15 miles I knew I could finish before the time cut-off. Arrowhead 135. I attempted it four times and finished twice. It's cold, snowy, and really difficult. JayP's fat pursuit. I've tried twice and not finished twice. 120 miles in the GYE with lots of snow. I think I pushed my bike for 4 hours. Chequamegon 100. I hit a tree with my face and shattered my nose. I had to ride back to the start bleeding like a wounded deer. The first of two sunrises in Iowa.
    7 points
  7. The last couple of days on the Great Adventure were hard..the heat was a biggie, sleep was lousy and then the shoulder issue...my shoulder was so inflamed..I couldnt wear my camelbak over my right side..I got cranky and misserable...but I would do it again.
    6 points
  8. Photo update, today, 1/16/2021. Wiping out at a high rate of speed on an unbanked 90 degree turn 9/10/2020 as couldn't brake hard enough and tires lost traction. After 4 months, the fractured clavicle healed but the hematoma remains. While initially ballooned out to size to size of grapefruit in the final couple of miles during the post accident ride home, appears to have maxed out this week as not get getting the stretching twinges - otherwise not painful. Hopefully will begin absorbing down over the next few months. Only thing I can think of is with the left being the road rash and fx clavicle side, caused by landing inside the handlebar. The only injury on the right was a puncture wound on the calf, presumably by brake lever. No vien punctured so wasn't a 'control bleeding' issue as just oozed blood which clotted quickly.
    6 points
  9. I repeat the story of my childhood cycling adventure. Sure it was only 10 miles total, but this was for two people who never really cycled. Luckily ice cream treats were involved. And yes, the picture is still hanging in my bedroom.
    6 points
  10. Tomorrow, I am going to socialize with someone who had covid 4 months ago. Then on Sunday night and all of Monday, I will have RO to rough up, and we are gonna tear the town apart! I think we will make a cake, too. Or cookies again, they turned out pretty damn good!
    6 points
  11. What a difference a week makes. Priest gave last rites today.
    5 points
  12. I don’t think free masons exist. If you want a mason to work for you you will have to pay him.
    5 points
  13. The last day of touring in Holland we lost the route markers, went the wrong way, got lost, ran out of water and food. It extended our saddle time and my butt was starting to hurt. We ended up in the Amsterdam red light district after sunset, which is creepy because men have full license to leer and they’re not discrete about it. But, at least we knew our way back to the hotel from there. We bought water and Red Bull at a liquor store and limped into the hotel. The day before I had wiped out on some gravel, but mr. didn’t know because he was ahead of me. I got back up and riding, but lost the route, couldn’t see mr., found myself in what looked like someone’s back yard. So, I backtracked to the place I crashed, hoping mr. would try to find me. It was a weird feeling that we were separated in a foreign country and neither knew where the other person was with no phones to contact each other. He eventually found me. But the tour wasn’t so fun after that. The last day was the longest and as already mentioned, turned weird at the end.
    5 points
  14. Having only taken up cycling for exercise in my 60's as part of multiple form of exercise, my longest ride is only 25 miles on a mountain bike on Baltimore and Annapolis Bike Trail from a park south of BWI Airport to the U.S. Naval Academy and back. After I'm back in my house, I'm probably going to get a hybrid bike and take some longer rides and and when the pandemic's over do one of those 50 mile events.
    5 points
  15. I think Mt Washington is the single most difficult event I ever done. I worked hard preparing for it; trained in ways I’d never trained before, thought I’d lowered my gearing enough and was psyched mentally to do it. And it still kicked my butt. The last hundred yards or so: And the mountain from the bottom: I’ve done other rides that have taxed me in different ways. I did a solo ride in PA back in 95 that I wasn’t prepared for. I didn’t have enough to eat, I’d not switched out my flat lander cog and I bonked badly. I’d ride/walk until I came across a gas station, buy a snickers and a Mt Dew, try to test a few and then repeat the process. My mental fatigue was making it difficult to think properly and the idea of trying to catch a ride back never even crossed my mind. Did a MTB ride with a group of friends in CA back in the early 90s that turned out to be technically far above most of our skill levels. It was truly miserable. Was wipe out after wipe out. Very little actual riding it seemed. At one point one of the guys was literally hanging over a ledge that dropped hundreds of feet straight down holding onto an exposed root by one hand while his bike was swaying from his other. We were trying to pull him up, and yelling for him to let the bike go. But he wouldn’t. We managed to get him up safely and saved his bike as well. We were pretty shaken after that.
    5 points
  16. Ride the Rockies is one of the best organized rides in the U.S. The support is excellent. It is not actually as hard as it might look if you are checking out the daily elevation profiles. Most of the climbs in Colorado that have been part of this tour over the years, while they might be long, are not as steep as many of the shorter climbs in the eastern U.S. The RAGBRAI often has as much elevation gain as Ride the Rockies, but the difference is that on RAGBRAI, you go up for 10 or 20 minutes, and then down for 90 seconds, so most of your time is spent climbing. On Ride the Rockies, you may go up for several hours, but then you go down for 30 minutes to 2 hours. The steepest climbs on any of the routes I have ridden were on the 2016 tour, on the last day on the east side of Horsetooth Reservoir. There were some quarter mile sections of 14%. Most climbs are 4-6% with the occasional 8-10% section.
    5 points
  17. I did a century in the middle of a week long tour. They had predicted temps over 100° so we started 5:30 ish. Running our lights. The rest stops were not set up when we got to them. They did have some fruit and water and Gatorade. I don’t think they really expected people to ride 100 miles in that heat. It was an out and back and they had a rest stop at 15 miles. Nobody there when we went by. A lunch stop at 25 miles we got fruit and water there. Our turn around was at a winery 50 miles out. It was now over 100° They sent an Ambulance with bottles of ice water that pulled up along side us while we rode and handed us bottles of water. That part was cool. We got back to the lunch stop and ate some leftovers that the 50 mile riders didn’t eat. The final 25 miles were 104° official temp but the bike computers were reading 118° with the sun and heat off the pavement. The last road we were on had melted and the hot tar was sticking to our tires and splattering up on our legs and bikes. I looked for a farm pond or swimming pool or someone washing their car anything where I could cool down but there was nothing. At least when we were pedaling there was a breeze. We past an ambulance on the side of the road that was tending to someone who overheated. I kept on pedaling and when we got back to camp I didn’t stop at my tent but went straight to the shower truck. I don’t usually take cold showers but that day I took a half hour cold shower trying to get my body temp back down. I felt a bit out of sorts the rest of the day. Went in town to dinner with a friend I made on the trip and by next morning I was fine.
    5 points
  18. The older I get, the more I feel like I am a stranger in this world. I think that is one reason I like riding a bike. When I am on my bike, I am twelve years old again and the world is a beautiful and loving place.
    5 points
  19. There is a ton of levers and buttons on it. It’s a really old British made thing. I did some grading, scooping, and used it to deliver a railroad lumber tie to this spot where we are putting in a mechanical gate. Kinda fun to work with. Once my husband has his garage together he wants to work on it and make it nicer. It runs well.
    4 points
  20. lives in Bend. He has a you tube channel & filmed going up a climb by my old house. I have only done this a few times. Mostly because there I can't "warm up" because it's so close. I also never went as fast as Chris does. Also he is standing most of it. I'm sitting & creeping. It is really pretty at the top as you can see 7 mountain peaks. One of the road races goes up the road. A MUP crosses here & I saw a cyclist go from the MUP into the teeth of a few riders. I heard a lot of bad words then.
    4 points
  21. But not until February 19th. At least it is scheduled.
    4 points
  22. We played pranks in the Navy. I once spent all night slowly drilling a hole in my chief petty officers coffee cup and filling it back up with water soluble stuff. Half way through morning muster the cup started peeing on the front of his khakis. No one ever ratted on me but the next day I found my tool box welded shut. He was a pretty cool E7 who had stayed with us after being promoted from E6 (very rare to stay in the same place)
    4 points
  23. I have lots of regrets. But I am not going to add one more to the list by discussing them with you people.
    4 points
  24. I think we all change as we age, some more than others. I've changed enough, and lived long enough to be able to look back and see several distinctly different personalities, some I remember fondly, others I regret ever having known, let alone being.
    4 points
  25. Not any real regrets. I'm very happy where I'm at now and somewhat astounded that I made it this far. If I could go back and change something, I might be in a totally wrong place now. Obviously I watch too much Doctor Who and other time travel shows.
    4 points
  26. I remember his pics of his dinner table.
    4 points
  27. Which one of these things is snot like the others?
    4 points
  28. Intelligence, confidence, personality, butt
    4 points
  29. You needed gears like this, it's the only way I was making it up.
    4 points
  30. Going to the grocery store, pulling the trailer, about five miles away. My back was "out" and I could barely walk. Sweated bullets the whole way but didn't puke.
    4 points
  31. Longest was a solo ride I did in Ohio. Rode from home, Liberty Twp, to Loveland and took the Little Miami trail north to Xenia. Some other trail west to Dayton and picked up the Great Miami trail south. When I reached Middletown, it was getting dark and I didn’t want to ride on the roads without lights so I called Wo7 for SAG. My computer said 108 miles so I rode around the block until she arrived. 110 miles. Hardest was the Garrett County Gran Fondo in MD/WV near Deep Creek Lake. They had 25, 44, 62, and 100 mile options. I signed up for the 62. After climbing for miles with a 39x27 low gear I opted for the 44 mile route when I got to the split. The hardest part was I couldn’t maintain a steady cadence to climb with all the other cyclists at different speeds. Finished with 43 miles and 5,000 feet of climbing. Still a hard ride.
    4 points
  32. When I was just a little tadpole, we'd go up to the Catskills in the summer. We were city kids who didn't spend a lot of time outdoors, although we'd hang out in the neighborhood park a bunch. But when the summer came, we'd go up to the mountains and finally have a chance to ride bikes, and hike up the road to go play in the sttreams. It made me feel very free and adventurous. One summer I got ambitious and decided i wanted to ride my bike to the next town over. We didn't have a car with us in the country, so you were stuck in your little town until my Dad drove up on the weekends. Going to North Branch was a wild adventure! I felt very excited. My mom agreed to come with me because she probably didn't want her dopey city girl riding alone. Google maps tells me it's only about 5 miles each way, but at the time it seemed like a huge distance (especially on our old hand me down bikes). When we got to North Branch, we went to the General Store and got ice cream treats. Then we rode our bikes down the path to the abandoned church building and explored while we had our ice cream. I felt very accomplished and proud. At the time I enjoyed the adventure, but as I grew older, I appreciated my Mom doing this when I assume it's the last thing in the world she probably wanted to do since I never saw her biking anywhere else. That made me feel very loved, sort of like the formerly unfortunate and not spring green pink tumblers. Years later I was on vacation and saw a framed print of an abandoned church at the end of the overgrown path. it reminded me of my great bike ride, and that print is the only picture that I've carried with me through a number of moves. It hangs in my bedroom right now, and when I pass it each morning it makes me smile. The End
    4 points
  33. I was hoping Akirasho would show up here but he left LF before this started. He was careful not to open up on the forum and show much of himself but I was getting to know him. He would pack his camera on his rides and he took some great pictures. I think he was our only black rider.
    4 points
  34. Similar to LJ. Organized century from Grand Island to Lincoln. Temps were forecast over 100. They released us at 6:15. The first half was relatively flat and mostly comfortable. At York, I took a little longer snack break. Drank down my water and refilled them before starting the 2nd half. The heat started to set in but it was still pretty flat and the asphalt was newer than it had been so riding was good. Made friends with an Ironman triathlete before she got into aero position and really got after it! She pulled away. By Seward, it was really hot. I drank both bottles empty before refilling them and some grapes and a cookie for snack. The last 20+ miles had a lot of hills. The wind off the pavement was as cool and refreshing as a blow dryer. Both water bottles were empty when I got to the last rest stop. I refilled my bottles and worried about a lady under the canopy who was beet red. Her husband was trying to convince her to wait for a ride to come but she was determined to finish her first 25 miler. A while later on the road, I was catching a guy. He was swerving and erratic. I asked if he was ok when I caught him. He said yes, but I could tell he wasn’t. A little bit later, an official vehicle was checking on another rider. I stopped and told them to check on the other guy and I described his jersey. They radioed to someone else a description. I was only a few miles from the finish. I was out of water. Sun was about high noon and the road was a moderate but steady uphill grade. I was in the first stage of heat stroke. I was irritable. I was calling people names just for driving courteously! I finally made it to the finish. My Ironman friend had faded at the end and had only finished a little before me. She handed me a water bottle from the cooler which I downed and went in for another. I put both my wrists in the ice water of the cooler for a little while before getting my bottle. I drank half and put the rest in my bike bottle for the couple miles to my son’s place. Said goodbye to Rosie after a little chat and finished the ride. WoW met me there with street clothes. After a shower and lunch, I felt like a new man.
    4 points
  35. June 2009 the Granite Pass between Shell Wy and Burgess Junction on WY Route 14. Literally had to push my fully loaded bike and Bob trailer most of the way up over the 9033 foot pass. Got to the top and my tire was flat. Had to inflate and coast down to Sheridan WY the next day to fix.
    4 points
  36. I miss the WI posse. Or the WI beer mafia. Madcity was generous beyond belief. Mittens was hilarious and really nice in person. And Soy drank PBR and fell off his roof like a good Wisco boy.
    4 points
  37. The Katy trail..only because having the shingles..All of April and the itch remained for most of a year...and the ride was in June... Yeah it was hard.
    4 points
  38. TOSRV West (230 miles in 2 days), Ride the Rockies (2002, 2010, 2011, 2016), Bicycle Tour of Colorado (2010, immediately following Ride the Rockies)
    4 points
  39. It was to be about 50 miles, I got lost, ran out of water, and became dehydrated. I got oriented, found a store and hit the Gatorade, hard. Was feeling better and it was pretty much all down hill to home. Cruising along on fairly level ground, about 10 miles to home, feeling pretty good when my leg began to cramp. I stretched it out and walked a bit, continued on, cramped again, stretched and tried again. Gave up and called for rescue. My daughter hauled me home, where I showered, ate oranges and drank Gatorade. Had leg cramps that had me screaming for a couple hours. Limped while walking for a few weeks, never really regained decent bicycling form.
    4 points
  40. I don't ride centuries and usually I don't ride much road. The toughest ride was only about 50 miles from a bit east of Mashpee Commons on Cape Cod down to Woods Hole then north to North Falmouth and back to Mashpee on 151 then back to where we were staying. It was a dangerous ride with stretches on rt 28 where there is no shoulder and lots of tourist traffic at speed. Back on 151 isn't as bad but is still high speed traffic. The trip was longer because whenever possible I'd duck off the main roads and go well out of my way to stay on some back neighborhood roads. I think that was the last long trip on the roads that I did. Now I just stick to off road trails with just the necessary hops on the road to connect them.
    4 points
  41. At the local Tesla dealer, when SW was shopping for his new car...
    4 points
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