Last weekend I joined Our Lady of Perpetual Headwinds for just such a ride. The rest of the Princeton Freewheelers joining that ride have been doing more training over the winter than I have. Truthfully, I have not done much riding or training of any kind for over two years. Okay, I was the slowest one there that day, but I had a great ride nonetheless. Laura has an "no drop" policy for her rides and the group regroups at the top of climes or as necessary.
Laura also had the first chain drop of the day. She and most of the riders rode the extra distance from her house to the starting point. Just before reaching the parking lot her chain fell off and got jammed between the chain rings and the frame. This part does not really count as a shakedown early-season chain drop for Laura's bike. Her bike is quite the diva, is high maintenance, and requires a lot of attention. "Miss Piggy" as Laura lovingly calls her bike makes these sort of attention demands frequently.
Being late February, we had to watch carefully for new and very big potholes in the road from the winter freeze-thaw cycle as well as for patches of ice still on the road. I was the only one riding a cyclocross bike. Everyone else was on their very nice high-end road bikes. "Jewel" as I have named my cross bike doesn't care about potholes, mud, ice slush, gravel, you name it. Jewel scoffs at danger, laughs of death. Somewhere along the ride, a rider in front of me slipped on a patch of ice in the road. While he regained his balance and did not fall right then, the slide pitched him kind of sideways and left him aiming for the shoulder of the road. He managed to almost regain control and parallel the road but his weight was still too far off the shoulder. As he sloughed along the snowbank for little while the inevitable happened. It cannot count as a fall, because the snowbank came halfway up to meet him. It was more of an ease over into making a one sided snow angel. Regroup, remount, no problem.
Later in the ride, this same cyclist got a flat front tire. I pitched in to help and quite soon had a new tube in the tire and remounted. Laura pulled out a CO2 cartridge to quickly inflate the tire without having to use a hand pump. After carefully emptying the CO2 cartridge, the tire remained completely flat. I grabbed my frame pump to just fill the tire by hand as eyes started looking at me as if to say "what's the problem here? Can get going?" That was probably just my misperception, but I got nervous has my pump failed to inflate the tire. Rather than continue messing with this tube, I just swapped in another tube and Ron grabbed another CO2 cartridge to inflate the tire. I am sure that he gave me and my pump a bit of a "look."
While I confirmed that my pump was fine by holding my thumb tight against the output and created good air pressure by pumping it, Laura found that the first tube I put in had a huge shredded section opposite the valve stem. We were all a bit confused about when and how this happened. Did the cartridge freeze and damage the tube?
Once riding again, I pulled up next to Ron to reiterate that my pump was not the problem. We all laughed and Ron continued mock sneers at my pump. This sort of good-natured banter is one of the main advantages and fun of a group ride.
Not long later Ron's chain became seriously jammed between his cluster and the spokes of his rear wheel. It took Ron, Jim, and me almost 10 minutes to get Ron's bike back on the road.
Again I pulled up next to Ron as we resumed riding: "you wouldn't be the first to accuse my pump of practicing the Dark Arts."
Laughing, Ron unoquivically apologized for casting aspersions at my pump, and at the end of the ride pledged to seek out an equally powerful and mystical pump.
As Jewel and I rolled to my car I could hear my pump demand: "RESPECT MY ATHORITY!"
Good fun; good ride.
