The Peninsula Metric Adventure
I’ve been doing a lot of road and mountain biking lately, more so of each than I can remember doing. (Ming has chronicled his rides this spring, and I think I’ve been on all but the Bainbridge Island ride.) A few of my friends are training for the STP and some are just trying to do more mountain biking. So I’ve been doing a lot of both. In fact, I finally upgrade my MTB to a dual suspension Trek Liquid that I bought off Craigslist . I love it.
On Sunday, we rode in the “Peninsula Metric Century“, a 100k (62 mile) organized road ride on the Olympic Peninsula. We got the 7:35 am ferry from Fauntleroy to Southworth and after registering, proceeded to hit the road. With a few errant detours, we ended up topping off at 70 miles.
The first few miles were uneventful – there was a bit of a range in pace among us (Robert leading the charge on the early hills), but we largely kept together.
Things got interesting around mile 30 or so. We had just stopped and were preparing to descend a large hill and gearing up in the hopes of having our momentum carry us up the following ascent. Unfortunately, the chain of the rider in front of me derailed shortly after we started, causing him to abruptly stop and causing me to veer into him.
I wasn’t able to stop quite in time, but I was able to slow down enough to make a somewhat graceful dismount, ditch the bike, and run off my momentum into the field on the side of the road. I believe Donald referred to my movements as “gazelle-like”.
I thought this would be a minor issue, but apparently ditching the bike caused me to bang up the rear wheel, leaving it with a fairly profound side to side distortion. After loosening the brake cable, it could rotate freely, but barely cleared the brakes and chainstays. It seemed stable enough, so I continued riding, but carefully since I effectively had only one brake.
Around mile 38, someone had a spoke tool, and after a lot of finagling, was able to get the wheel a little more in true, but still quite distorted. In fact, briefly it was worse, causing me to think that I was going to have to wait for the “sag wagon”.
We fixed it and we pedaled on, and a few miles later, I heard a pop in my rear tire. It seemed fine at first but shortly after the rear wheel was deflating. Awesome. Fortunately, it was just a flat, so we fixed that, and carried on.
Around mile 47, we arrived in Gig Harbor and stopped at Old Town Bicycle, which was right on the route and close to one of the break areas. After about half an hour, one of the techs replaced two spokes and trued the wheel as best he could, stating that the rim was pretty much damaged beyond repair. Amazingly, he didn’t charge me at all – I wished I lived closer to the stop so that I can repay the favor with more business. If you live in Gig Harbor, you should go to Old Town Bicycle.
Fortunately this was the last of my mechanical troubles, and after quickly fueling up at the snack pit, we continued on. There were a few rolling hills leaving Gig Harbor, but lots of good downhill too, and as opposed to some of the previous road rides I’ve done, we powered to the finish, as opposed to crawling to the ferry crying.
At the finish area, I enjoyed a very delicious strawberry shortcake, as well as some bud light cans in brown paper bags that someone who we’ll from now on simply call the “Asian Jesus” blessed us with.
We caught the 3:50 ferry, and then headed back to my house for some post-ride BBQ, including chicken, steak, mushrooms, asparagus, and tomatoes. And some margaritas and beer.
The great part – it’s not even summer yet.
A few post-ride photos from the iPhone:
Post Ride Refreshment
A Tough Ride
Resting
June 9th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
remember looking over my shoulder, expecting to see someone face down and toothless. Instead, I saw you skipping gracefully down the road. Gazelle-like indeed.