hydraulic salamander

May 29th 2006
The Great Pizza Ride and Recumbent Rally

Boy what a ride. Under 50 miles in 90+ degree heat some small hills, not big enough to speak of, and we even had a GIRL RIDING WITH US and she didn't even seem scared of us when we finished! Even tho Tom had his "Show-Me-State" license.

Anyway, as I was saying, the ride was in Millstadt where Tom and I have ridden at least three times this year. Its an OK ride but I'm going to avoid Millstadt and Columbia Illinois for at least another month. I just want to see more of the country side. We started off with a bang. Literally. Brian had a blow-out before we even started and normally that would have been a bad sign but even my 10 year old Continentals held out for the rest of the ride. While we were getting ready, the organizer of the ride (the Trailnet guy) kept announcing that we had to be very aware of what we were doing on the road because bicyclists are getting a bad name in Madison County Illinois and St Clair is beginning to not like cyclist as well. Well that was what I got from what he was saying.

We didn't see any problem with authorities the whole ride until the end. While we were partaking in our end of ride ritual (beer and jerkey) a Millstadt Police Officer pulled up. He sat in his car for a minute or two and made us a little nervous. When he finally got out he came up to us and asked if we were the organizers (I guess it was all the grey haired executive types standing around[see picture below]). It seems that the Mayor of Millstadt got a call that there were a bunch of bicyclists on the rode and no-one even bothered to call them and tell them that the ride was happening. The Officer said that they just wanted us to have fun and if Trailnet had notified someone they could have shut down some roads for us and gotten more Police on duty even had some extra Paramedics to stand by if needed.

Kathy (the girl with us that put some of the boys to shame) retrieved her ride sheet and gave him Trailnet's SAG number. We told him we thought he was going to tell us that we couldn't drink in a public place but he said they just wanted us to have fun. What a great guy.

The ride itself was pretty fast paced. We rode with Craig and some of his friends. They kept the pace at 20+ mph even in the 90 degree heat.

My stats for the day were:
Dst: 43.35, Avs: 18, Tm 2 hrs, 24 mins Mxs: 31.5

The beer and jerkey was consumed quickly...