Clydesdales and a Skinny Road Cyclist Do the NITERIDE!

Well, as ya know, a few of us Clyde's did the NITERIDE last night.

It was a great ride! The night was cool and no wind to speak of and the "Blue Moon" rose orange and baleful!

Mariner Fan, ChunkyD, Ryanhulse (The skinny Cervello riding roadie! Nice guy, by the way!) and I did the Niteride as a group, although given the ride conditions and number of participants, it was tough to stay together, plus the fact I didn;'t really have any legs last night because of my 79 mile loop the day before at speed. We averaged, depending on the amount of traffic about 17 MPH +/- and sometimes we really got cooking, between 23 and 27! There were a couple of other BFers there as well, on a tandem, R900 and his wife! Cool folks but they had a blown tire very early in the ride and we got separated til after the ride.

Chunky D, well, how do I say this....

The man can ride a bike! He's got a rocket in that Clyde Frame! He doesn't have much luck with lights (well, that was pretty common though here at the night ride!), his headlight disintegrated on a rough section of road. I lost my tail light as well! Actually, there were more broken bike lights than I've seen in a long time along the ride route!

As per usual, riding with Mariner, I had a near crash. I was trying to get a shot of the monument downtown while I was riding. I asked Mariner Fan to sing out if anything crazy was about to happen. He hollered out about a bump coming up right as I dropped a front wheel in it while trying to take a picture in motion and holding on to the bar with one hand (I did get the shot though and the little jiggle blur actually improved the shot!). This is NOT a recommended procedure, by the way! Not his fault, and without his bit of warning, I'd have had a nasty crash! Mariner, that's 2 for 2 where I should have crashed and pulled it out of my butt to stay upright! You are a good luck charm, actually!

Before the ride, we watched the action at the Major Taylor Velodrome. Man, talk about some fast riders! One of those guys had to be pumping up well over 40 and approaching 50 in the attacks and that's MPH! Dreadlocks flying, he'd make his attack and you could literally watch his frame flex and he took off looking like he had just kicked in the warp drive. I'm almost surprised he didn't leave a blue trail of Cerenkov Radiation behind him! There was also a godawful crash on the track, with a rider blowing out a front tire at speed, going down and another rider doing a full tilt face plant. He hit so hard he snapped his handlebar on the track surface and I'm pretty sure he broke his collarbone as well although I hope not! I heard a double snap when he hit the track and the only thing on his bike that snapped was his handlebar and that other snap was kind of muted! I'm glad crazylady didn't see that, because I'm thinking about converting the Raleigh into a fixie track bike to ride the drome with!

Here is the video!