Originally Posted by
burnthesheep
It's a survey demographics thing for sure.
I mean, if you were to poll among two groups of "no kids under, my age under 25" and "no kids, kids have left the house".............versus "I have dependent kids at home"...........I bet you'd find a pretty big split.
My thing is that group rides are one of my freebies to myself. They take a lot more time than just leaving my front door. I almost always have to drive there and back. Then there's the chat before and after. Which I enjoy. But, with kids, you're just not always able to carve out that amount of time for a group ride.
A 75min group ride in town winds up "costing me" about 3 hours total. Drive there, get bike out of car and going, ride, put bike back, chat/beer. When I ride out of my house.......I can get in 2 hours ride time instead of 75min and still be out only 2 hours instead of 3.
I like group ride stuff. If I had time and needed the solo workout also, I would just do that before hand. Then make the group ride about the fun. I just simply don't have the time to always make it happen.
Heh - I have kids (9 and 5 years old), I'm their primary caretaker, and they're the reason that both long solo rides *and* group rides are wholly necessary.
My wife is a champ about it, and I'm thankful - if I'm looking particularly frustrated the evening before a "day off," it's not unusual for my wife to ask me, "you're going to be riding all day tomorrow, aren't you?"
