Day 2, Chapter 1
Soooo...finally got my brand-new wireless mouse and can get a bunch of pics uploaded without the jerks and starts I was dealing with last time around. Technology, I swear; once it goes on the fritz, this modern stuff? Toss it into the can and go buy another one. I hate that...oh, well. So let's talk about old-school bikes on old-school surfaces, shall we?
Symes Hotel on Sunday morning:
Cool birdhouse condos:
Before heading off for the second day sendoff group meeting, Alex and I rode down to the old Main Street to get some pics. Hot Springs is a small town.
Me on Main Street in Hot Springs:
Before we left, all of us gathered in the big grass area (where the campers set up their tents the night before) and there was a neat, impromptu gift-giving. It was basically a raffle of bike-stuff; I was pretty surprised when my number was called!
My gift:
Note the sweat-stains; that pic was taken at the end of the day!
Anyhow, after a group photo of the BF C&Vers, we got on our merry way.
The gang's all here:
Selfie heading out of Hot Springs - sporting my new cap:
"H" is for Hot Springs:
The group heads out; Alex is off to the extreme left:
We re-traced the route from the day before for the first 10-15 miles, so the first thing in the morning was a climb up the paved road which of course we'd descended into town the day before. No biggie - we were all fresh and it was paved; I didn't even go down into the basement myself. The interesting part of the new portion of the Sunday route was the hard-packed dirt portion. It was almost like riding on pavement, although here and there was some fairly deep sand to catch one out if one wasn't paying attention! I noted after awhile that something seemed to be missing, and after getting back on the gravel, I realized what it was: the rolling along was pretty quiet on the hard-pack and I'd been missing the sound of tires on gravel
We made a left onto another stretch of gravel road and saw a cooler by the side of the road at the intersection. I was almost out of water, so that cooler looked for all the world like an oasis to me. Ha ha - joke's on us: empty! I thought that was needlessly cruel, but one of the more savvy riders told us that it was only another 1.5 miles to the pranza stop, so I could forgive and forget!
Alex was already there when I stopped. I immediately filled up my water bottle and low and behold, there were a bunch of bottles of San Pelligrino at lunch! I snapped one up, filled my plate with salami, crackers, some cheese and a couple bananas and joined Alex on one of the tarps spread out beside the roadway. The stop was at a T-intersection, so one could look up the base of the T and see the beginning of 9 Mile Hill just waiting to be tackled after our refueling stop. No alcohol for me on this occasion - I wanted to be ready for what was supposed to be a harder climb after lunch than the day before.
Alex had hit a rock pretty hard on one of the descents on the way to pranza and had really put his rear wheel out of true. He tweaked it on the road, but intended to put some more time into it after he ate. I limited myself to 30 minutes at lunch, then took off up the road to settle myself in for the loooong climb.
The Colnago handled the not-so-rough stuff well enough to allow for a cockpit shot or two:
More to come...
DD