THURSDAY NIGHT RIDE & REPORT(S)

I'm mixing a few reports here - first: we'll be riding out of Townsend Tonight - I've heard of quite a few people that will be there - maybe even more than on Tuesday. Tuesday's ride was a good one, despite the winds, branches, flats and so on. There were 10 Bastards in all, many of them pictured here, looking pretty, ahem, excited about the prospects of riding in the face of 400 mph winds. We had to wake Craig up before we rolled out.

The yawn before the storm.

Once rolling, it wasn't bad for most of the ride. The trees provided protection from the wind - as well as providing a lot of debris that turned into flying shrapnel when hit by speeding bicycles wheels. The road below was a nice view we had waiting for members of the group to catch back on, fix flats, have drinks, make phone calls ...

Where's Werdy? Where's Surly? Where's Waldo?

... and relax some more, as seen below. From the photos you'd think that we never moved or turned a pedal and were just transported to this spot from the parking lot. That was, let me assure you, not the case. While the slumbering "Flying Bats" make look sleepy, in action he was a beast, leading us at break-neck (or should that be break-wind?) speeds. BK Dave told me that at one point while be hauled by F'Bats we were do 21 mph into the wind, which is pretty damn impressive. Calculating a head-on wind speed of 400 mph, Craig had to be doing an actual 421 mph! He will be awarded the most aggressive rider jersey - which hasn't arrived yet. It's a vest made out of bloody Chihuahua hides. We'll get you later on that one F'Bats! Myself, I'm getting the least aggressive rider's jersey by virtue of dangling off the back to the point of invisibility. The least aggressive jersey is a Party shirt made out of half-sucked lollypops. Yeah, it's sticky and sucky.

Don't be fooled, they aren't as sleepy as they look!

In all there were 10 of us: Cupcake, FNG-Alan P, JZ Jeff, Slayer, Tony, Werdy, Scott W, BK Dave, Tom on a Mountain Bike, and myself.

The last part of today's post is about the practice last night which was a good one. A new guy, Adam, got his introduction to barrier hopping, which you guessed it, was a nice, non-injurious face plant. Welcome to 'cross Adam! Patrick, Cupcake, JZ Jeff, myself, and even Zoe, were hand for a little barrier and technical work.

Looks like a nice night for a ride tonight - I'm picking the beers out now. Hopefully we can keep it a nice easy-tempo ride since most of us should be racing a doubles on one side of the state or the other.

See you Bastards and Bastardettes tonight!