A GLARING MISTAKE AND BOWLING FOR BASTARDS

A girl and her bike preparing to ride last night. And no socks, again. Little did she know she wouldn't need socks.  Elbow guards, kneed pads and hips pads and a face mask would have been a better choice. And it wouldn't be for fighting the boys off in the bar, either.

First, my apologies for a poor choice in routing last night. In an attempt to get by the icier sections before a freeze (temps were good) I lead the group (actually I trailed waiting to see what would happen up front) into a death trap, or at least an ice trap. One section of 3 mile was nothing but glare ice from ditch to ditch and several Bastards hit the deck, I'm sorry to say. The remainder of the ride was mostly a road ride with a short section of 7 mile thrown in to get back to the parking lot without further incident. If I had it to do over again I would have ridden from my car directly to the bar and ordered a Guiness. Or two. I'm glad no one was hurt, and we all made it back one piece. I did note in this icy conditions the group was riding too close together, for me, anyway. If you recall years ago we had a system for classifying falls which started with a SPUD which was a simple single rider planting himself or herself, a SPARE when one  sliding rider takes out one other (this could also be a SPLIT) and finally what I thought was going to happen last night, as seen in the following video ...

The weather is very nice today and I'm thinking if I can get out of work early enough I might try my hand at another ride(sans those sucky-ass studs I rode last night). Let me know if any of you feel like venturing out early.

KOKSIJDE COURSE PREVIEW

Adam McIntyre has been keeping up on the progress of the Koksijde course and has been posting a number of "views." This one is probably the best - you're riding along with Christian Huele. What do you think this thing is going to be like filled fence to fence with raging cyclocross racers from around the world. As you watch it, think of how much of this you could ride before your legs or your lungs collapsed.

I'm hoping to have so old videos of this race when it was the World Championship course back in 1994. I'll try and post those later today.