Man, you guys' bikes make my old Schwinn Varsity look kind of quaint.

 

Dangerous! It feels like someone's giving me a shove. It takes a lot of concentration when in aero position if there's a crosswind.
But man is it fast!

 

Hold on to the Varsity...collectible depending on age and condition. Is it a Chicago built Varsity?

 

Yes, it is. I bought it for $3 some twenty years ago. It is an ugly brown with some heavy wear on the top tube, and no trace of the decals any longer. I put a on Sakae Custom drop handle bars when I got it, and just last year replaced the original wheels with new ones equipped with Suntour GPX hubs and Chinook aluminum rims (it was getting hard to find 27" tires around here). The cool thing is that in the wheel swap my ten speed became a twelve speed.

If it were an Omega, it would be a franken.

 

It was actually a beautiful night for a ride. This was the 7th annual "Midnight Garden Ride" that the missus and I participated in. It's a slow, fun ride through downtown and midtown Savannah after the sun sets. This year the ride was postponed a couple of weeks due to a hurricane visiting on the original schedule but that only made this ride all the better. A perfect evening as far as weather and the group, I would estimate at 700 to 1,000 riders, had a great time.

Sorry for the lousy images; my phone is the pits...

Here's the group finishing:

Mrs. ahsposo on her Think Pink bike - she's a save the tatas girl


A still of the group at the only traffic stop of the ride. The police and the marshals do a fabulous job of herding this large group through our town safely and with minimal irritation to motor traffic.



It's the political season...


This person just barely finished

 

Ride out to the lake to take in the sunset.

 

Ride with my father on maybe one of the last nice days of the year

 

Small masters team ride today on my 1989 Schwinn Waterford Paramount...perfect temperatures here in Cincinnati...good times.

I'm on the right waving...



Some pics of my 1989 Schwinn Waterford Paramount from today...

 

Really couldn't ask for better weather any day, let alone November in NYC.

 

Dang! 60*F in Cincinnati, OH today...had to hit the road with my trusty 1989 Schwinn Waterford Paramount...painful indoor trainer days of ONE 40's, TWO 20's and FOUR 10's are just around the corner so you gotta get out while you can while the weather is good.

 

I'm back! I had a great time riding in California, first time ever being on the West coast. I never realized just how pretty Southern California was (even during a drought). Unfortunately, I never made it to the Omega Boutique as I had originally planned.

The event was held at the Westlake Village Resort, a beautiful venue with very good service.




Once I got settled in, I threw my bike together and went for a quick shakedown and tuneup before the night's festivities.



Later that night we had a meet and greet cocktail event outside. The event organizers, along with Bob Roll and a few others, said some words while we all ate and drank (the reason I really don't have any quality pics worth posting, lol). Specialized also brought out the bike Sagan would be riding the following day, a black and rescue orange S-Works Roubaix. I had a sneak peak of it getting built up earlier that day, so I wasn't 'surprised.' The combination of alcohol and celebrity brought about some obnoxious behavior by some of the participants, but Sagan was gracious throughout, while Roll was affable mostly.

For the day of the main ride, I originally had planned to do the longer portion of 84 miles. While that was a great plan, it rapidly fell apart on the first main climb, a Cat 3 up Mulholland. I was admittedly not at my best post my run-in with the bus 2 months back, but even still it wouldn't have made too much of a difference if I had been. The main goal for a clyde like me is to at least finish a climb I suppose, and make up for it on the flats and descents. Problem with that was I was SO slow on the climbs, and some of the descents were ridiculously technical (Decker), so I was relegated to doing the shorter 60 mile loop in order to get back before dusk. Overall, that route had 5,400 feet of climbing, by far the most I've ever done on a ride, especially since it was peppered with some Cat 4s and 3s, along with a Cat 2 (my first!).

Me and my big head are immediately to the left of the yellow diamond sign. This was also the beginning of the end for most of the clydes.



The front of the peloton wasn't hitting the rollers leading up to the Rockstore climb (Cat 3) as hard as they could because they were so bunched up, so the clydes were losing a crapload of momentum, culminating into basically a dead stop start to that climb. At 2.5 miles and with an average gradient is ~7%, I was pretty much shot a third of the way up, so I needed to rest (three times actually). Contrast that with my only stopping once on the Mulholland climb (Cat 2, 6.9 miles, 4%) later into the ride, I guess those few percentage points are dealbreakers for my big butt.

The descent towards Pacific Coast Highway was amazing, and I had to stop a few times just to take in the scenery.




This was part of the really technical descent on Decker:



That night there a nice wedding-style cocktail hour and dinner, along with both a silent and live auction. Some of the cooler stuff were a signed S-Works WC Tarmac frame (went for a bargain price of $2K!), newest Dura-Ace group, and some one of a kind statuary. There were also the expected signed jerseys, helmets, pedals, sunglasses and portraits. As was the case throughout the weekend, both Peter and his wife were friendly, approachable and gracious.



The following day was a recovery ride, originally planned for 25 miles with a climb up Rockstore again. There was no way I was ready to do that again, so I resigned myself to doing a portion of the return route from the previous day. However, since it rained early that morning, the organizers felt it wouldn't be safe to have that climb and subsequent descent as a choice. Secretly, I think quite a few people had reservations about that type of "recovery" ride, lol. Either way, it worked out great for me as I got to ride with the group, until getting dropped on a decent climb. Since the ground was wet and I had only road that course once, there was no way I was going to put my weight forward in an attempt to latch back on via the descent, so me and a small group just tooled along the course and turned around with the peloton when we crossed.




Later on that day was the big bike giveaway by Specialized to the Boys & Girls Club of America recipients. The kids (and parents/guardians) were floored as each of them was given a brand new bike.

Swag report for the participants was the following: Specialized S-Works Prevail helmet, Specialized Audax shoes, custom Peter Sagan kit from Sportif, Sagan hat, Sagan GoGoID, custom signed Sagan lithograph, various promotional stuff from Osmo, Sunroot, Topical Edge, SRM and a few others. The Audax shoes are really nice, but I will likely never wear them as I prefer SPD. Maybe I'll put them up here as a giveaway.

I met some terrific people, not the least of which were the organizers who put the whole thing together. Met some nice folks from Texas, Arizona, and Colorado, some of whom I really hope to run into again for another event. Overall, I have to say I was completely happy with my decision to do this trip, especially in light of it being my first such indulgence vacation-wise in 20 or so years. Thanks for all the words of encouragement and support. ACLinjury, sorry I didn't see your request until having briefly logged on yesterday. There was a slight problem with the route file from what I was told, so it may have only led to you getting lost, lol.

Oh!! I put up a small snippet of my descent towards PCH after having taken that pic you see of the coast. Pretty straightforward descent, coasted at ~43 MPH. Good times, good times.

[VIDEO]

 

"riding about 35km/h uphill "

Guy was beasting! That's a good flat pace, let alone uphill.

 

Fixed my post to include the correct format for the pics. Apologies in advance for being forced to see my mug so big.

 

Even though it was 35*F and overcast today...it was a beautiful day to ride a bike in Cincinnati...because the masters team bought me the newly released Dunkin' Donuts PEZ dispenser...AWESOME!!!

EDIT CHANGE: Pics have been re-cropped.

 

Keeping it real
And yes I am wearing -78 speedy

 

Sigh ... ''twas an awesome fall for riding .... hoping we get a thaw at some point. Time to wax up the cross country gear.

 

Today in Cincinnati, OH...I missed the team ride in the morning due to chores...and craptastic weather in the afternoon equated to TWO 20's on the trainer in the garage.

Mr. Garmin says, "Dude, you're freaking blowing up...you suck!"

For the record, I think Mr. Garmin sucks...but that's just my opinion.