riding weekend

I had Saturday off, and Jenn's friends wanted to meet for a bike ride TO the club bike ride, so we hopped on the tandem and rode over to meet the group.

We met at Nancy's Bagel Grounds, and rode to the ride start at the Waterfront Park Yellow Lot. The Saturday Yellow Lot ride is billed as "slow and easy," and it's an urban ride, to boot: fairly flat for the most part (although it does go up the hill in Iroquois Park), with lots of stop lights to give folks a chance to regroup and/or rearrange in various groups. After the club ride, several of us stopped at Nancy's for lunch, as they are a sponsor for the Old Kentucky Home Tour. As it happens, they are deserving of our support for several reasons, not the least being the sponsorship--they serve some great food!

After lunch, we rode home to get ready for a couple of birthday parties--one at each end of the county! We had put forty or forty-five miles on the bike by the time we got home, and felt great!

We got home late, so Jenn wasn't interested in going for a bike ride leaving the house at 7:15 in the morning. I was, however, so I saddled up the Strada and rode to meet some friends at Sawyer Park for a ride to Smithfield and breakfast there. On the way out, I stopped and phone Jenn to suggest that she come meet us there, and she agreed to drive out.

Our Best Restaurant serves a range of great foods for breakfast, and is a popular destination for folks wanting Sunday morning dining. After filling our bellies, those of us on bikes rode back to Sawyer Park, with a round-trip of fifty miles or so. Add in the ride to the ride and the ride home from the ride, and I had about sixty-five miles on the Strada. At breakfast, it was decided that Jenn and I would ride the tandem on the afternoon ride out of Heine Brothers' on Chenoweth Lane, as Larry and Margarent were going to be riding that on their BikeE tandem.

So, after getting to Sawyer Park, I hustled home to get the tandem ready to go. We had a good ride in the afternoon, enjoying the company of Larry, Margaret, Nita, and several other members of the group within the bicycle club that calls themselves the Pups (Not yet ready to be Mad Dogs).

As an aside, the Pups started out calling themselves the Pups In Training, as they wanted to build up to riding a century this year. Several of them met that goal in September, and continue to ride together building strength and social bonds.

The ride on the tandem was another twenty-five or so for a total of about ninety for the day, and one hundred thirty or -thirty five for the weekend.