Missouri Mountains

Memorial Day weekend was all about playing guitars and hanging out by the Black River. The Annual had all the usual folks. Jim Murphy and Brian and I hung out together. Since I'm always up a bit earlier than most, I decided Sunday would be my bike ride day.

I loaded up the bike on the back of the Jeep and drove out to Lenny's quicky mart. After ten minutes or so I was heading north on highway 21 toward the top of Taum Sauk Mountain.

The riding was pretty easy at first and I didn't push the pace. I rode by lots of turtles sunning themselves on the road. Their wasn't much traffic and everyone gave me room. The first mountain was Sheppard. The climb was sort of long. I bombed down off that and made a left to head on to Taum Sauk. It was a pretty gradual climb. The last bit was pretty steep. I stopped to turn around at the Tip Top roadside park. There was a shrine to some Japanese poet I'd never heard of, which seemed odd.

It was fun coasting back down off of the mountain. I knew there were two more hills, then I was home. Going back up Sheppard was the hardest part for sure. Then, down a bit over a bridge to a pretty steep climb where I was home free.

When I finally got back to the Jeep it was still only about 10:30. I noticed there was a car parked behind my Jeep. It wasn't really blocking me in. As I loaded my bike up a mouse ran along the parking lot toward the store. Then some older guy walked up to me and commented that I had locked the doors and rolled up the window on the Jeep. I though we was joking. I mean, you can't lock up a Wrangler anyway.

I turns out it was Lenny and he was ticked off because I parked in his parking lot. He said park somewhere else next time. I didn't say anything, I just pulled out and left. Weird guy. He sell beer and cigarettes to floaters and he's worried about a Jeep in his parking lot.

It was a good ride. I headed back to the river and we jammed all day long.

Hub Ride

Yesterday I commuted to work and back. The way home was nasty as there was huge headwind. I was also out of tubes, so if I flatted I was sunk. I got to the Hub shop around 10 till 6, picked up a tube and headed home to get my other bike. I headed over to Geyer and Essex and the guys came by after a couple minutes.

Right away I knew it was going to be fast. We were doing 20+ heading up to Manchester and wound up sprinting through the light. I worked hard to get back to the lead group, pulling over 30 most of the time. At the bottom of the hill cruised to the front and hit the hill first. I was putting out way too much effort for that early in the ride, so I wasn't surprised when everyone went by me. At the top I couldn't close the gap and had to push all the way to Clayton where I got back on.

The pace seemed really high going in to the wind on Clayton. This wasn't going to let up today. I cruised along near the front for awhile. At the bottom of the hill on Mason I led a pretty decent climb into the wind all the way to Babler. The hoped for let up didn't happen.

At Ladue I got stuck waiting for a car and had to go all out to get back to the front. By then, I was in going in and out of the red zone so much I had to back off. By the time we got to Conway I got gapped and it was all over. I saw the group cross Ballas and wound up hitting a red light.

Ron, Chris and another guy and I gave it a good effort after that. We knew we were dropped, but motored on. I thought I had dropped everybody on Rock Hill. Coming up to the light, whoosh there goes Ron. Same deal on Gore, then whoosh there goes "other guy". I hammered back up to him and actually finished just ahead, but he had me.

Yesterday was a good day, over 50 miles of riding more of it going pretty hard.