On A Fast Tuesday Ride

I booked today off as a vacation day. You wouldn't know it from the way my Blackberry has been ringing off the hook, all work related crap. I read a study, actually there are several, by forcing employees to have real down time, - i.e. disconnected, offline, away from the office, sleep in, don't worry about it, we've got you covered - down time. Well that sort of downtime causes:

1. improved employee moral
2. improved performance and productivity that far and away offsets the loss from a couple days away from work

Well fine, I hate my job, and frankly when my boss got pissed at me because on Thursday at 8:30 I was not able to shut down the servers, well let me elucidate, that was Thursday at 8:30 at night! I was on my bike at King and Parliament and he called me and got pissed because I needed twenty minutes to get home - well if anyone out there is hiring an IT guy, I am willing to be on call but it better be expected that off hours calls may not get the under 5 minute turn around that a call during the business day would entail. This 24x7x365 World we have created is a monster and I want out! Lets start the revolution, throw your Blackberry into Lake Ontario!

Anyway an angry rant from an office worker, hope you enjoyed it.

Okay so on to real things, i.e. things that I love with a passion, not hate with a passion (what can I say? everything for me is a passion). As I said yesterday I was going to do the Tuesday night ride, and I did. I could include the map, but the one Dan drew in advance is exactly the route we followed. Also I must have accidentally hit the stop button on my GPS on Russel Hill Road so I lost the last ten or so clicks, which were also probably the fastest part of the ride. But I can draw comfort from the fact that for once I was not waaaay behind the pack the entire ride. Well there was one spot I started to drop back, on Eglinton I just felt slow for some reason but I picked things back up by the time we got to Tomken.

It was a good ride, we never really stopped for any length, and managed to maintain a pretty decent speed. At one point I commented that Thi should spend some time pulling the pack, to which he responded by going full tilt like a bat out of hell, and I am pleased to report that while I had trouble I was able, with effort, to stay in his draft to the next red light. One day I might even be able to keep up with fast guys for more than just a couple blocks, if that ever happens maybe I should start racing.

I have some pictures, compliments of Dan Yang, all taken at the end of the ride.

I wore my North Shore Inline Marathon Jersey on this ride. I figured the red would stand out so drivers could see me. Not smart, next time I will wear either a white jersey or a BCC jersey. Actually at night the BCC jersies are pretty reflective, which is a good thing.

From left to right, Dan, Jeff, myself, Bill, Thai and Steve.
The guy waving was walking down the street, someone asked him not to get in the way of the previous picture, then feeling guilty they asked him to stand in this picture. Notice the blur between myself and Jeff? That is Dan running to get in the picture after setting up the camera.

I remember as I fidgeted with my water bottle I was thinking, this is going to look really silly, oh well I guess that water bottle I am holding is not really a big focus of attention here.

I have taken all kinds of Glutimine since that ride but legs still hurt. But that is alright, I feel great!