More On the Simcoe Scramble

It occurs to me, when I said the wind will change direction to always be a head wind, in fact that is my own discovery from my skating days on the MGT, back and forth, back and forth, head wind all the way! What someone else at the BCC said was, even if you have a head wind and there are rain clouds behind you this does not mean you have dodged the rain, the wind might be coming from the North at sea level, but at the level where the clouds are the wind is coming from the South. We can generalize this rule to say, if it is raining somewhere, it is probably raining where you are!

Yesterday, during the rain, we came to a steep downhill, it was frankly frightful, I felt I had zero control. For once I was relieved to be going back up hill.

Towards the end of the ride I was pulling the pack when we came to a downhill, by then things had dried up nicely. I floored it, the road was good and the faster I went down the hill the easier the journey back up would be. I was maintaining a steady 52km/h as the hill leveled off, then Dan shot by, he must have been doing at least 57km/h possibly more than 62km/h. I caught up with him a few kilometers later. As I caught up I told him I was out of steam, I was much relieved when he told me, he was too.

There are some pictures from the ride, here they are (the one of me is courtesy of Dan Yang, the group shot was taken by Emile, using Dan's Camera, so let's say it's courtesy of Emile?)

See me, I'm on the left, I took my helmet... because well, I always take off any head covering during a picture... if I can. At this point most of the guys have zero km on their computers, I am at 33.1 I think... or was it 31.3? Anyway I can take some pride in knowing that I while I wasn't doing great by the end of the ride, I was still doing pretty well all things considered.

The coffee break at Tim Horton's just south of Lake Simcoe. Okay a few stories, first this picture was after I started bitching that there are no photos of me on these rides, well Dan set that right. Shortly after the picture was taken we left the Tim's and I was feeling kind of gross, I had just downed a bottle of iced "tea", read: water, corn syrup, artificial flavours, potassium hexametaphosphate, nitrogen tetroxide, unsymetrical dymethyl hydrizine, natural flavours, etc. (Yes two of those ingredients are rocket fuels, I don't remember what was really in the tea but it was about that bad!) Anyway as we are leaving I say, mostly to myself, but too loudly, time to burn some fat, as I pass a line of obese people lined up at that same Tim Horton's doughnut shop. Well, after I stopped laughing it occurred to me, what I should have said was, time to go poison the air and enrich Osama Bin Laden, but I have to wonder if they'd get the reference. I'm a elitist condescending son-of-a-bitch aren't I... but then again, if those people stopped driving to the Tim's and rode a bike there instead, they would feel better and loose a little weight, it was Sunday morning after all.

Today I was riding home from work and I saw a tricked out Ford Mustang and I thought to myself, we have not only made ourselves oil dependant, we have made ourselves in love with oil. Our entire culture is based on oil worship. I am going to say something horribly wrong and offensive, but it is worth considering, maybe to some small extant Bin Laden was right, not killing 3000 people I mean, but in objecting to our way of life. We rape small defenceless countries so that we can drive around in tricked out Ford Mustangs, is that really the society we want to be?

One final thing, today I climbed Brimely from the bottom of The Bluffs to Kingston Road, I can honestly say it's about as hard as Rattle Snake, at least if you don't down shift like crazy, which I did not do. I did The Bluffs all in the same gear as I ride the flats, next time I take my cassette off I'll count the teeth, if I remember.

Finally I have added my GPS data to Mapmyride.com for the Rattle Snake climb, you can view it here.