Wed Night Ride

Finally got my chance to be "in" on a Bob/Dawn Cooper Wednesday Night Ride last week. I was more than willing to travel to far off destinations since everyone is located near the Lansing Area. However, Bob said I should just organize one locally here in GR instead and everyone would come over here to ride. Okay, will do. Bob, Dawn, Jason and Earl made the trip.

I joked that since I had no idea what these rides consisted of, I'd plan a "Soul Crusher" of a ride. I don't know if it turned out to be a soul crusher of a ride for anyone other than me, but I am glad it hurt as much as it did. My life has been complicated with lots of other priorities over the last month, so riding has not been included in the mix. I'm lumpy and out of shape and I needed a good thrashing.

I decided that we would ride Cannonsburg Ski Hill, then ride a few (hilly) road miles over to ride Cannonsburg State Game Area, then back to Ski Hill to finish out. Overall ride length should not be more than 20 or so miles.

Let's break it down like this...the single speed killed me on Ski Hill. Tough! So much walking, I had no leg strength. I fell once on a soft shoulder of the trail on a straight-away (which produced a nice green and blue hip bruise). I almost puked 2 times and I was delirious (low on sugar) before we even hit the Game Area trail. Danger!

In all, the ride turned out to be really good. It took us longer than I anticipated though, which meant a late night for all the travelers. All was right in the world moments later though, with dusty and dirty friends at The Score patio with a live (although terrible) band playing in the background, surrounded by sand, palm trees and a cold Founder's All Day draft in-hand and a spicy chicken quesadilla displayed before me.

Here is a link to some video footage. Kind of long. Riding conditions were very nice, I found it hard to cut extra sections of footage out. Plus, I figure once I record sections of a trail once, I'm likely to not repeat the process again unless something special is going on.

http://youtu.be/rbWhQlOpckM

Earl and Dawn in "Florida".