Ride recaps
Sunday, October 5th, 2008.
“The helpful team”
Brent, Elliot, Slow Brian and Fast Bryan headed out on a cloudy, overcast, and threatening morning for an ‘easy’ training ride. Brent & Bryan headed east on Broadway from downtown, picking up Elliot and Brian along the way.
The ride out Broadway to Freeman Rd. was uneventful until 1/2 mile before the turn south. We crest one of the rolling hills in the morning fog (from the storms brewing over the Rincons), and discover a dog and a horse running in the road headed east. The dog splits with our approach, and we are able to ride up next to the cantering pony. This is the smallest horse I’ve ever seen! In fact, my dogs are taller at the shoulder than this mini-creature.
We are able to herd the horse off the road and get hold of the halter while Elliot calls 911! I begin looking for a place to tie up the horse since an owner is nowhere in sight and Animal Control is on the way. Unfortunately, the rope is too short to effectively tether the beast, so there I stand in my clown suit and road shoes holding the wee-equine.
As luck would have it, from the top of the hill we just descended comes a frantic looking young lady of about 14 running our direction. She is the owner of this little horse and looks relieved to have her back. Without more than an out-of-breath acknowledgement of ownership , she takes the rope and turns to lead the pony home.
Now, Elliot, being the responsible citizen, calls 911 once again to explain “Hi, this is Elliot. I’m the one that reported a loose pony on Broadway.” For some reason, we all found this statement hysterical, and proceeded to laugh our asses off while Elliot was trying not to crack up with the emergency dispatch.
With the pony episode behind us, we hammered hard up Freeman Rd. We continued east out Old Spanish Trail and fell into a constantly rotating paceline into a headwind. Our speed wasn’t that high, but we were all feeling the effort.
We turned right onto Pistol Hill and drilled it at race speed. Brent and Brian did all the work at the front, bringing the pain! At the top, I launched the first of many fruitless and eventually debilitating attacks to get away. However, when you have Brent “the-diesel-locomotive-one-man-TT-solo-breakaway-master” chasing you, I guarantee you won’t get far. He & Brian pulled me back every time, and after my final attack, they pulled me back and then upped the pace on the hill, dropping me soundly.
After a little recovery waiting for Elliot, I got to pull us back to the 2 small figures up the road in the distance. They were kind enough to sit up and wait. Once back, we began to eschelon paceline into the crosswind.
The remainder of the ride home was easy, including taking the town sprint from a distracted Brian (mu ha ha!).
Our last good deed for the day was to help a cute, leggy young lady wearing exam gloves, replace a disobedient inner-tube. She was certainly apt at fixing her own flats, and had a good knowledge of what to watch for while doing so. She just happened to have an inner-tube that wasn’t inflated enough to hold it’s form while the tire bead was being seated onto the rim, causing it to remain under the bead. A quick extraction, re-inflation, and remounting did the trick.
Then, surrounded by four Aggress riders in full kits, she asks “What team are you guys with?” With a complete look of surprise on his face, Brian points both index fingers at the huge AGGRESS on his chest and says, “You’re kidding, right?”. She is told we are with Aggress and asks “What does that mean?”. I’m not sure who chimed in with, “The helpful team”, but it was befitting of today’s ride.
Cheers!
brYan
