Saturday Activity & New Bike News

In the morning, with 20-20 hindsight, I made a bad decision to cancel the scheduled  ride.  The radar glob of blue/pink/green to the west of Canal dissipated as it approached and the morning and afternoon remained mostly sunny and relatively mild.  Anyway, I caught up with the gang heading out of Slate Run Metro Park.  We began out of the wetlands side and discovered 10TV was sponsoring a 2 mile and 4.5 mile hike from the other side of the park that had drawn dozens of people.  At the start on our side was Steve O, Peggy, Pastor Mark & wife Beth.  Donna O had started earlier on skis but we were hiking.

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What a pleasant surprise to discover all the trails had been plowed.  For anyone who enjoys trail running but locating a decent surface hard to find, head to Slate Run.  Good heavens, I even saw patches of a strange substance that others identified for me as grass! We walked briskly and after 2.5 miles began merging with the "Commit to be Fit" people.  We suspected there might be hot chocolate and/or snacks with the event so followed signs to a historic farm and found a mob of people and a plethora of snack options including cornbread with maple syrup, snicker doodle cookies, soup, hot chocolate....what a great opportunity to net a calorie gain for the day, again.

I also relearned why one must keep his/her spouse away from his/her cycling buddies.  Beth Cligan entertained us with little known facts about Mark, such as his childhood nickname was "Moose" (because he was a tiny boy), Mark's middle name is Douglaus and Mark wears women's underwear under his cycling tights. At least I'm fairly certain I heard her make all those claims. 

After chowing down, we headed back and I began to run while the others hiked.  Ended up with 7 miles but was annoyed I had missed out on a good opportunity to ride. Speaking of which, rumor is going around that one of the area's top cyclists has purchased a new bike......

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....I have sources in virtually every bike shop in the city and one of them tipped me off to the arrival of a very unusual, carbon fiber frame from an independent frame maker, Van Dessel.  A $20 bill later, I had the name of the new bike's owner.  I was dumbfounded to learn the identity.  As if superior endurance and fitness is not enough of an advantage, now "The Boss", sometimes known as Craig Butler, has a sub 15 pound machine with SRAM components.  Steve O checked out the bike soon after I did, called me and uttered the only suitable words to describe it, "Uh Oh".

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