DTP Strikes Again

Today the weather was beautiful--sunny with a high in the upper 70's. Perfect. But, I was seriously lacking any motivation to ride. Weird. The family and went out and did some stuff and that was fun and it allowed me to put off riding in a guilt-free way. But around 1:30 or so as we were on our way back from shopping for kids clothes I knew that I was out of excuses, but I really was sick of riding solo after the long ride on Tuesday, sooo....after thinking....and running through my options several times, I called DTP. I don't mind hanging with DTP. The conversation is often funny and his suffering while riding is good for his soul, and mine too really. In his current state he is a constant warning not to slack off because the road to Slowville is really no further than about 6 months away. At least that is about how long it took him to get there after not riding all last fall/winter.

Anyway, I rationalized that a ride with DTP would be good because it would make for decent recovery ride after riding hard Tuesday and running hard yesterday. My HR would remain on the low side of things if I allowed DTP to set the pace and I figured that at that pace we could easily ride for a couple of hours or more. He wouldn't get too tanked too fast and I could ride near him, talk, and keep my mind busy with things at a time when at the time I wasn't feeling like getting out there. Yeah, that would work I thought.

I call DTP. Yep, he is up for a ride. Yep, his road bike is in good shape (because this seems to be a constant issue) and he says he will be at my house shortly. I felt bad because I made him come to my house and I wasn't even close to ready when he showed. I was still messing with responding to email from all the stuff I was selling on the OBRA email list. As an aside, it is amazing how fast a person can sell stuff there. No overhead like Ebay and everyone is local. Love it. Anyway, I think I left my helmet in Black Butte so I had to dig out the spare which was not fitting to my head, and then get dressed....blah blah blah. I it took awhile and as a make up I gave made him some Clif Shot Electrolyte drink. DTP was patient and we talked while I got my stuff together.

The ride starts and we head down Cornell and after a bit we took a right at 113th. That is a short road, but it has a pretty darn good hill. We rode it and DTP never complained. Nice. Normally, he would be whining about something, but everything was good. We continued to Thompson and then headed up towards Skyline where I figured we would ride over to Germantown Road and then take a left and meander around for awhile. I told DTP to let me know if I was going to slow or too fast as I led the way up Thompson. We had some good conversation and though he was often a bit winded, he still was in a good mood--no complaining. I felt great and relaxed. I was enjoying the ride and the weather a total turnaround from how I started the ride. Which meant that something was bound to happen to screw everything up.

Once we arrived at Skyline we stopped briefly for some water and then started up again. We were going at a pretty good clip when as we neared the Skyline cemetery I heard some serious complaining...from his bike. There was some serious racket going on and I could see DTP had slowed. Somehow DTP dropped his chain to the outside of the crankarm. When he tried to get it back on via a downshift and some pedalling there was more racket and then silence. His chain was gone. He completely lost a link somewhere on the road trying to perform this operation. I didn't have a master link (something I will remember to have on me from now on) and neither did he. Luckily we were at a point in the ride where we could coast almost all the way back home. He only had to walk about a 1/4 mile. Total mileage for the ride: 8.5 miles. Totally frustrating really. I had finally gotten my butt out the door and gotten into the ride when his bike DNF'd. This has happened a lot lately when riding with him. Often it is the bike--either he can't shift, or the crankarm comes loose, or some other problem. Stupid stuff really. If he rode much he would have these issues ironed out before the next ride. But my theory is that becuase there is such a lag inbetween rides he forgets that there ever was any issues. Either that or he can't tell when something is wrong before his bike slaps him upside the head so to speak and quits on him. Because I am aware of this I asked him about his bike's condition. But because he has a short term memory he didn't remember there was an issue. He had serious front derailleur problems the last time we rode on the road together months ago. He never fixed it.

Maybe I wanted to ride with DTP so that I could get out of riding. Odds are about 2 in 3 that something significant will happen to shorten the ride when riding with him this year. Maybe riding with DTP is a guilt-free way for me to wuss out on a ride...doubt it, but it is possible I suppose. Oh well.

Stupefying. Still, those 8 miles or so were pretty fun. I just wish we could have at least tripled that total.