Sneaky little century

One thing about riding a bike for more purpose than just riding a bike: the miles add up.  This past Saturday at a little after 8AM, I departed my door, riding to Northampton to join NCC for their morning group ride from Pulaski Park.  It's been over a pandemic since I joined one of these rides, which, while at times brisk in pace, are friendly and firmly adhere to a no-drop policy, regrouping at the top of climbs and making sure nobody is left behind with mechanicals or other issues.  It is a "nice" ride.

This weekend's installment was led by Tim and introduced as sixty-something miles with six-something-thousand feet of climbing.  There were firm numbers in his description, though I tend not to take notes, but you get the idea: a reasonably long and reasonably hilly ride.  Oh, he also mentioned at least one section on an unpaved road, and just like that, with the excitement of impending dirt, I would have had an elevated heart-rate and full warm-up even without the fifteen mile ride from Granby.

And it was a nice ride with a nice group of people.  Melissa, whom I'd met before briefly, taught me a lot about the state of affairs in hospital obstetrics and how it could be so much better at respecting women and what is actually a natural process.  Later, James and I compared our varying solutions for transporting cross country skis by bicycle, and we all took joy in observing Jonathan's roadside nap while waiting for a half the group to return after flying past a intersection.  It was also a chance to reconnect with Keith whom I first met at UMass way back in the fall of 1993.  Sure, we pushed it up the hills, including the sublime and steep dirt of Mount Road in Chesterfield, but it was all in good fun, with no teeth bared nor wounds inflicted.  Jonathan and I even took advantage of a flat repair along River Road to dip our toes in the water.  Yay!

Cool feet make for cool rides

Back in Northampton, I peeled off to Adele's apartment for some snacks and a quick nap before we left on the eleven mile ride up to Sunderland to wish our friend Anna a happy birthday and hopefully lay the seeds for some summer adventures, now that her school year teaching duties are done.  Also, her homemade lentil and chick pea dishes, as well as the externally sourced baba ghanoush, were delights to a belly that was spending so much of its day fueling legs on a bicycle.  Well filled with food and more friendly conversation, I again remounted my bike for the gentle sixteen mile, tail-wind propelled roll back to Granby.

But wait, in the waning miles of my day's riding, I started to do the math.  Fifteen, plus sixty-something, plus eleven, plus sixteen, adds up to a nice, even one hundred-two-something miles!  No, I didn't include a pro-open mountain bike race or spend any of that distance pulling a fifty-three pound trailer, and it did take me eleven hours and forty-five minutes to return to my door, but there is distinctly a sense of satisfaction when a century can sneak up on me like that, with hardly a notice.  When you ride a bike enough, centuries just happen like that.