Well, as ya know, a few of us Clyde's did the NITERIDE last night.
It was a great ride! The night was cool and no wind to speak of and the "Blue Moon" rose orange and baleful!
Mariner Fan, ChunkyD, Ryanhulse (The skinny Cervello riding roadie! Nice guy, by the way!) and I did the Niteride as a group, although given the ride conditions and number of participants, it was tough to stay together, plus the fact I didn;'t really have any legs last night because of my 79 mile loop the day before at speed. We averaged, depending on the amount of traffic about 17 MPH +/- and sometimes we really got cooking, between 23 and 27! There were a couple of other BFers there as well, on a tandem, R900 and his wife! Cool folks but they had a blown tire very early in the ride and we got separated til after the ride.
Chunky D, well, how do I say this....
The man can ride a bike! He's got a rocket in that Clyde Frame! He doesn't have much luck with lights (well, that was pretty common though here at the night ride!), his headlight disintegrated on a rough section of road. I lost my tail light as well! Actually, there were more broken bike lights than I've seen in a long time along the ride route!
As per usual, riding with Mariner, I had a near crash. I was trying to get a shot of the monument downtown while I was riding. I asked Mariner Fan to sing out if anything crazy was about to happen. He hollered out about a bump coming up right as I dropped a front wheel in it while trying to take a picture in motion and holding on to the bar with one hand (I did get the shot though and the little jiggle blur actually improved the shot!). This is NOT a recommended procedure, by the way! Not his fault, and without his bit of warning, I'd have had a nasty crash! Mariner, that's 2 for 2 where I should have crashed and pulled it out of my butt to stay upright! You are a good luck charm, actually!:D
Before the ride, we watched the action at the Major Taylor Velodrome. Man, talk about some fast riders! One of those guys had to be pumping up well over 40 and approaching 50 in the attacks and that's MPH! Dreadlocks flying, he'd make his attack and you could literally watch his frame flex and he took off looking like he had just kicked in the warp drive. I'm almost surprised he didn't leave a blue trail of Cerenkov Radiation behind him!:eek: There was also a godawful crash on the track, with a rider blowing out a front tire at speed, going down and another rider doing a full tilt face plant. He hit so hard he snapped his handlebar on the track surface and I'm pretty sure he broke his collarbone as well although I hope not! I heard a double snap when he hit the track and the only thing on his bike that snapped was his handlebar and that other snap was kind of muted! I'm glad crazylady didn't see that, because I'm thinking about converting the Raleigh into a fixie track bike to ride the drome with!;)
Well, here are the images and turn on the sound!
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o260/TomStormcrowe/Niteride_2007/th_27167e8f.jpg (http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o260/TomStormcrowe/Niteride_2007/?action=view¤t=27167e8f.pbr)
KingTermite
07-01-07, 12:17 PM
Cool report and pics. It's nice to put some faces with names. :)
Mariner Fan
07-01-07, 12:20 PM
I don't know how Tom does it. We rode on the Cardinal Greenway trail and he managed to ride into the gravel side ditch without going down. Then we are riding towards Monument circle and Tom pulls out his camera and asked me to watch for any road hazards. I look down and see a spot in the road where the bricks had bucked and I warn Tom just as he hits it with one hand on the handlebars and the other holding his camera. He definitely had to use his Ninja skills to stay upright on that one!
(51)
07-01-07, 12:30 PM
Sweet. Rock on!http://www.bonjovi.de/forum/images/smilies/buttrock.gif
ryanhulce
07-01-07, 12:32 PM
Lots of fun guys!! It was very nice to meet you all! Thanks Bob for locking my bike in your truck! I look forward to riding with you guys again.
Here is my Garmin Data from the Velo ride, Dinner Ride, and NITE Ride. http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/3173459
Great meeting you Ryan! You and Tyler were riding hard and I was amazed that you could get through the crowd of slowpokes.
I had a great time and I hope this will become a Bike Forums meeting place in the future.
JoeMetal
07-01-07, 02:55 PM
I'm sad that I missed it, but I will definitely be there next year.
ryanhulce
07-01-07, 03:08 PM
Great meeting you Ryan! You and Tyler were riding hard and I was amazed that you could get through the crowd of slowpokes.
I had a great time and I hope this will become a Bike Forums meeting place in the future.
Hehe we got yelled at by a few folks, but we had a blast!!! It felt more dangerous riding with the slow riders on mountain bikes than blowing by them :)
It was also a pleasure meeting you as well.
Mariner Fan
07-01-07, 04:20 PM
Geez, I feel bad that I didn't see Tom when he thew his chain. I was busy trying not to wreck at the bottleneck at the park.
ryanhulce
07-01-07, 04:36 PM
Yeah he had to use his "Ninja" Skills again not to go down.
chunkyd
07-01-07, 05:46 PM
Hey fellas!
it was nice meeting everyone and putting names to faces!! Great time hanging out and watching the races! and a very enjoyable ride! i kinda wish it lasted a little longer.. it was refreshing to ride at night in the city..
I hope we can all ride again soon! After july 14th my ride schedule is open...i gotta fill it up! before old man winter tells me to eat! lol
Chris
Tom Stormcrowe
07-01-07, 06:40 PM
Yeah he had to use his "Ninja" Skills again not to go down.
That wasn't so bad....at least there wasn't any damage to the chain! That bottleneck slowed down Fast!:eek:
Mariner Fan
07-02-07, 10:23 AM
That wasn't so bad....at least there wasn't any damage to the chain! That bottleneck slowed down Fast!:eek:
I got caught there too. I had to down shift fast and people were yelling at us to keep moving. Well, I can't do that when everyone in front of me has slowed to a crawl.
ryanhulce
07-02-07, 12:04 PM
Well I was doing some searching to see who that guy was that was blowing everyone away, and found a link to his website. http://joshuaweir.com/
Mariner Fan
07-02-07, 01:14 PM
Well I was doing some searching to see who that guy was that was blowing everyone away, and found a link to his website. http://joshuaweir.com/
Great link Ryan! Wow, that guy was impressive. :D
East Hill
07-02-07, 01:25 PM
Tom, did you invite the gentleman with the highwheeler to join us here at BF, or is he already a member? Your ride looked like fun!
East Hill
Mariner Fan
07-02-07, 02:04 PM
Tom, did you invite the gentleman with the highwheeler to join us here at BF, or is he already a member? Your ride looked like fun!
East Hill
I hope he did. We just thought that bike was the coolest thing so Tom asked him to take a picture. His wife was on a vintage bike as well.
East Hill
07-02-07, 02:09 PM
I hope he did. We just thought that bike was the coolest thing so Tom asked him to take a picture. His wife was on a vintage bike as well.
That would be a two-for-one deal, then! Gotta love those folks with vintage bikes (you all know I am a C & V regular :p ).
East Hill
Tom Stormcrowe
07-02-07, 04:04 PM
Tom, did you invite the gentleman with the highwheeler to join us here at BF, or is he already a member? Your ride looked like fun!
East Hill
I invited him, we'll see!:D
matthewbrandon
07-03-07, 01:14 PM
My wife and really enjoyed the ride. We started as far forward in the bunch as we could(we waited at the start for a hour beforehand if that tells ya). Turns out the Lead motorcycle only ran 15. When we got to the rest stop we were forced to stop for about 10 minutes and this huge pack formed and when the motorcycle took of our 15 mph pace was nuts it was like a slow-mo version of what goes on at paris-roubaix or flanders when the field approaches the pave or a berg. The bottleneck into ima sure interesting luckily only 1 person went down but we all had to put a foot down. The police escort told up that when we are the stop downtown there was 9 miles of bikes on the road thats alot !!!!! Passing all the slower riders is way better than being locked in a 15 mph jam-up with people all around that have no business being that close to each other
Tom Stormcrowe
07-03-07, 02:23 PM
Well, I put up a longer video montage with an Ozzie Soundtrack and better editing on You Tube:
Here is the video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzEgfMlashM
Tom Stormcrowe
07-03-07, 02:26 PM
My wife and really enjoyed the ride. We started as far forward in the bunch as we could(we waited at the start for a hour beforehand if that tells ya). Turns out the Lead motorcycle only ran 15. When we got to the rest stop we were forced to stop for about 10 minutes and this huge pack formed and when the motorcycle took of our 15 mph pace was nuts it was like a slow-mo version of what goes on at paris-roubaix or flanders when the field approaches the pave or a berg. The bottleneck into ima sure interesting luckily only 1 person went down but we all had to put a foot down. The police escort told up that when we are the stop downtown there was 9 miles of bikes on the road thats alot !!!!! Passing all the slower riders is way better than being locked in a 15 mph jam-up with people all around that have no business being that close to each other
It did get crowded! I was one of the ones that got yelled at frequently for flying....I wasn't going that fast though! I was only averaging 18 or 19 most of the time with a 14.8 average!:eek:
There were some traffic jams though!
Mariner Fan
07-03-07, 10:01 PM
Geez, no one yelled at me! Guess I was the slow poke. :D
R900
07-04-07, 08:23 PM
Hey guys, really enjoyed meeting everyone. Sorry we didn't hook up at the start, we were so far back we waited for awhile to get going. Then we had a flat within the first mile or so, (second of the night as the first was while the bike was still in the van). Ended up being a rim strip, I should have caught it the first time. Anyway, about 6 BGI guys helped us out with some electrial tape, but we were way behind by then. We then missed a turn and got passed by the sweep van, luckly we corrected and caught up at the rest stop. However we missed most of the Police assistance. Tried to fix the strip at the stop but could not find one after taking the wheel, tire, tube off, so wasted about 15 minutes. We did see everyone leave the rest stop. So hauled butt again and finally started catching the group. We were riding so hard to catch up, is was difficult to slow down at the end, I just kept passing people (slower people at the back). Still a good time, ate with Bob, Tom, Ryan, and Chris, although never did see Ryan's bike. Bob's is really sharp.
Our new lights also worked great, plenty of power and lasted the whole ride. With the bad rim strip we decided to stay off the Velodrome, but i think I'll bring my Madone next year to test the banks. Got everything fixed we we got home, and did the Vandalia Freedom ride today on the tandem, so we are back in action.
Now time for RAIN, anyone else decide to ride yet...
Nice meeting everyone.
Tom Stormcrowe
07-04-07, 08:36 PM
I've got Tour de Cure that day. Otherwise, I'd do RAIN in a heartbeat!
Mariner Fan
07-05-07, 08:12 AM
I had a great time there. Mainly because Tom, Ryan, Chris, and John were there from the bike forums. My co-workers all commented how nice these guys were and how much fun they had. :)
I got super lucky and was able to park right in front.