Ride went well. We drove up and camped last night, to avoid our normal 4am drive. Nice camp site on Schroon Lake, could hear the loons all night. I had to mount a new Corsa CX tire on my friend's bike (nightmare tight), and I hadn't tested my hand built wheels and 18T since I mounted them, so we did a 20 mile shakedown ride Saturday night.
Sunday morning, I topped of my tires, and saw a huge bullfrog in the on the edge of the rear tread. So I was just going to carry a spare tire and tube with me and change it if blew out. My friend had a bird over it, so I changed that before we left.
I like charity rides, and I don't like charity rides. I rode easy to stay with my friend, but that left us in the middle of a sea of fat guys living their TdF dreams. They were incredibly vocal on the things most groups just signal, moderately faster than us on the flats, slower than crap on climbs. So we passed them every climb, and they'd pass us on the following flats. Ordinarily, I would have just ridden away from them, but that would have dropped my friend too.
The 18T was overkill, and I should have kept my 16T. The P2P I did with Mr. @
rjones28 was far more challenging.
The only real excitement was that I did not properly tighten my rear wheel after the tire change. It held up until the last long fast descent, where I was wheel sucking a faster rider. I hit a bump, heard a clank, and had no clue that that was the chain coming off both the crank and sprocket. I found out when I went to pedal at the base of the hill.
Overall, good time had by all.