I can't believe it's been this long since I visited this thread! As I mentioned before, sometimes I'm not so good at keeping up with stuff.
In the months since, I've done a few metric centuries (Tour de Cahaba was the toughest, even had some categorized climbs), and ridden with BamaRando a couple times.
My planned Natchez Trace ride didn't happen. My older brother wanted to come ride with me, so I told him what he needed to do (ride, and ride some more), but I noticed on Strava that he wasn't doing nearly enough, so I graciously reduced the ride to a 3 day Chief Ladiga/Silver Comet round trip.
As time drew nearer, I worried about his ability to do even that, having watched his few-and-far-between rides on Strava. He arrived, packed into a minivan with Mom and Dad (who decided they wanted to come along, and split the gas), with no room for his bike.
So, we ended up just riding to Piedmont and back to Anniston, not quite 40 miles total. I guess at least we rode, but it was a huge step down from Natchez Trace. I loaned him my Paratrooper, as it was the only bike I had that I could adjust to fit him.
Tour de Taco got canceled again, so maybe next year. I'll be working on breaking out of the metric century now, and maybe I'll get in a full C within a few months. I'm also planning to revisit the Ladiga/Comet out and back as a solo trip, with Natchez Trace sometime in the future. I have Jake pretty much dialed in now, though I haven't done the groupset upgrade I talked about before. Stuff is working fine as-is, so I'm not gonna worry about it right now.
I did pick up another "fast" bike after selling the Domane to my brother: a Kona Zing Supreme frame I built up with a new 105 groupset. It's Super Zingy!
