I went out for a fast 40-mile ride this morning at 9 AM - met up with two of my friends. I had a rec soccer game at 1 PM, so we had to take a hard pace. One of our good friends I was with couldn't keep up our pace, so we were forced to drop him at the beginning.

Going THERE was nice. We had a gentle headwind, all the way down from North Seattle up to Everett. Averaged 20 mph, plenty of nice rolling hills. When we finally pulled to a stop at the halfway point, my Selle Italia was clonking around, I guess it had come loose, and the seatpost had slipped down an inch or so. I was in the process of tightening the binder bolt when the hex part became completely rounded out. Argh. So I couldn't do anything.

The break took half an hour. That was about twenty minutes too long, and now we were really in a time pressure situation. Back on the road I realized that the seat angle was a little tipped forward and the post was still too low. It felt really, really bad. But we didn't have time to play around with it, so we pressed on. Here's when it began to rain. What's more is that now we were going back facing a nasty headwind.

We made slow progress over the hills - I rode in the effin drops up half of them. My (remaning) friend was beginning to drop behind, and it was a few blocks riding inches from semi trucks before I realized he was out of sight. Crawling up the wet lanes with a wind in our faces, we probably averaged 11 or 12 at times.

Pushing hard to make it in time, we had just gotten past the most hilly section when my friend got a flat. Jumping off our bikes, we swapped out the tube as a team and began pumping our last spare tube like mad with the tiny Topeak. Too bad we had forgotten to put the little securing nut onto the valve before doing so - a few pumps before we were done, the stem simply snapped. The rain beat down on us as we swore at the heavens. Forty-five and a few phone calls later, we got picked up from our lonely spot on the sidewalk and drove the last 8 miles home. I jumped out of the car, changed, downed a gatorade, and headed off to soccer. (I played a horrible game. )

The shiny white Bianchi is caked in a layer of street mud and grime. What an exhausting day.