Oh, that's part of the joke (this being the C&V forum) though I guess the joke's on me mostly. Seriously, the bike isn't actually so heavy, it's a 531 frame with mostly alloy components; it's only heavy because I habitually carry too much crap with me. Anyway, there was virtually no climbing.

The front hub is a Sturmey Archer dynohub from the early 50's, powering my lights; I suppose it's a little heavy, but I like having lights on all the time, and virtually no friction. The rear hub is an alloy Sturmey Archer shell from the early 50's but it has 5-speed guts from the late 60's, a very efficient hub with a pretty nice range. The pedals... well, on my last couple centuries I had toe clips that started to hurt my feet with the pressure on my toes, so I wanted to try something else there. This has the advantage that you can press on the pedal with different parts of your feet if the bottoms of your feet start to get sore (which actually did happen; but I think that's the shoes' fault).

I have to admit that Soma Lauterwasser bar gets to be uncomfortable on long rides. By the time I got off the bike, my arms and neck were both pretty sore-- a soreness that went away as soon as I got off the bike (though the beer and tortilla chips may have helped a bit ).

Hey, I did a January metric... not sure if that counts as a scratch or an honorable mention

February Palm Springs century. Don't forget me!!!

It counts as whatever you count it as. Our only rule here is that you get to make your own rules.

True, on this side. Over in Long Distance, they chose to deny a guy who rode 50 miles to volunteer at the bike co-op and then 50 miles home, 3 hours later.

I was on that same ride with southpawboston (75mi for me), and I'll be doing a full century next week!

after that, i'll be attempting full monthly coverage! Sad to say, with this weather, there's really no excuse not have gotten out for a century both Jan and Feb!

Final edit

February:
leaping_gnome------------2 double metrics and a double century
seedsbelize---------------2 and a double metric (This won't last, as the hot weather cometh)
triplebutted---------------1
rhm-----------------------1
aboatguy-----------------1
jan nickolasjen-----------1

All of you who I missed, let me know.

I missed, so I'll do a makeup in March. Thanks for keeping count, Seeds.

March done. 5hrs 18min, but I have to admit it wasn't with anything even remotely vintage. Wait, not true; I wore a rather old wool jersey.

Bjorn, now 13, picked up a loaner bike and did a metric.

I did a century last monday riding back from NAHBS in Sacramento. I rode through Davis, then up over the mountains through Napa and Sonoma, ending up in Petaluma. I followed that up the next day with a 75 mile ride through the north peninsula to San Francisco. That was all on my 1983(?) Fuji del Rey:

Fuji in front of the Dam by JPTwins, on Flickr

i got to benefit from the redwoods too:

Fuji in redwoods by JPTwins, on Flickr

and here's me at the end of 175 miles:

Arrived in SF! by JPTwins, on Flickr

You may notice the two panniers packed full of clothing and NAHBS swag and a U-lock (at least 15 lbs extra). And on top of the for at least 40 miles, I had a major headwind, which slowed me down to about 7-8mph. I'm not going to say how long this took me, because that wasn't really the point. I had a blast and a trip down memory lane (I grew up in and around this area, my father had a vineyard near Sacramento, and nothing in Boston looks anything like this!)

The route: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/988169
All the pictures: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jpbiker...7629546704651/

this was also my first full century, which surprises even myself, considering how many times I've done 70 mile rides. I'm looking forward to many more!

Congrats jptwins. I lived in Sacto during the 70s, and rode thousands of miles commuting, but took my motorcycle if I was going out.

I did my March century yesterday. A watershed century for me, as it is the first one I've ever done on wheels that I built myself (waits for applause to die down). I put fat tires on these wheels so I can stop riding the high traffic roads with the nice, smooth surfaces, and ride the back roads through the villages. I rode probably 75 miles of it sans helmet, due to there being zero traffic on those roads. A nice, relaxing ride.
Look what I found just a couple hundred meters from where I've been eating lunch almost every Sunday for the past couple years.

It's located in the midst of a massive tide pool, some 20 km long and a few wide. They harvested salt and traded it with their neighbors.

A clash of times. A local farmer, with the help of some friends, will soon plant this field, probably to corn. Each man is armed with a pointed stick with some heft to it, as long as he is tall. Standing a meter apart, they jab the business end into the stony ground, drop 4 or five kernels of corn in it and move on to the next hole, a meter away.

They've been doing it this way for thousands of years.

First off, congratulations to all with their up-to-date accomplishments!

I tried this past weekend to complete a 300k brevet on my Gitane Super Corsa. On Saturday a heavy winter storm finally descended on California. In the midst of that we eleven souls started out to ride the central coast from San Luis Obispo to San Miguel then over the coast mountains to Ragged Point before returning to SLO by Hwy 1. None of us made the full 300k.

The ride started off fine, with some rain, but we were prepared for that. From Paso Robles to San Miguel we were drenched in a cloud burst, with the temperature dropping into the 40's, but we were prepared for that. It actually got nicer, with a tiny patch of sun that lasted for a few miles as we began the climb over the foothill wine country. But then it went wrong. The clouds were heavy with Alaskan cold and we faced freezing head wind and hail. I began to have trouble with my right eye, which tends to stop working in cold weather due to nerve damage from previous surgery. There was lots of debris on the road from the wind and hail and I was having to hold my right eye closed with my gloved hand and dodge the debris as best as I could. We were all experiencing hypothermia to some degree.

Finally we turned directly into the wind and I could tell that my eye was not going to take the dessicating wind blast (wind chill in the 30's or 20's) so I had to abandon the ride. Fast forward through the next couple of hours while I got back to start, picked up my trusty Forester and went searching for my previous ride mates to make sure they were OK. I ended up picking up four, loading my top rack and rear cargo completely and all five adult men jammed in. Those who made it the farthest were close to the turn-around point at Ragged Point, in the teeth of the wind. Three of the five who were in front of me had experienced multiple flats from one section of road. And with frozen hands one had induced a pinch flat into his replacement tube. One woman who had been behind us actually rode the furthest but also abandoned the course and rode back to SLO with the wind at her back. The rest had abandoned earlier. Yes, I was a wimp.

We comiserated over dinner back at our brevet leaders house. I took a few pictures but none were good enough to post here. The next morning I drove home and could see the result of the winter storm. Fresh snow just about everywhere along the coastal range. So now the plan is to ride a 200k permanent before the end of the month.

Jim

gnar!

Seriously, I don't think so. You made the right call; there is no point in punishing yourself. That ride wasn't meant to happen.

Today, rhm and I made the March Century: a double metric from Penn Station, NYC to the Bear Mountain Bridge near Peekskill, NY along the east side of the Hudson River and back along the west side.

My legs are friggin' tired. Ride report to follow.

^^Yup, that's true. My total for the day was (according to my mileage computer) 128.5 miles. Left the house at 4:40 AM, got back at 8:50 PM. This involved a 1 1/2 hour train ride in to NYC, and the same to get back... the hardest part was getting on the bike again after the train ride home; that was a cold ride!

The only pictures I took were of this beaver dam near Yorktown, NY:



That was pretty funny. There's this little stream right by the bike path, which is a former railroad bed, now paved. The beavers had built their dam up a little higher than the level of the bike path, so the water ran around the dam and onto the path. So then they built a low extension of the dam (only a few inches high) upstream a considerable distance. And this incorporated a few sandbags. Them beavers is crafty critters.

I'm somewhat ashamed to admit it, but I rode cyclocross bike with modern steel frame and shmergo brifters. And frankly I'm not sure I was any faster, or any more comfortable, than I would have been on one of my 50+ year old machines. Then again, we did some pretty rough off road riding that I might have avoided otherwise....

So I had attempted a century last weekend. The combination of a late start, a persistent headwind on the return leg, a flat tire (thought it was a slow leak, but it became less slow in a hurry), and finally St Patrick's Day all conspired to limit my mileage to 95.

Yesterday, I didn't start any earlier, but I had a buddy along for the ride. We stitched together a roughly 100-mile route on Google Maps, made some sandwiches, and headed out. Here's a picture of our steeds at about the 30-mile mark:



If you're OCD like myself, you may notice that my tires don't match. The 700x28 Paselas are such a tight fit on this bike that any radial hop from the front wheel results in a buzz/squeak every revolution. It doesn't help that these tires started out at 25.5mm and have now stretched to a more honest 27mm. Gotta true that wheel before too long.

Rob's bike is a Cross-Check that he had powdercoated after having some braze-ons installed, and brazing holes filled. I joked that he should hold a Park Tool product next to it to see if they matched, and sure enough...

Here's a link to a modified version of the route, intended to be a little simpler and include some trail miles, at the cost of a couple miles: https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=...c0d7d662&msa=0

There was a persistent wind from the northwest that pushed us along nicely from Cedar Rapids to Ely, but it drained a lot of energy from Ely to Center Point. My friend has not been doing as many long-distance rides, so he had to bail at CP. (The fact that EVERYONE was doing controlled-burns in their fields and/or having bonfires that day didn't help his asthma, either. )

I, of course, didn't have the good sense to pack it in, so I took North Center Point Road all the way back to Cedar Rapids. Here's my before-and-after mileage:

I don't know about the rest, but I would have accepted the 95 miler. (some of) The Long Distance folk have a 'within 5% rule'. I used to be a stickler myself, but if I'm at 95 miles or more, I count it.

+1.

The thing I like about a 'century' is that it's not just a bike ride, but it's a bike ride with a name. If you insist on putting an adjective in front of it, that's your choice... almost-century, failed century, whatever... I prefer, in this case, March Century.

Cool, I appreciate it! I figure that if I'm strict with myself, my claims will be acceptable by everyone.

The 95-mile ride was as much a mission to scope out the condition of the Cedar Valley Trail as anything. It was heavily damaged in some areas by the flood of 2008, and I've been interested in organizing some trail rides with friends this year.

Here are some shots from that ride:

A cool bridge about 20 miles in. You can just barely make out my bike parked underneath.


One of the hazards along the way:


Taking a quick break between Brandon and La Porte City. Much of the trail is this pea gravel, which is fine when well-maintained and the weather has been dry, but some sections were heavily rutted, so I definitely got my exercise in.


And here's where I had to turn around. It was clear that no one was supposed to continue from here, and I learned later that the bridge to La Porte City is still out, so I wasn't going to make it much further by trail anyway.


(Full-res pics here: https://s36.photobucket.com/albums/e2...ntury_Attempt/ )

ThermionicScott------2
TimmyT--------------double metric
rhm------------------double metric
jptwins---------------1
Jan Nikolasjen--------1
seedsbelize-----------1

And that will be it for me, until June and July, at least, when I'm back in the USSA. Too damn hot.

CORRECTION:

I didn't have a chance to write it up, but i managed to get in another century in on March 31st. It started with a leisurely 10 mile ride up to a local cafe to start a group ride. The organized ride was actually an introduction to brevet riding and randonneuring, and so many of the people had done Paris-Brest-Paris and other long distance rides. One of the ride organizers didn't have a water bottle for this ride, because it was cool outside and "under 75 miles". woah.

So, we rode this route: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/777285 you'll notice the insane number of turns and that had a dual purpose: to avoid ugly roads as well as to keep people together and make the ride social. nevertheless, we probably still help a 15-16mph average. I had only ridden with one of these guys before, but by the end, I had met and talked to many of them.

The real perk was that at the end, there was a party with food and beer and a couple presentations by long-distance randonneurs on some of their experiences. Good fun, followed at 10:00pm by a pitch black dynamo-lit 25 miles ride back home. In the end, it added up to a bit over 100miles and 4 beers.

That sounds like my kind of riding!

I have a late March entry also. My randonneur club put on a Fleche, a 24-hour ride, across 31 March to 1 April. I rode my Trek TX700 with a team of 2 others for a total of 223.8 miles. We did about 160 of those miles on March 31st so I think that counts. Just like two weeks ago, we had a strong winter storm pass through the coast and it hit us just after sunset out on the Palos Verdes peninsula. The rain was strong for about an hour and the wind was howling all night in our faces as we made the long stretch up the coast. But we made all the checkpoints on time and arrived at the finish along with one other team. Here is our route: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/932024 My teammate, Kevin, took all the pictures since my camera quit working almost immediately, and I will update with some pictures as soon as he sends me some.

Just a little bit about what a Fleche is. A Fleche is like the tail feathers of an arrow and the concept is that teams start from different points to ride 24 hours to a single finish point, arriving at the same time, like arrows into the bulls eye. So the fun is to see everybody at the finish for the stories. We actually saw one of the other teams heading down the coast (with the wind, the dogs!) at about 2:00 AM. I didn't know they were another team but I figured anybody out riding in those conditions was a randonneur by definition, so I yelled "hey rando" as they went by. Turned out that they didn't finish (at least on time) so I didn't get to meet any of them. Our other team started from San Luis Obispo.

Cedar Valley Trail looks awesome, ThermionicScott!