Barry, it was nice meeting you as well. See my post under this forum. Ellen

GB's ride report:
Sunday's Indian Head 100 was a beautiful ride. Backroads were mostly car free, great food stops, a well run affair. I went with my neighbor Shawn who rides a Rivendale. As I was leaving the 1st rest, Harry smartly recognized me from the crowd. We wound up riding together for most of the 2nd half. I also met gentleman I know from the Kogswell forum riding his new Velo Orange bike. So, the Rando bike scene was in full effect. Harry probably had too much of our retro-bike snobbery and shot off near the end. Shawn and I knocked out the last miles at a easy 14.5 pace.

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Lots of great inland swamps and streams

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Approaching the 2nd rest. Beautiful historic farms at water edge.

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And long stretches of cool tree canopy. Who's that guy in front?

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Harry making his move.

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Enough hills to make it interesting.

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The rando bike dorks.

A great ride and very cool meeting Harry.
We must do some more riding again. (next time I'll ride my Trek 1600 :D)

Barry, was that you with the touring rig with the skateboard on top?..(just kidding) My son and I came into that stop pretty early. We want to thank you guys for taking care of us along the way. I wish I would have said something about the forum and found out you were there. It was a great ride and well marked route. We did the metric and finished in about 4 1/2 hours. It was a nice casual rolling hill ride. We kinda took our good old time and enjoyed the scenery...Thanks again..Jeff

I'm down with Rando
 

Hey Bob, nice meeting and riding with you and Shawn as well. I didn't see the camera, the speck in the background of your self portrait is me, regrettably. One of the many times you zipped up a rise on that heavy old rando bike to leave me and my fancy featherweight Trek Madone behind, with no excuses but for sore legs and too much gut. On that last leg I was pretty sore on the climbs but still managed to roll pretty good on the flats.
I saw you and Shawn rolling up 210 as I was heading out of town for the long long ride home, yelled and waved but you guys looked focused.

I do like the randonneuring thing despite my comments about how those "crazies" do double century weekends every weekend, and when the hell do they do their laundry, just jealous that I don't have the time. I particularly like the old school bikes. Maybe I'll trade in that undersized Trek 520 for a "real" old school touring bike. My avg yesterday was 16, the GPS cut out for a while and shows 15.7.

Keep me posted on what club rides you're doing or if you just want to put a ride together.

Kid trailer
 

On the trailer issue. I bought one to haul my four year old around, the 14 and 10 year olds are done biking with dad. Anyway I was really surprised how little i noticed it. Took him on that Tour Dem Parks ride and just flew up to Federal Hill, passing many. I'm sure there's nothing worse than huffing up a hill and being passed by a guy hauling a trailer.

Hey Barry, what route did you take back from Frederick? Did you map it?

Yup, my rig looks like it has a skateboard on top. I think I remember you, is your son in the late teens or early twenties? Anyway Sunday was such a great day to be out riding and I had a blast and made a few friends along the way. My coworkers at the stop were wonderful and one fellow was from Arlington, VA who came out to help from Potomac Peddlers, it was really heart warming to see so many out on the ride and support the ride.

I have GPS tracks of everywhere I bike to, so it takes just a bit of effort to get it up on Bikely: http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path...ont-Pikesville

This was a nice route except Winands Rd was a freaking race track at 9PM on Sunday, I've never seen that road with that much fast traffic.

Yes, that was us we were riding some old classic steel (Schwinn LeTour & Nishiki Century). My son will be 14 this month and I love riding with him. He's pretty strong. My wife was running a SAG vehicle, but spent most of the day working at the Fairfield FD making sandwiches. She said next year it will be easier to ride. The volunteers really work hard to keep us happy, safe and moving..Thanks to all of ya.!!!

Also my wife and I will be doing the Back Roads in a couple weeks. That's a nice ride also...

Jeff, I've done the Back Roads Century for the past two years. A lady in our club has me halfway talked into doing it again this year, so keep an eye out for a pink Team BBC jersey.

Back Roads
 

I might put that Backroads ride on my calendar.

Hey Barry. Is that an xtracycle bike you're riding with the skateboard looking platform on the back?

http://www.xtracycle.com/

Well I almost got destroyed today on Route 28 in Gaithersburg. Went riding after the storm and everything was great until I got the 28 and QO Rd. Some guy not paying attention slams on his breaks behind me. I jump forward hearing him getting closer and in the mits of that end up jamming my ankel into one of my gears. Got 3 holes in my ankel now and bled like crazy as I road a mile home. What a way to end a crappy day.

Along with that I just noticed one of my breaks has been rubbing, that would explain why it seemed I was not getting enough speed today.

http://www.bikepptc.org/PPTC_Century

They may have changed the name this year, but it was called Backroads for the last two I participated in.

I think you should go. Yes, I like those jerseys I had the priviledge of seeing a few of them pass me on the Civil War ride. I'll just yell NoRacer everytime I see one so I'm bound to meet you. I think I'm going to start early to do the Northern loop and meet my wife back at Clarke County HS to do the Southern loop. She's not really up to doing the full century yet, but I'm glad she's going for the metric...

Yup, I'm the local Xtracycle promoter :D

I had looked into the Extracycle. How do you like it? My wife does all our shopping, mostly up at Trader Joes in Towson, nearly impossible to bike safely up to that store. But hey let's drill in Alaska and offshore so we can continue to drive our gas guzzlers a few miles for a cup of joe. I'm the guy that was at the bike symposium in Annapolis, so sick of the car culture. I say tax that gas to 10.00 per gallon and use the revenue to build pedestrian friendly infrastructure.

I'm heading out to Charles St. for the Peace rally 4-6 anywhere between the Harbor and the beltway. Anybody want to meet up, ride up and down Charles?

I am in love with my Xtracycle, basically it can do 90% of the stuff you use a car for, from groceries to hauling kids around. Try Trader Joes on Reisterstown, coming in the back way is nice, a few hills but nice. That's something else that the Xtracycle changed for me, I used to go to the closest store but now I mostly go further out for nicer routes, time to chill or just to spin a bit longer. It's hard to describe the feeling of doing a utility/joy ride.

I'm not sure what I'll be doing latter but a ride/peace rally sounds fun, if you'll have cell phone with PM me the number and if I can make it or in the neighborhood, I'll call.

I work off of Joppa Rd and have biked in that area to get to the Bike to Work Day event or up and around the circle/roundabout to jump on to west Joppa to get to Falls Rd or north up Delaney Valley to head to Timonium. Believe me, that section of Joppa is much tamer than the section east of Goucher Blvd.

That is definitely true, can't imagine riding east on Joppa, that's basically a highway as is York. This is my wife we're talking about who at this point won't even ride the tandem with me on the road. I'm going to have to do a recon ride over there, see if I can wind through Towson campus.

Barry, Reisterstown would be bit far for me.

Well Barry isn't quite accurate. that Trader Joes is in Pikesville. A good 10 miles closer than Reisterstown

My impression was that he was pointing out the street that it is on:

In any case I don't think I need to go out to Reisterstown Rd. when I can scoot up the road here a couple miles. I was on Greenspring Valley Rd. last week and it's a no go except to jump from Stevenson to Park Heights. I sound like a wuss complaining about busy roads but actually enjoy riding with traffic in a more urban setting, where the cars are slowed by lights, like when I used to commute down to Hampden.

Rode up and down Charles St yesterday on the fixie to check out the peace rally. Lots of fun, usually use the fixed at Montebello, felt good on the hills, going down on a fixed is weird though spinning really fast, braking not an option. Going up was fun though, no choice but to push with only one gear.
Only 9.5 miles but about 900 feet.

Hey NoRacer, was exchanging e-mails with my friend Bennett from VA, we met in Montana last year and have done some touring in VA etc. Don't know if you remember him, says he rode with you on a couple DC Rand rides, last New Year's Day ride and another. He busted up his shoulder early summer on that DC Rand Appalachain adventure, crashed into Crista and Chuck, surgery and a long recovery ensued, he's slowly getting back on the bike.
He may be at the Seagull, that's how your name came up, as I saw your post on that forum and your speed from last year.

Any organized rides this weekend, or anybody getting a ride together?

I remember Bennett. He and I got off-cue on the New Year's Day ride, but we finally caught the group at the next rest stop. I wasn't there for the mis-adventure with Crista and Chuck.

As far as this weekend is concerned, I think Josh and I are still on for our ride to New Freedom this Sunday. Feel free to join us. We'll probably meet at the Park and Ride just off of the east side of the Back River bridge. My legs are still a bit fried from the running and cycling I've been doing, so I'm only up for an easy to medium paced ride.

My son has his first day of fall baseball on Sunday, probably do this early morning ride downtown with neighborhood group. Hope to get out tomorrow early for some miles. Thanks for the invite, I'm sure your moderate pace is my max pace.

yes we're still a go

So I did a PPTC group ride today (first one with this particular group, and a large group). It was out in Poolsville MD and was about 42 miles. Wanted to see if any other members were out their, cause I did not get a chance to meet everyone?

Anyway the route was nice, and actually their was a bike race going on so we got to see the main pack of them. It was a good group, about 6 of us broke off fairly early on and stayed together for most of the ride. Towards the end I broke off from the group and caught up to a rider that left early from the rest stop. She was very nice, and cool person to talk with as we road the remaining 10 miles. I was vary happy with the ride, great weather, great people, and I preformed great.

4 people told me I should be riding in the A class groups since I was blowing up hills and flying down the flats. It was a good confidence booster cause I have not had a lot of chances to ride in larger groups. But the slower pace was nice and relaxing, good way to start the day.

So how was everyone elses ride today?

Just me and noracer again? all these people in baltimore and no takers?

Yeah, if anyone else is interested, please feel free to join us. There's no cue sheet, but that's because this will be a "no drop" ride. We'll make sure that you get back to the Park & Ride in Essex.

So, what time do you want to meet, Josh?

Josh, unless you post something different, I'll meet you at the Park & Ride by 6:30am. See ya then.

see ya there