The Silk Curse is Lifted

 

My coach had instructed me to restart the OMTP the Monday after father's day weekend so I was excited to be able to ride what, where, and as hard (or easy) as I wanted.  I was off the leash!  I started hunting rides for Saturday morning on Friday afternoon.

The first offer was fast guys at 8:00 am 45 minutes from my house.  The fast guy part sounded good but the early start time had me looking for other options.  Skinny Jim hurled texting insults when I turned him down (he is, after all, one of the fast guys), I don't like Skinny Jim sometimes.

I ended up negotiating another ride with only a 30 minute later start time but with 15 minutes less of a drive.  Dirt Hippie promised to give me a proper thrashing on the north side trails for a couple of hours.  I told him he could lead and complain all he wanted to.  He did thrash me and it seemed to make him happy.



Can you believe this guy can school me?

The Bait

It really started on Saturday evening.  There had been rumors of a Silk led CX ride sometime over the weekend.  The Kid and I have had, let's say, questionable success at these.  Silk tends to under estimate mileage and over estimate ground conditions.  So as I sat at Oscar's in Beautiful Downtown Havana Saturday evening, drinking an adult beverage, and listening to live music, a text came in from Zac.  It had an attachment with a proposed route for Sunday which, to my slightly muddled mind, looked to be about 50 miles of mostly paved with a little bit of clay road.


Since it was going to be fathers day I kinda wanted to do something with The Kid so I asked him if he wanted to go.  When he found out it was a Silk ride he said he was out.  I told him it looked like less than 50 miles and should be an easy pace.  That, along with Zac's prodding, plus the idea that it was fathers day, made him sign on.

Fathers Day

Another 8 am start time at Food Lion.  We met Silk, Dirt Hippie, and Zac, then rolled out through the north side neighborhoods.  The pace was mellow but when we were about 40 miles from my truck I began to realize the ride was going to go longer than I had anticipated.  I think by this time The Kid had figured it out also.  Seems I had misread the attachment the night before and the mileage was started from a different point.

Anyhoo, we ended up with a little over 60 miles.  We had a good solid ride.  The Kid easily kept pace.  I however, was a little gassed by the time we finished.  As we all parted Silk yelled "the curse is lifted!" and in a way I guess he was right. After all, we didn't get lost, nor did we get caught in a monsoon, and we didn't need to pull anybody in.

Typical Silk ride from last year

I felt better after I sucked down a smoothie on the way home.  I spent the rest of the day in the AC under the ceiling fan watching movies. 

Now that I think about it I'm pretty fortunate to be able to participate with my Kid in things he enjoys doing, and I'm lucky he likes to do some of the things that I like to do.  Between moto and now cycling we have spent many a day together on two wheels.  I hope he remembers them fondly, I know I will.