I'm such a hack...

Went out on the long weekly Spidermonkey group ride this morning.  The last couple of rides, I'd tried to hang with the fast group when they detatched on the last leg of the ride, and had been found sorely wanting in both leg and gearing.  When my turn had come up to pull at the front, I couldn't spin the single middling chainring mounted on my 'cross bike fast enough to maintain the speed of the pack, and was slowly spat out the back.  I wasn't the tip of the spear, but more like the skinny leather strips that lashed the spearhead to the shaft.  Oh well.

So I changed my setup, installed a front derailleur like a real grown-up, and armed with two chainrings and its attendant wide range of gears I set out ready to spin to win.  Except I was undone by my own goon riding.  I might as well admit it now.  I'm a lead-footed, ham-fisted hack.  I'm a stomper.  The only thing separating me from the big ol' Baby Huey-looking guys that walk into bike shops clutching mangled wheels with broken spokes protruding at every angle is that I happen to remember to inflate my tires to the proper psi.  And even then I manage to give myself rear pinch flats.  Lots of them.

I wish I could blame my mountain biking background, where often times the fastest way through a rough rock garden is to point and shoot your front wheel and hope for the best.  But I managed to give myself rear flats even on a full-suspension bike with four inches of travel in back.  And today, while navigating the torn-up streets of the north shore, with its potholes that belonged more in Beirut than tony Winnetka, I slammed my rear wheel into a deep crevice hard enough to dislodge my water bottle from its cage.  As I pulled over to retrieve it, I heard the telltale and all-too-familiar 'hssss' of a pinch flat.  Nuts.  I waved the group on as I hunkered down to fix my flat.

I guess the upside of my hackdom is that I can replace a tube pretty quickly, and in a few minutes I was rolling again.  But I knew that I was doomed to a long solo ride ahead of me.  A pack of twenty-plus riders taking turns drafting for each other is going to roll exponentially faster than I ever could by myself, and I knew I had no chance to catch up to them.  So the challenge was to see if I could navigate up through Fort Sheridan and down to the traditional rest stop at the coffee shop in Highland Park.  I'd only been up there a couple of times, and both times I was basically following someone else's wheel.  After an interminable amount of time (I wouldn't let myself look at my watch or bike computer) punctuated by a couple of wrong turns and lots of soul-searching I made it up to the Fort and down to the shop, where the rest of the 'monkeys were off their bikes and sitting in the cafe chairs, soaking in the intermittent sun and sipping their drinks.  Judging by the progress made on the half-eaten scones and blueberry muffins, I figured that they couldn't have been there that long.  One minor moral victory for me.

On the way home, I was glad to be back in the fold.  I'd stayed in my small ring to save energy for the breakaway that inevitably happened on the way home, and my legs felt good even as the speed ramped up.  I remember thinking that I was glad I had the big ring in my pocket, wondering when I should shift up into the 52t, when true to form I caught a jagged edge in the pavement, slamming into it full-tilt with my rear wheel.  It was entirely flat before I'd even rolled to a stop.  Enraged, I dropped the bike on its side beside the road and stood over it, loudly cursing and wildly gesticulating like a bitter old Italian widow at the graveside of her long-philandering husband.  I just couldn't believe it.  I was out of tubes and CO2 cartridges and I was miles from home.

Luckily, Derek - a Spidermonkey who I'd only met hours earlier and knew I'd flatted previously - pulled up next to me while I was in the midst of my conniption fit, and had already taken out his spare tube and tire levers.  As I gratefully took them off his hands, he was already threading on his inflation cartridge for me.  "Shit happens, man" he said.  Indeed it does.  But riding with someone who carries extra gear just when you really need it makes the shit storm easier to deal with.

For whatever it's worth, I was at least able to use my big ring to pull as hard as I could for Derek as we chased after the long-gone pack.  I figured that the least I could do was kill myself in the effort to catch up to them.  So we tore through Winnetka and Evanston and I let out a half-mad cackle as I saw the back end of the pack waiting patiently at a red light on Howard,  right on the edge of Chicago.

As we latched on the back, I never knew it could feel so good to be last.