Group ride musings...

So after the "I am mountain biker, hear me roar" proclamation of my last post, I'm here today to talk about road riding.  I went on my first group ride of the year this morning.  Which isn't exactly true, because I headed out with a couple of guys from the shop a few weeks ago.  But there was still snow on the ground, and I was really tentative from an icy fall I took this winter that left me with a sore knee (again with the knee!) and a really skittish disposition on wet streets.  If that first ride was a nature show, then I was one of those unfortunate impalas nervously perched on the bank of a crocodile-infested river, while all the other braver bucks were gleefully splashing through.  And we all know which ones end up in the jaws of death.

Today the roads were bone-dry, though, and if I'm gonna count it as my first ride, then today was my first group ride with gears, as well.  Allow me to explain: as I said before, I got into this whole cycling thing through mountain biking, and my bikes have always reflected that.  I built up two full-suspension mountain bikes before I cobbled together my first bike with skinny tires, a ratted-out Raliegh Technium singlespeed whose two-tone bar tape job I was inordinately proud of.  She was a great bike for getting around the city, and when I decided I wanted to partake in the shop's early-morning group rides down the lakefront, I thought that the ridiculously high 53x16 gearing might let me hang with the pack.  Unfortunately, more often than not, I would be forced to watch everybody else's rear wheels slowly recede in the distance as I churned my only gear in slower and slower circles.

Tired of bringing a knife to a gun fight, I showed up today with, well, a two-shot derringer pistol.  I forgot what nice rides everyone else had.  I mean really really sick rides.  But I was determined to use all nine gears I had on my cross bike if that's what it took to hang, and every click of my bar-end shifter would seem like a gift from above.

And it was a great ride.  I never realized how much fun it is to actually have a conversation with someone when you're riding fast, and how spinning the right gear when you're in the draft feels as effortless as gliding.  My mind, freed from constant worry about whether I was pedaling the right cadence or not, was even able to note some minor observations:

"Some of these houses in Evanston are only slightly smaller than Downton Abbey."

"Did he even get the words 'Man I feel tired and slow' out of his mouth before he accelerated away from me?"

"There's probably smaller potholes on the surface of the moon."

"I love when the lake and the sky are the same shade of grey and you can't see the horizon."

"Small marmalade sandwiches are easier to eat on the bike than gels, I swear."

"Ooooh, there really is a fourth hand position on the end of the drops."

Which isn't to say that I didn't get my ass handed to me, because I surely did.  My only pull led us onto the short, sharp upwards burst right before the turnaround point, and halfway up the tiny hill I gave out.  Small consolation that I was able to winch my way up in a tiny baby gear instead of a great painful one, but at least I was able to catch up and latch back on to the group.  Moral victories, ya know?