A few things, and some stuff, and some training.

Last week, I was riding home from work, and my fixie got a flat.

It was a bummer, but I didn't have far to go, so I just hiked it home. I thought it was some glass I ran over (after a mean truck cut me off), but turns out the tube split. Must have been because of my awesome tube-splitting riding. But she's back to new now, thanks to the nice folks at Bicycle Chef (I'd give a link, but their website got hacked and now it goes to some Turkish terrorists or something). It was good to visit the bike chef -- they reminded me I need to bring in my road bike to get a little tweak before the ride (a month from today!).

This weekend's ride was great fun - I taught spinning the morning, which made me late for the ride, so I had to ride fast and hard to try to catch them. It was basically the same ride I did a few weeks back on my own, which, if you remember, was one hill after another.

Sort of looks like I was there on wrong day. Darn.

So -- starting about 40 minutes after the group, looking at a big mountain in front of me, and deciding that what the hey?, I can do it.
Ha. The road between me and them just kept going up. My cue sheet said it was only going to be about 16 miles of that, but 16 miles of going up and up and up some more is like 50 regular miles. Good news, though. I caught up with them and found a bunch of relaxed, resting riders finishing up what looked like a nice, long break.
There was Mark with a flower in his hair:






and Jeff riding his banana seat bike:

As soon as I got there, they were ready to go, so back on the bike I went, ready for the next 30 miles or so. More hills. More countrysides, more baby goats.

Next weekend, a century (100 miles), and 45 miles of hills -- the last Benchmark ride!