every ride an adventure

In a down economy I am of course glad that business is good, but it does tend to get in the way of training.

This week the weather also got in the act sending waves of wind and rain starting Wednesday evening and continuing for most of Thursday.

This morning I finally found the time to get out for a 30 mile loop that brings me close to 300 miles over the last few weeks.

The route showed some of the storm damage the area took this week as I got to dodge lots of water, tree branches, roof tiles, and even a section of fence blown onto the roads and shoulders.

While I'm used to biking around various obstacles, my bike decided to toss in an additional challenge just to keep this morning's ride interesting. Heading up a modest hill the chain dropped off the front gear ring.

With my old bike this was a fairly common occurrence and usually I could get it back on while riding. My son's bike however demonstrated a remarkable ability to jam the chain between the frame and gears when I attempted this.

Just managing to release my clips before doing a header off the side of the hill I must have looked like a target to the suddenly large number of cars that passed by as I balance by the side of the road fighting with the chain.

The bike allowed me to believe I had fixed the problem for about 5 minutes before it once again demonstrated who was boss by randomly changing gears. The engineer in me knows the gear changes were random and related to the mistreatment of the derailleur. That doesn't change the fact that most gear shifts seemed to be timed to run me off the road or into passing cars;)

Despite the bike's best efforts to kill me I completed the ride faster and feeling stronger than any of my prior outings. Today was also the first ride where the GPS and I agreed on the route with no major detours.

In Santa Fe Dad has been a social butterfly this week doing lots of partying and little training. Maybe this trip he will need to draft behind me;)