60 Spring Miles - Ultramiler's Ride With Woodlands Cycling Club
Saturday March 18, B J Davis, Bill Oswald and I joined the Woodlands Cycling Club on a "traditional" Saturday morning club ride. I had pretty much stopped riding with the club in favor of choosing my own riding buddies and routes. The ride was enjoyable, starting in Montgomery, Texas the home of the Texas Flag.
the ride began with fog and nice cool temps with the sun later coming out in all its glory. This included the glory of the wild flowers on the side of the road and out in the field. Bluebonnets and Indian Paintbrush.
Our route took us to Richards, our first stop, which is where BJ, Bill and I decided to leave the club riders in favor of more miles and a few challenging hills. We picked up a rider who is not in the picture named Eric. A young man who is training for his first half Iron Man who also rode with us the full 60 miles.
Following is a photo of BJ, Bill and I at our next break point in Anderson Texas.
It is important to note that the people you see in this photo are 3 of the original Ultramilers. There were others, like Mike Lukk who has retired in Utah who was also there with us as the Ultramilers grew to over 30 riders. We also used to ride with Bob Writt, but he now rides the Tour De France each year and is out of our league. :) And Joe Shoemacher, Bob Borsh, Mike Kimball and others. Some of our exploits over the years include:
- Houston to Austin in a Day - 205 miles
- Bicycle Tour of Colorado - 8 times at over 450 miles each time.
- Sacramento to Yosemite and Tahoe and back - 500 miles
- Oregon to San Francisco - 450 miles
- Big Bend, Texas - 400 miles
- East Texas Chainring Challange - 7 times at over 400 miles each time
- And many many many Centuries over the years.
After dropping Eric a couple of times I dropped back to pick Eric back up and ride with him. One of the traditional traits of our group. No body gets left behind. No one is left out on roads they don't know. We started as a group we end as a group.
BJ and Bill rode on and soon disappeared from our sight. When we arrived in Dacus our next turn, we did not see BJ and Bill and figured they kept going. So we trucked on. Eric recovered some what but mostly had to drop back to about 14 MPH. We have all been there.
When we arrived back to the parking lot in Montgomery, all the cars were gone except my truck and Eric's. We said good by and I headed home placing a call to BJ to find out how things went with him, only to find out they were in the store and came out to back track and try to find us after we passed by. One of those little "communication" "7 Ps" kind of deals. :)
Ok enough for now. One more picture of us back in the day about 10 years ago for your viewing pleasure. Later I'll do an update on my riding and swimming of late. In the first 3 months of this year I've already almost passed the number of miles I rode all of last year. And added 3 miles of swimming each week to the mix.
More soon....Headed to Garner State Park in April
Footnote: I forgot to mention that on the way to Anderson we passed a rider fully loaded and heading across country. While everyone else rode on to Anderson, I stopped to visit and found out his story. He began his trek across the US in Florida back in January. He rode to New Orleans where he boarded a train and rode to San Diego. He then rode east. He had about another week and his trip would be over. A complete traverse of the US on the Southern Route. I will be doing the Norther Route next year.
