...a different sort of ride

I'm glad I was able to go to North Bend this weekend. It was fun, as always, to hang out with my cycling buddies Kathie and Bob. But it was a different ride, one we probably won't mark on the calendar for next year. The pancake breakfast was edible. The scenery was beautiful. The people were friendly. But...

We didn't get more than 10 miles away from town in the first two hours. (Up one mountain road and back down again, up another, and back down again.) And in those two hours they had a rest stop every 7-10 miles--more than needed. So they faked us out. We thought the whole ride would be like that. Finally, finally we headed out of town on a 50 mile loop. And guess what? The support ended. Nada. Zip. Zero. A porta-potty on a construction site got lots of use--we were mighty glad to come upon it. Thankfully, the weather was overcast and cool so we didn't go through our water quickly, but by the time a rest stop did appear, we were running on empty.

In spite of it all, the three of us had some laughs. This picture is for Scott. Last week on a group ride we were hustling our butts to get back in because it really started to rain. Kathie and Bob heard Scott yell, "Hey! That's sweet corn! We could stop and pick some!" And he meant it. So on Sunday we just had to stop and take a picture of Kathie picking sweet corn.