May Metric Ride

As is a tradition for OHBike, the first Saturday in May is the “May Metric.” We used to do it as a supported ride, but now the supported metric century is the Rural Legacy in June. So now, we just do it as a club ride, offering various distances (100km, 40miles and 26miles) at various paces. Because of the weekend’s plans, I offered to lead the 40-mile route at a fast pace. I didn’t have any takers to join me. But that was ok, as others needed the cue sheets I’d run off. So I rolled out with the next fastest group that was planning on doing the full metric. Five of us rode together for the first 10 miles, keeping a comfortable pace of 18 or so. We stopped at Merkle Wildlife Refuge and regrouped.

I had about 10 miles to go before we’d split apart, so I opted to ride a little slower to spend some time riding with Blake, Jan, Carole and Walt. There was a fellow – don’t know his name – who had been working hard to stay with us, but he didn’t want to do the 65 so he said he’d go with me at the split. As we turned into North Keys, he told me not to worry if I dropped him on the hills, he’d just wait for the next group of 40-milers to come along. I did pull away from him on that little hill (I can remember that seeming to be a big hill once upon a time!), but I figured he’d catch up with me on the descent down Cross Road Trail. I was right. That road’s condition is getting beyond “bad” and into “seriously dangerous.” It’s great where they put the new bridge in, but on either side of that new section, the road is really torn up. I dropped whoever he was on the climb up out of the stream valley. I almost had an incident on the climb, as I hit a spot that was sand/fine gravel and it grabbed my front wheel and I started to get mired in it. Fortunately I tend to climb only just barely holding the bars, so it was easy enough to apply a little pressure and break free.

As I approached the turn onto Cherry Tree Crossing, my day took a turn for the worse. An old geezer in a big sedan (you know the type, they drive Lincolns and other similarly sized vehicles even though they don’t need the capacity for any reason at all) was waiting to pull out of Cherry Tree Xing. I signaled my turn, watched the guy coming the other way who was making a right into CTX as I slowed and knew that it was possible that the old geezer was going to do something stupid. As I started to make my turn, the old guy started to pull out. I yelled at him as I grabbed the brakes for an emergency stop. My left hand, more used to making that squeeze than my right, gripped tighter and the rearend started to come up to create an endo…. I shifted my weight around quickly turning it into just a fall onto my right side with my elbow and hip taking the impact. Fortunately it was a slow speed thing, so no shredded shorts, no torn skin. Just some raspberries and bruises. I got up, yelling at the moron about looking for traffic and obeying stop signs then headed on my way. The drive train was ticking a bit so I opted for the shortest route back to the car and then headed directly to BikeDoctor to drop it off to be checked over and adjusted to clear up the noise. Didn’t see anything concerning, don’t think anything took real damage, just got a little bit out of alignment.

It’s the first time that I’ve gone down on the bike since 2004, so I guess I was due. I’m sore and I’m bruised, but that’s the extent of it, so I count my blessings and look forward to the next ride.