Saturday afternoon my dad calls and asked what I was up to. “oh, just finished up buying some whiskey for the aid station for our  bike event tomorrow.” Days asks incredulously, “Whiskey? At the rest stop on your sporting event?” Yes, Dad. It was going to be that sort of day.

Saturday morning we woke up to a cold rain-snow combo. I had to go out and mark the bottom of the course, the part inaccessible by car. It was wet and then it poured all day. As people came into the shop to sign in and pick up the shirt, they were hesitant but mainly in good spirits and mostly because there would be good tacos at the end of the ride.

In a stroke of weather luck, Sunday turned out to be the better of the days. It wasn’t warm or sunny, but it wasn’t actually raining. About 130 showed up for the ride, not a bad turnout for crappy weather.

abw_grinder2010

Photo by Richard Mahoney

This year George pressured me into riding. In prior years he rides and I hang out at the staging area and fret about things. This being year 3 and the number of things to fret about having decreased, riding seemed like the right thing to do. I’d never actually ridden the entire course, not the old one or the new one. Cause really, how many times do you really want to climb all those big ass hills? I wasn’t too keen on being really slow out in public, but as it turned out I wasn’t that slow and enjoyed some nice company whilst riding.

The whiskey at the aid station was a nice attitude adjustment before  the last leg of the ride. Weather was starting to roll in and the liquid warm up was perfect to bring it in. More tomorrow, gotta go work.