The Kaos Theory

Today I participated in a local ride called the Vineride starting in Newberg Oregon. My first bike rally I ever attempted was this ride last year. God time flies these days. Last years the ride was on the 20th which just happens to be my birthday, this years was on the 19th and that happens to be my wedding anniversary. You know I’ll never be forgeting the day I said my vows to my wifey. If I do, I’m probably stuck in an old age home with an accute case of oldtimers disease or I’m the guy you hear about on the news. Something to do with a knife in his back or an accidental fall down the stairs. You know what I mean. Well, let me get back to the ride. One thing I’ve learned about riding is how a new route can cause so much mental anxiety. You ask yourself, what are the hiils like? Are they steep? What’s the condition of the rode? Is there a ton of traffic to deal with? Weather? Since this was my first repeat rally, none of those issues ever popped in my head. I remembered just about every hill, nook and cranny of the road. I rarely had to use the markers, I just sailed along. And I can say with complete confidence, I friggin SAILED along. I was as strong as I have been this year. Hills were nothing and the flats were quite speedy. Usually, all three of my regular readers know, I shoot for an overall average of 15 mph. Looks like I can start raising the bar on my expectations. My average speed was 16.3 mph for just a tad under 38 miles. That shattered my best speed by almost 1 mph for any ride I’ve done, short or long. Plus, 99.9% of my ride was solo, no drafting on the back of a giant train being sucked along. I tried to find any documentation on my 2005 Vineride but I guess I didn’t post anything, I think my average speed was around 14 mph. Most rides, there are beaucoup riders flying past me, this ride I was passed only once. I can’t count how many I zoomed by. I’m beginning to sense my fitness level is ready for a full 100 miler and I have the perfect opportunity coming on September 24th, the
Peach of a Century. A month of extra training should be enough, don’t ya think?

My wife and her friend Trudi had decided quite some time ago to ride in the Providence Bridge Pedal. Trudi is a newbie on the bike, what I mean is she hasn’t really rode a bike except a stationary one in about 8 years. So they signed up to ride the six bridge portion which is about 14 -15 miles. I thought this was a good time for the wife to ride her own rally and I would cheer her on at the finish line. Somehow late yesterday she coaxed me into riding with them. Normally the rallies I do have anywhere from 500 to 2000 riders, they estimated the total participants at 15,000. Which from my understanding is the second largest of it’s type in North America and third in the world. Geographically Portland is bisected by the Williamette river with 10 major bridges connecting the East with the West. To say this is a major event is an understatement, the logistics is downright amazing. They blocked off all the bridges for varoius times during the day to accomodate the riders including Interstate 5. If they did this sort of thing in LA it would be a nightmare of biblical proportions but it went off without a hitch. Kudo’s to the event organizers. The most difficult part of the ride was keeping tabs on my wife and Trudi, I didn’t want to lose them and I think(I hope) they didn’t want to lose me either. I tried to ride at a nice easy pace which wasn’t hard to do with all the other riders of varoius skill levels around. You couldn’t go too fast without running into somebody. I’d ride ahead, pull off to the side, wait for them to catch up and jump back into the fray again. Our initial goal was to ride the six bridge route but at some point we missed the turn off and ended up crossing 8 bridges instead. This almost doubled our mileage and I wasn’t sure if Trudi was up to the task. Well I was wrong, she held her own quite well eventhough she was riding a mountain bike with slight underinflated tires. I didn’t plan well for this ride only bringing one water bottle. Heck, I thought we were only going 14 miles, one should be enough. However, we all survived and a good time was had by all. At the finish we parked our bikes and headed into the Bite of Oregon at Tom McCall Waterfront Park for some grub and of course several frosty mugs of Hefeweizen. Mmmm Beer.