Where's my cupholder?

#305 / #99

Today was the monthly around-the-lake ride I lead for a local casual bike group (casual hammerin' wheels on Meetup.com). Rather low attendance (although I've had fewer) probably because of the 60 degrees at our starting time. Mr. Mohawk, another group ride leader, showed up sporting shorts and a sleeveless shirt, as well as his eponymous helmet. Brrr! A couple showed up also, she on a Raleigh and he on his mountain bike so he "wouldn't ride too fast" for his girl. Red Leader stayed well out in front of the pack, as he often does.

I started off in my wicking shirt, under a wool shirt, under my windbreaker. I peeled out of the windbreaker while rollling along, stuffing it between my back and the seat, and shed the woolie at our rest stop at Nimbus. So I guess Mr. Mohawk was not so wrong after all.

At Nimbus Flats boat launch, I chatted for a minute with a couple on a tandem, who decided to come out and explore this trail. I'm not sure the map they had would do them much good. They asked how to get to Folsom from where we were, and - after hearing about both routes - decided that the south side trail sounded the most straight forward. I told them about the group, so I hope they can hook up with the Hammerin' Wheels sometime.

I stayed in the sweep position, right behind she of the Raleigh, with an average for the ride of 10mph - just what I would expect from the slowest person on a ride like this.

When we got home, Red Leader persuaded me to let him help me with the cyclecomputer roll out test - my Greenspeed Scorchers (Kevlar type) measure 1506mm circumference. We measured my rear wheel, even though that is a drive wheel, because that's where my sensor is, and the rear wheel's an ICE wheel, and the two front are Velotechnik's wheels. I had been using a figure of 1554, which was my SWAG (scientific wild ass guess) based on a tire one size smaller and one size larger from Cateye's chart. So. It will be interesting to see if this brings my onboard distance on long ride closer to the distance found by my phone's Strava app.

RL may join me tomorrow when I ride down to Alphabent for the Sunday workshop.