Don't pick up strange women on a bike ride !

As I mentioned in the previous post, we were once again going to be doing the Black Bear Century Tour. One bike.........one day.........100 miles. Last year it was myself, Gloria and Meri. This year it was Gloria and I plus we were joined by Bob and Rosita White. 

We all have timing chips attached to our bikes and as we go over the rubber speed bump the computer starts our time. It is not a race but a tour, but our times are recored and posted so we know how we did and how we compare to other riders. Riders go out in groups of 10 every minute until all of the riders have left. The weather at the start was a cool 50 degrees and no wind.

The shots above are an iPhone slide show beginning with the start line and then the rest are from the Fairview rest stop. This is the second of 5 rest stops. The bib numbers you see on the four of us are all the same because we had a start time of 8:18 am.

I didn't take anymore pictures after these. At mile 54 things took a turn for the worse. We had been riding fast, well ahead of last years pace. Shortly after leaving the rest stop Gloria was leading and had caught up to a young lady riding by herself. Her pace was 19 -20 mph and for this section of the course that was a good pace for we more senior riders. We rode behind her for several miles and then she started to show signs of tiring. I pulled out to pass Gloria and her and as I went past her I said “ I'll pull for awhile” meaning she could ride behind me and not have the wind resistance. She said “OK” as I moved in front of her. I am not sure how much pace line experience she had, but Gloria and the other riders told me she was not settling in to the pace. When you switch from pulling (leading) to drafting, the pedaling effort is far less and one needs to be careful of not running up too close to the bike in front. She was weaving to avoid hitting me. I had just checked my speed to be certain I was at her 19 mph pace and I was at 19.5.

I looked in my mirror just as my ears heard the awful sound of bike and body hitting the ground. I saw it was a blue jersey going down, Gloria and the new girl were both in blue. Gloria had made contact with her wheel with her front wheel. She recovered from the contact but then there was a second one and she went down. Gloria had some pretty bad scrapes and the bike was a little twisted. After a few minutes Gloria was able to get up and we started to slowly ride to the next rest stop, about 1 more mile. At that point my rear tire blew a hole in the side wall. I covered the hole with a dollar bill and put in a new tube and off to the rest stop we went. Because of her physical beating and the condition of her bike Gloria had to withdraw. We put her rear tire on my bike and one SAG driver took her bike to the finish line and another drove Gloria to the finish area where she was treated by the EMT's .

In all we spent about an hour at the rest stop before getting under way. By now we had picked up a southeast wind which was pretty much a head wind for most of the remaining 45 or so miles. We also had to deal with a flat on Bob's bike as well.

The last picture was taken the day after the ride and shows some of Gloria's road rash. We think she may have a broken nose and has black and blue showing up more each day. I really feel bad for her because I know how much effort she had put into the training for this ride. She is very disappointed in the out come and of course is in pain.

So all in all it wasn't the Century we were hoping for.