Where to start I have a lot of thoughts on my mind about this ride. It's hard to start with all these jumbled ideas whirling around. So why don't I start with the plan for the ride. It was planned to be 45 miles;, down East New Lenox Road, to Lenoxdale, on to Lee, West on route 102 to West Stockbridge, back on route 41 to route 20. Sounds like a good distance for an early season ride, and as Duke put it there were no major climbs (how do you define Major would have been a good question). It was a good ride! The type of terrain that Nicki, with only 4 rides under her bike shorts, could do with ease. So if the weather held off it should be a good ride.
Ahh the weather. It was amazing, the sun was out, a bit on nippy side, and low humidity, it was the perfect ride weather. Shaun commented on the weather mens job and how accurate that they are. No need to repeat the fact that they called for showers and cloudy Sky's, and it was beautiful. That's why I always show up for a ride, you never know what the weather is really going to be, even 10 miles from the ride start.
There must have been a lot of pent up bike riding desire, 12 people showed up. Quite the crowd, Duke, Nicki and Jim, Mary Lou, Dudly, Deb Mc. , Pete Z, John C., Willy K., Shaun and Pokey Paula. (me makes 12) I was kind of surprised to see so many people. In a way it was nice because of all the energy but in other way it was awkward because we did crowd the road and it's a bit scary with cars passing us when the Peleton is 2 deep.
We started off a little after 11:35 and headed for East New Lenox road. This was a scary part because we were all jockeying for position, and weaving in and out, while cars were trying to get around. I swear all I heard for next 15 minutes was "Car Back!" When we turned on to New Lenox road it turned miserable, pot holes and bumpy pavement. It was hard to ride, it was hard to keep a line, fortunately it was uphill slightly. I was glad to turn on the Road to Eastover. This road is busy, cars were flying by, I really don't like riding this road because of all the turns and hidden driveways and I'm just a poor 250 lb biker, easy prey for cars. But much to my relief we finally made it to Lenoxdale. YES!! We turned left on back road by river and flew into Lenoxdale, that was fun, fun, fun. In the village we regrouped in the Post Office Parking lot. While we were waiting for everybody to show the enterprising post master came out and tried to convince us to buy stamps. Apparently they are going up $.02 on Monday. The Post Master sounded like a carny salesman, get your stamps here. I am glad email prices aren't rising or I would be in trouble.
When we finally headed out, stamp less, we headed to the back roads of Lee to get to lee shops. The road condition was decent but still some pot holes. At the Lee Shops we turned onto Tyringham Road. Holy Cow!!! It was worse than a dirt road. There were holes everywhere, no escape. Paula almost went over handle bars on one hole. When you are riding closley it's hard to see the holes and Paula hit it with no where to turn. She got lucky to hold it. It's hard to believe that anybody could go fast on this road. Well Willy proved that you could go fast on the Holy Road, I guess he was trying to run from all the divots in the road, or even fly over them, but he took off, like a shot. The only unfortunate thing about his break away was that he missed the turn that the rest of us were taking. Poor Shaun had to track him down. Well somebody had to do it, and I voted for him. You go boy!!!!
The turn was good for one thing, it got us off the bad pavement, the road lead us by the Oak and Spruce Condo's. It is a great road as you can see from the following picture.
I was amazed that the Oak and Spruce was crowded. Wonder what those people do in the Berkshires when they come. Probably drive around and look for bikers to complain about being double on crowded roads.
Since I decided to stop and take pics, I lost touch with the main group and waited for Willy And Shaun. This is where the ride started to split up into small groups. I got lost in Stockbridge, I figured Duke would head to the Mobile station but no he had to go to the "Daily Bread Bakery' What's up with that, we never go to the Daily Bread Bakery!!! This place is too high faluting for a bunch of bikers, I like the Mobile station better, at least it has pies. This place didn't have Table Top Pies.
After we all regrouped, we headed back up route 102 for west stockbridge we strung out. Route 102 isn't a hard climb, it's just long, up, up, up. It didn't take long for the better bikers to get ahead and climb. It was great to see John C. streak up to the top and head uphill. It's funny to see wheel suckers jump on his wheel, and carry up to top with him. I wonder what John thought about this, he probably didn't even realize it. Man those guys are strong, Jim, John and Paula, If I were 40 years younger I could have kept up...IN MY DREAMS!!!West Stockbridge was to be a potty break, unfortunately the public bathrooms there were locked. It occurred to me that they are always locked, whats the sense of having them? So we took a break there anyway and were having a good time chatting, until Pete decided that we had enough gabbing and we had to hit the road. Pete must have had a deal on eBay awaiting his attention at home.
It was at this time that the route change occurred. Since it was so windy, Shaun suggested that we do Swamp Road instead of Rt 41. I agreed because route 41 isn't one of my favorite rides, wind or no wind. So off to Barker Road we went. Actually the road was great, the smoothest road we've been on all day, it was fun. It was also here that the group split up into 3 smaller groups. Very Fast, Fast, and the people that were enjoying the day.
It got even more confusing because the "enjoying the day" group also split later to "enjoying the day" and Me. Some how I got separated from everybody and ended up doing the last 5 miles by myself. Not that it was bad, just that I didn't want the others to worry about me. Fortunately, I showed up about the same time as the other "enjoying the day" people so it was only a short time for worry.
The ride ended up being only 37 miles, because we didn't do Route 41. I really wanted to finish the 45 miles and was tempted to go out and do circles until that happened, John C did. But I needed to get home and mow the lawn...
Thanks Duke Great Ride. See you next week.
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