The Dirt on Jarachinas

A few posts back, I wrote about how Jarachinas was the best road for cycling in the Rio Grande Valley.  That is, unless you went north on Jarachinas from 107, in which case Jarachinas turned into a sandy beach.  Piojo wrote a response, explaining that the truly best road in the Valley IS a dirt road like the sandy section of Jarachinas.

I was out riding with Speedo today, and we rode a route that included Jarachinas.  We approached the intersection of Jarachinas and 107, and Speedo asked "have you ever SEEN the sandy section"?  I hadn't, so we rode north through the intersection, and 50 yards down the road turns into a sandy, gravelly mess.  The 1st photo below tells part of the story.

This photo of Speedo's wheel sinking into the gravel and sand tells the rest of the story.  With just a little movement of the wheel, you sink about 3 inches into the mix.  That's enough to bring you down pretty quickly.  The road gets even sandier, but we didn't ride far enough to get a good photo.

I liked the desolate feel of the landscape in this area, so I took one more photo that captured the field bordering the road.  The plowed, barren field seems to go on forever.

I'll close the post with a photo of me taken by my talented daughter, Betsy.  Notice how she captured the rakish tilt of my helmet, the sheen of 30SPF sunscreen on my face, and my truly massive quads.  Fatty would be jealous.

Chief Wahoo was Stolen!

I went to high school in Cleveland.......Texas.  Guess what our mascot was?

If you took the low road and guessed Indian, then you would be right.  More specifically, we ripped off the real Cleveland Indians, Chief Wahoo, colors, and all.  I was reminded of this when my youngest daughter tapped me on the back while I was at the computer, and when I turned around she had on my ball cap from high school.  What a cutey-pie she is.  If you're curious, she's holding a ballpark giveaway baseball from the Houston Astros, circa 2000.  If I can keep it in decent condition, it might be worth something one day.

On a different subject, it's been a long week already.  We were out of town for the weekend, and now there are construction workers busting out walls and building new ones in our home.  I'll have a more detailed post on these topics soon.

Wind-ervals and a Conversational Ride

I don't have much time for the blog right now, as most of my time is being spent on job searching, cycling, family, or selling our house.  The last excuse is a biggie, as we're deep in the process of changing realtors, and it is requiring a major change in direction for selling the house.  That's another post, but in the meantime, here's my road report for the last two days:

MONDAY 3/24/09

After two days off, which were spent doing simple and fulfilling things with the family, I decided to head out for some interval work.  I didn't realize until I got out there that the wind was averaging 25 MPH, gusting to over 30.  It almost knocked me over several times, and I could barely spin when I had a headwind.  I did 11 miles, then went home feeling very weak-legged.  I didn't feel good after the ride.  Too short, too hard, too windy.  Some days are good, some days are not.

TUESDAY 3/25/09

I met Speedo at 7:30a, and we rode southeast towards Progreso.  I had stupidly left my Garmin on overnight, and since it couldn't get a satellite fix, it burned the batteries down to zero point zero availability.  As a result, I have no ride data, but here's the route.  We did 56 miles in about 3.5 hours, fighting lots of rush hour traffic along the way.  I don't know my speed, cadence, or heart rate data, but the ride felt like a long, slow, distance ride that was on the edge of being bumped from slow to moderate.

Independent of the traffic, speed, and other stats, we had a great ride.  It was strenuous, but we were able to converse and enjoy the cool morning weather.  Conversation covered jersey design, Facebook, patching tubes, buying tires on the cheap, and all sorts of other cycling and non-cycling topics.  We did have to fight a strong wind (~15 mph?) on the way out, but then we embraced the same wind on the way home.   

One last tidbit -- I'm pinching cycling pennies these days, so instead of a CLIF Bar, I ate a PB&J sandwich at the halfway point.  Delicious.

90 Miles of Atypical Road Cycling

On Friday, I met Dutchman, Major, and Koff at the Burger King at 7:30a.  I got there a little early, and after riding in the damp fog and the 61F temp, I bought my first ever pre-ride cup of joe from the King, as you can see in the below photo.  Unfortunately, it's the only photo I took during an atypical day of cycling.

Less than 10 miles from Burger King, I flatted.  Not the pop-hiss kind, but the slow, spongy kind.  Although we could find lots of nicks and cuts, we couldn't find anything that caused the flat.  In my experience, when you don't find the root cause of the flat, you'll have another, so I wasn't happy that we couldn't find a cut or piece of wire that caused the flat.  It was frustrating, and atypical, as I usually find the cause of the flat.

When I started prepping my CO2 gear, I realized that the 16 gram cartridges I brought would not fit in the hand pump / CO2 gizmo that I brought.  Which was weird, because the only reason I brought this particular gizmo was because I was out of threaded 16 gram cartridges, and had to rely on unthreaded cartridges, which won't work with my normal crack pipe inflator.  Luckily, Major had some cartridges that he traded me.  With the flat fixed, we were off.

A few minutes latter, I was chatting with Koff, and told him that I was really needing to make a restroom pit stop.  He said he did too.  I didn't really want to stop, as I had just caused a delay with the flat.  As we approached the next intersection, I called out to Major and said "Koff needs to stop and pee".  Ha!  The old "Teacher, Johnny thinks the homework is too hard" trick.  Works every time, and so we stopped to use the facilities.  It turned out that we all made use of the plumbing, so I didn't feel too guilty.

When Dutchmen made his way back to the bikes, he said that he was buying breakfast tacos, his treat.  I don't know if states outside of the Southwestern US have breakfast tacos in convenience stores, but we have them throughout Texas.  They're delicious badness.   Major said "if we're gonna have tacos, let's just go in and sit down in a booth".  So we did, and I thought our chances of a long, intense ride were evaporating.  I found myself feeling okay with that!  The tacos were great, the conversation was good, and the stares from the store clientele were worth the delay.

With a full belly, we headed east-northeast towards Hargill.  We pedaled along between 18-20 mph, in a double paceline with long pulls.  As we neared Hargill, I was closing on 50 miles, and feeling a little tired.  I bought Gatorade and oatmeal-raisin cookies at the store in Hargill, and felt much better after eating.  Just as we were departing the store, some other patrons were leaving.  Suddenly, two of the guys started fighting.  Punching, wrestling, grappling, and pushing, with the women in the group yelling at them to stop.  We watched for a few minutes, then Dutchman wisely suggested that we should move along.  I think the last time I saw a fistfight was in 1991.  This ride was just getting stranger by the mile.

We pushed along towards Burger King, feeling better since we had a tailwind on the return.  Dutchman turned off for home, and a few miles later, as expected, I flatted on the same tire that I had flatted earlier.  This time, I found a tiny cut that was through and through the tire, so I lined it with a boot, replaced the tube, and added CO2.  All good, except now I was out of tubes, and without a patch.

I rode towards home, and as I reached Shary Road I realized I wouldn't finish with a century.  Unlike Monday, I didn't feel the need to add on miles in Granjeno to make the century.  I was out of tubes, my family was out of town, and if I flatted I would be in a world of pain, having nobody to call and ask for help.  I would either be riding on flat, or walking.  I decided to end the ride, and finished with 91 strange, atypical miles.  The nitty-gritty statistics and details on the ride are here.

Stuff I Lost or Bought because of Austin

Today I have been out of work for a full month.  And do I have a job search related post?  No.  Instead, I want to tell you about one of the worst aspects of my November 2008 - Feb 2009 long distance commute from the Rio Grande Valley to Austin:  forgetting stuff at home, and then forgetting stuff in Austin.

You're probably confused, so I'll explain.  Almost weekly, I would forget to pack something for the trip.  Then I would need to either go buy the item in Austin, or do without for the week.  When I would get home to Mission, Texas, I would often realize I'd left something in the hotel.  Here's a photo of one such item, which jogged my memory while doing laundry:

This one was a double whammy -- I ran out of socks for spin class / cycling while in Austin, so I bought a pair at Nelo's.  When I got home and did laundry, I could only find one.  I waited a few weeks, thinking I would find the 2nd one.  I never did.

What else did I forget and then purchase, and/or lose?  Here's what I can remember:

• Water bottles.  I bought a bottle from Mellow Johnny's, and kept it in my luggage after that.
  
• A casual leather belt.  I bought a cheapo at Target in Austin, then decided to make it my "standard" brown belt.
  
• The socks that I mention above.
  
• A combination lock.  Twice.  The first time, I bought one at Target.  The second time,  I bought one at the gym.
  
• Brown socks.  Bought some at Target.  Yes, I like Target, and it was close to my office.
  
• Toothpaste, several times.  I figured out that if you go to the front desk of the hotel, they'll give you a tube for free, even if they sell toothpaste.
  
• A base layer long sleeve tee (Under Armour knock off).  This one makes me mad, because it wasn't cheap, and I've needed it several times, but I refuse to go buy another.  It's basically summer in the RGV now, so I'll forget about it until the next coldish snap.
  

I'll probably remember more as I realize I'm missing things.

Jara Chinas Road : The Best Cycling in the Rio Grande Valley

On Tuesday afternoon, "Centralized Listing" called to tell me my next assignment was in the Homeland Security Office, running intel on possible Mexican coyote weaknesses.  Just kidding -- they wanted to show the house on Wednesday at 10:00a, but everytime I see "Centralized Sho" on the Caller ID, it strikes me as rather Get Smart-ish.  My mind started going over all of the straightening and surface cleaning, the timing, and where I would go while they were showing the house.  Hmmm...an ideal opportunity for a ride.

I verified with Major that we would meet at Burger King at 8:00a.  I left the house in the dark at a little after 7:00a, and when I turned down Harvey in central McAllen, I saw a very nice sunrise.  It deserved to be photographically memorialized, and so it has been:

Four of us showed up at Burger King, and we decided to ride out to what I consider THE BEST ROAD FOR CYCLING IN THE RIO GRANDE VALLEY.  That's right.  I said it.  The best.  It's Jara Chinas Road.  I'm not sure what a "Jara" is, but I think it's a plant.  "Chinas" means Chinese, and my Googling leads me to Chinese Rock Rose.  Who knows?  Regardless, Jara Chinas Road has wide shoulders, smooth pavement, minimal traffic, and rolling hills.  It's beautiful.  

But if you ever see the sign in the photo below, don't believe it.  If you take a right, you're on a sand and dirt road.  The real Jara Chinas is to the left.  C'mon, Texas DOT!  One other cool thing about RGV roads, as evidenced by the sign -- as you head north from Business 83, the roads are laid out in a grid.  At one mile north, you're at "1 Mile Road".  Seven miles north, and you're at "7 mile road".  And so on.  This makes it easy to navigate your way around greater McAllen.

Here's another shot of what you'll see on Jara Chinas.  Like I said, super wide shoulders on both sides, and also extremely rural, hence the lack of traffic.

I captured this next one as I cruised down Jara Chinas at 19mph, racking up the first 40 miles.  I call this shot my "Wally Shot".  Wally has a new bike shop here in McAllen (no website yet I think), cut his teeth working at Jack and Adam's in Austin, and posts a shot like this almost daily on Twitpic.  So I'm copycatting a little.  He's easy enough to track down on Twitter, so I leave that to you. 

Jara Chinas has one weakness:  a gravel pit.  Towards the southern end of Jara Chinas, near where it dead-ends into Expressway 83, there's a gravel pit.  As you can see in the below photo, there is a little truck traffic in and out of the gravel pit.  It's not too dangerous, as the trucks have plenty of room to turn and navigate, and there's lots of visibility.  The worst part is the blowing sand they stir up, which I think was blasting Major when I took this photo.

I can't give enough love to Jara Chinas.  Even so, the ride kicked me in the seat yesterday.  I ended up with 70 miles, but was totally blown out when I finished.  I'm going to take the day off, job search till my ears and fingers bleed, then do another long ride tomorrow with Major, Dutchman, and anyone else that meets at Burger King.  Until then, I leave you with a link to the Jara Chinas ride.

Ride to Hargill with Bonus Century Miles

Yesterday, I met a few of the Team McAllen folks at the Burger King for a long ride.  Dutchman wanted to try for a century, the Major is always up for a long ride, and 3 other strong riders were game for anything.  It was a beautiful day, as the rain had blown out, leaving us with a cool but sunny day, perfect for an afternoon ride.  We decided to head northeast to Hargill and points beyond, which was fine with me, as I've never ridden into Hargill proper.

The ride to Hargill was a basic Rio Grande Valley ride.  Start in urban McAllen, quickly head into rural farmland, and just as quickly feel like you've left most of civilization and may not be able to find a place to buy water and food.  As an added bonus, on the way out we threw in 5-6 miles on US 281, which is a major highway with lots of traffic.  The rumble strips on the side of the road made it really fun.  About 35 miles into the ride, we reached Hargill.  

Having never been to Hargill, I didn't know what to expect.  What I saw were a few houses, and a very small store that we thought was closed.  No lights, no signs, few windows, no gas pumps, and no people.  One of us pulled on the door...and it opened.  The store was lit by one 8 foot double fluorescent, and did not appear to have air conditioning, but they had drinks and food, and a reasonable excuse for a latrine.  Photos of the Hargill crossroads and a sign on the outside of the store follow.  Note -- I'm surprised that there are no spelling errors or misuse of apostrophes on the hand-painted sign.  That is a rarity.

Since I was planning on a century, I was focused on hydration and energy during the ride.  I had two bottles, and drank constantly.  Gatorade in one, water in the other.  On the way out, I ate a ~250 calorie Clif Bar.  In Hargill, I had ~225 calories of peanut butter cookies.  And on the way back, I had some Fig Newtons.  One of our fellow riders didn't do that...maybe he forgot, or maybe wasn't quite ready for the century.  He bonked!  It happens, and we weren't going to leave him out in the south Texas farmlands, so we changed our route, reduced our speed, and made sure we all made it back in alive, regardless of miles.  As we rolled near McAllen, I realized I wasn't going to have 100 miles by the time I made it home.  Crud, crud, crud.

Fortuntately, there's a simple but frustrating solution that I learned early in my cycling life.  I've ridden the Shiner GASP / BASH a couple of times, and each time as I approached the finish I would see riders heading the opposite direction.  The first year, I was brand new to cycling and didn't know why they were doing this until a more seasoned buddy explained it:  the official ride length is 85 miles, and they were heading out to do a 7.5 out and in to make a full 100.  Until yesterday, if I wanted a century, I've always ridden a route that gave me a century.  Yesterday, I fell short, and had to add on miles near my house to make the full 100.  If you've ever had to do this, you know that these are the worst miles you'll ever ride.  It's like sprinting to the finish line, only to have the race organizers pull up the stakes on the blow-up archway and move it another few miles down the road.  Regardless, when the day was done, I had finished 105 glorious miles.

The link to the ride data is here, and a screen capture of the map is below.  When you look at the map, the little loop in the southwest corner represents two painful, century-completing, 6 mile laps around Granjeno near my home.

POSTSCRIPT

I usually ride early in the morning.  Yesterday we started at 1pm.  I put sunscreen on my face, neck, and ears.  I forgot my arms and legs.  Here's what my upper arm looked like this morning.  I guess my 1/4 Mexican blood didn't keep me from burning.  Live and learn...

Lucky Seven?

Is luck real?  Is one number luckier than another?  I don't know but I know a lot of people think the number seven is lucky.  And so when I saw this image on my LinkedIn page today, I knew I would be finding a job very, very soon.  I'm going to go eat Chinese food today and see if my fortune cookie supports the theory.

Super Duper Quick Post

I don't feel that busy, but I haven't had time to post as frequently as I would like.  Here's a short, bulletized list of what's happening these days:

• I get up every day and take Betsy to school, unless Vic walks her to school.  When I get home around 8:00a, I start my job search activities.
  
• Morning job stuff takes about 2-3 hours.  I have a few meta-sites I use to search jobs, plus I get automated e-mails from some of them.  And I have friends and network contacts that are pretty consistently e-mailing me leads.  Finally, I get an odd recruiter or two that asks for information.
  
• Afternoons find me tapering down the job search, and putting in another 2 hours or so.  People use the cliche "finding a job is a full time job", but I've found that it's really a 4-6 hour per day job.  It's heavily front-loaded when you're creating resumes and getting your job search muscles toned up, but once you're ready, it's not too bad.  Of course, if you're traveling and interviewing, that's a different story.
• For exercise, I either get up early and run, or I try to get some riding in.  Yesterday I jumped out for a quick 17 mile ride, with some intervals in the middle.  The wind was NUTS down here.  My guess is 20+mph, with gusts close to 30mph.  I'd give you the link but Garmin's MotionBased site is getting flakier and flakier.  Terrible performance for a pay site.  Oh yeah -- I averaged 20 mph over 17 miles, with lots of the ride into the wind.  Pretty happy with my solo speed for this ride.
  
• I'm tentatively planning a long ride for Friday.  Gonna try to ride with Piojo and Dutch, but forecast looks a little chilly and rainy for the RGV.  We'll see.
  

That's all I have time for right now.  Vic and I are going to school for a picnic lunch with Betsy.  Can't do that if you're employed (at least not easily)!

Cycling Along the Rio Grande

Cycling in South Texas' Rio Grande Valley is not boring.  It's flat, and often windy, but it's not boring.  Friday, March 6th, my Dutch buddy and I rode a 58 mile loop that started in urban McAllen, meandered south through the city, snaked through a hike and bike trail, then dropped off into rural South Texas, then finally back into McAllen.  Look at the map below for a minute.   See the stretch along the river, and then the turn to the north?  Notice that there aren't many roads?  Rural goodness, with some fun things to see, and unique experiences to be had.

If you zoom in a little and look at the next map, you'll see the ride took us just yards from the Rio Grande, the river that defines the US-Mexico border in Texas.  Since it's so close to the border, as we rode we saw a lot of border-related activity and sights:  countless Customs & Border Patrol vehicles, border wall construction sites and activity, poverty, and irrigated farmland.  

In this part of Texas, the border wall is being combined with levee reinforcement.  The levees are designed to prevent flooding when the Rio Grande leaves its banks, and the wall is being built so that it butts up against the levees and reinforces them.  As you can see in the photo, they've added earth to the levee, and are building a wall of concrete and steel, eventually to be covered in sheet metal, on the river side of the levee.  Whether you agree with the wall or not, we are spending LOTS of tax dollars on this wall.  It is truly massive, and goes for miles and miles.

As we rolled into Havana, we saw some ruins, maybe of an old ranch or farmhouse.  There are other modern homes and buildings nearby, but the ruins are still there.  I haven't researched it, but the history of this area dates back to the original settlement of Texas by the Spanish.  Maybe someday I'll find out exactly why this ruin still stands, and the details of its interesting history.


After we turned north from Havana, we stopped for a few minutes so that Dutch could call his wife and explain that he would be home a little later than expected.  We picked a shady spot near some colorfully painted houses, as show in the photo.  This is fairly typical of the area -- modest homes next door to undeveloped areas covered by mesquite scrub.  Illegal aliens use the scrub to hide from Border Patrol, which we were reminded of when a Border Patrol agent pulled up next to us and said "stay here" and then gunned it to chase a vehicle that had pulled out of a side street.  In the 2nd photo below, that's the back of the agent's white Chevy Tahoe, following a black Chevy pick up. 

We waited for a few minutes, then decided that he wanted us to stay there simply to keep us out of harm's way.  We rode down to the next intersection, looked for danger, and then went on our way.  We figured that if the CBP wanted to catch us, it wouldn't take long!





But what about the ride itself?  Hard ride? Easy ride? Mileage?  Check out the first image in the post, and you'll see that it was a 58 mile ride, with an average speed of 18 mph.  That's a bit misleading, as it was a VERY tough ride.  If you look at the map, when we took the hard right that's at the NW corner of the route, from there back we were fighting a wind that averaged 21 mph, with gusts to 27 mph.  The gusts were very frequent.  We felt sandblasted, buffeted, and totally depleted as we finished the ride.  As I write this today, my quads are sore from the effort.  Another excellent ride in the RGV!

Crime Makes You Old, Leopold Jay Howard!

World-class cyclist Dave Zabriskie's house was burglarized during the Tour of California, and the burglars took lots of irreplaceable cycling equipment and memorabilia.  The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting that the prime suspect is 39-year-old Leopold Jay Howard.  Here's a mug shot of Mr. Howard:

And here's a "mug shot" of 38-year-old me, taken last weekend.  I was holding my little one, telling my wife how to take a picture (because I know it ALL), when she snapped this wonderful image.  I picked this one because it's not flattering at all.

Maybe I'm biased in favor of myself, but ol' Leopold is one old-looking dude for 39.  Maybe it's the life of crime.  Maybe it's just that it was a MUG SHOT, which aren't exactly known for capturing the intangible essence of the person being photographed.  I'm not sure.

What do you think?  Do I look older than this dude?  I'm not being narcissistic; I'm just curious!

Some Sick Intervals

The whole family hasn't been feeling well.  Vic was first; she was sick the whole weekend with a cold that moved from head to throat to chest.  Then came Lola.  Hers turned into an ear infection that required antibiotics.  Finally, I took Betsy to the doctor today.  Hers manifested as strep throat.  Me?  I've just had lots of junk in my lungs, a mild fever, and "post nasal drip" that is giving me a scratch throat.  So when Speedo asked if I wanted to ride today, I had to say no.

Of course, that was a lie.  I really did want to ride, I just didn't feel like I could.  Early this afternoon, the weather was beautiful, and I was feeling better.  Feeling guilty over my betrayal of a fellow rider, I decided to go for a quick ride.  I didn't want to go far, but I wanted some intensity.  I headed over to a little 2.25 mile loop that once comprised part of my morning run.  I thought I would try "hard loop easy loop" intervals.  As usual, it was a windy day in the Rio Grande Valley, as shown by the palm trees in the below photo.  The second image shows the beautiful concrete that comprised about 1/2 of my loop.  It's part of the reason I chose it!

I'm not good at pushing myself.  That's why spin class was so good for me -- I had a leader to push me.  But now that I'm not traveling to Austin and I canceled my gym membership, I need to get better at true training rides like this one.  Thus, I made sure I hit the lap button as I made my loops, and I really tried to push myself.  The overall results are shown in the image below, and my interval loop is the large rectangle at the southern end of the map.

Since this was an interval training ride, I have to give a little more data and analysis.  Here's the breakdown:

Lap 1 was the ride from home to the start point.  Lap 2 is the first hard interval, followed by an easy interval on Lap 3, and so on.  By Lap 6, I was hitting my stride, and finished in 6'11", with an average speed of 21.9 mph.  I tried to push on Lap 8, only to ride my 2nd worst interval.  I attribute that one to tiredness and being sick.

On the other hand, Lap 8 could have been due to me letting my leg hair getting entirely out of control for the last week and a half.  But I already have a Spring cycling tan line!  Take that, rest of the country!

 

One Gear Left

I got up Sunday morning, and it was about 40F.  That's unusually cold for the Rio Grande Valley, so I had to break out all of my cold weather gear.  I strapped it all on, and was on the bike by 6:15a, heading to meet the other Team McAllen folks at the Burger King start point.

10 miles later, eyes watering and fingers numb, I rolled up to Burger King.  There weren't too many riders today, so we headed out in just one group.  The wind was strong and from the north, blowing in the 18MPH range.  We headed north into the wind, so that when we turned around we'd have good sailing back to the start point.  When we go north, we usually head towards Hargill or McCook, and today it was Hargill.

As we headed east from Hwy 281, we discussed how the next right turn would be more than 90 degrees, and put us into a crosswind.  We also knew that shortly thereafter, we would be on Valverde Road, have a straight tailwind, and it would be on a smooth, straight road.  We acknowledged the hammerfest that would ensue.

The group turned onto Valverde Road, and everyone was together and organized.  4 or 5 of us made a jump, and started moving away from the group.  Speeds exceeded 30 mph, and we took turns pulling and pushing the speed higher and higher.  The plot below shows the speed for my entire ride.  It's not the best formatted graphic, but the speed spike between miles 32 and 35 is the Valverde sprint.

But what was special in it's own sick way was how I won a race that nobody knew they were in!  Like I mentioned, there were 4 or 5 of us in the group:  Me, Orangeman, TT, Ag, Frenchy, and maybe one other (aliases, of course).  As the group reached cruising speed of about 33mph, I was behind Frenchy.  He was on TT's wheel, and tightly.  TT rides a VERY nice Orbea time trial bike, and he had given a strong pull for the group.  We weren't in a pure paceline, so nobody had really pulled more than their share.  As I rode behind Frenchy, I realized that I was out of gears.  All I could do was add power and cadence.  Instead of cranking harder, I pulled back a gear, and poured on more cadence, hoping to save my last gear for just a bit longer.

As Frenchy finished his 32-33mph pull, he seemed a little depleted.  I was glad I had a gear left.  As my rear wheel pulled even with his front hub, I dropped into my last gear, poured on the power, and surged to over 37 mph.  Orangeman was on my wheel, and let out a genuine converted Texan hoot.  We started to fragment the line, just in time to see our next right turn approaching rapidly.  I had won the race that nobody knew they were in!

As you can see in the graph, we continued to ride hard, and our speed surged when we turned south.  Overall stats were pretty good, considering the strong wind:

Distance:  61.0 miles

Avg Speed:  18.0 mph

Max Speed:  37.3 mph

Elevation Gain:  +1706 ft / -1478 ft (GPS / Barometric, and yes it's flat here)