Three O'Clock Ride

I've meant to do this ride again, it's the ride I wandered into right after I ate that grate in the River Market.



You see the most interesting bikes in this group. Improbably shaped compact commuter bikes right next to downhill mountain bikes that are little more than handlebars and a saddle held together by a suspension.



And fixies, of course, though Randall's has the biggest chain ring I've ever seen. I'm not sure I could ride his bike except for downhill and with a tailwind.



And to file one under learn-something-new-everyday, I accidentally learned a tiny bit of Italian. Corinna noticed Ken's bike and told me, 'Look, there's a red Barchetta.'



But no, a barchetta is a two-seat car with no roof, a fine thing to be sure, and while Ken's bike certainly has no roof, it seats just one. A bacchetta is a stick, one used to punish. A switch, basically.



I get that the bike is stick-like in construction, but what a perverse bit of branding.



The compact bikes remind me of Roj's BMX when he put the tall seat post on it so he could clip in with SPD pedals.





At 18th & Vine, there was a drummer set up in front of the Parker Memorial, apparently shooting a video.





Corinna found a dog's jawbone by Cliff Drive. I'm not sure why, but the most logical thing to me seemed to be to mount the electronics for a Blue Tooth into it and use it for hands-free cell calls. Why not?



There are group rides where everyone rides as if it were a race; there are group rides that are mainly social, but where the riding is fairly continuous except for pauses to group up and with for stragglers.



Then there's a group that stops because it's a beautiful day to shinny up a cliff, or to watch a rider doing so. Corinna's done some rock climbing, and she said the face he went up was pretty low in technical difficulty, but with damp moss and SPD cleats, I think he gained four or five points, easy.



I had ridden to YJ's from my Mom's house. I had gotten there with enough time, and I was hankering for a longer ride than what I've typically been getting in lately. Thirteen to seventeen miles has been the norm, and I guess there have been a few commuting days where I get a pair of those in.



The trick was figuring out when to break off from the pack, because while the Three O'Clock ride has a more or less fixed starting point, as far as I can tell, it goes until so many people of peeled off that it no longer constitutes a 'group.' Then everyone who's left finds a place to eat dinner.



I should have peeled off when it was decided that we'd go to Riverfront Park. But I thought I could get the trail there and follow the river to downtown.



I didn't have to backtrack much, I took Front Street. But the winds. ¡Hace viento!



I knew I had a tailwind coming out, but it took forever going back.



For as long as I was gone, I'd have expected to get more than 33 miles in. For as whipped as I felt after, too.



But I got some neat shots of the ASB bridge.





And downtown.





Including the almost finished performing arts center. Kind of getting curious to hear what it's like inside.