Wes instigated yesterday’s Silar City Express ride on the NC rando list last week.  The Express is a 200K  out and back permanent with lots of hills in the middle 100K.  The course is also the middle part of the Morrisville 400K; and when we finished yesterday, we were glad we hadn’t ridden 100K to the start and we were glad we didn’t have another 100K to finish.  It was hot -- 92° -- and kind of humid -- 32% when we finished.  (Hotter, I’m sure, on the road.)  And, of course, we hadn’t saved anything for going any further -- at least I didn’t since I was the slowmo who actually stuck pretty well till near the end.

    Wes and Joe Ray were there with their Lightspeeds.  (I think they were both Lightspeeds.)  Lightspeeds are popular bikes with the randonneur crowd and I have to say they seem to go pretty well.  Billy, whom I’d not met before and whose shaved and well muscled legs caught my attention in the parking lot before we began, was there with a pretty blue, aluminum Cannondale.  I brought the Yellow Roadie and I was traveling light with two water bottles on the  frame and a little cash, two sports bars, some dates, and an instant breakfast in my jersey pockets.  I warned everyone that sometime before we finished, I’d probably drop off the back and that they shouldn’t worry because I know the roads well and I’d be fine by myself.

    I was the only one doing the ride for credit so they waited while I pedaled over to the gas station and got my card stamped.  I returned and we left a couple of minutes before 7:00.  

    Silar City looks like kind of a junky town when you blow through on Highway 64, but we crossed 64 and rode through the old part of town, which is really pretty neat with old brick buildings and lots of good old North Carolina houses.

    Three miles out of town, we turned onto Coleridge Road and it’s all wonderful from there on with thirty quiet miles of rolling, shaded roads through farm land into Seagrove, which is pottery heaven.  I asked Wes if he’d ever visited any of the potteries and he said he had.  “Pretty nice stuff, huh?”  “Oh, yeah.”  

    A little way out, I found myself riding point, which is something I meant to avoid, when Wes rolled up next to me and said, “You’re going pretty fast.  You must have been riding a lot.”  My chest swelled a little.

    That’s a good point.  When I ride with good strong riders and listen to them talk, I always find that they ride a lot.  It was no exception with this group as they talked about training rides with Raleigh racers.  They told me of one friend who lost thirty-five pounds, got divorced, doesn’t have a job, and loves to ride his bike.  In a year, he went from not being able to keep up on social rides to riding with a Cat 2 racing license.  Evidently, he now enjoys dropping my buddies when he gets the chance.

    Joe Ray told me he’s moved his bike from a shed out back to a place in the living room.  He says his bike is his only hobby and that riding his bicycle is his favorite thing to do.  He makes time for those rides on a regular basis and had just come back from a few days in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Billy, who is tall and thin with, as I mentioned before, impressive calves, rides on a tiny little saddle that seems to be enough for him.  His drive train consists of a standard double up front with an 11-23 cassette in back -- too tall for me.  And Wes’s bike was actually pretty dirty with a well oiled chain.  Billy’s bike was very clean and Joe Ray, who just replaced a Dura Ace drive train that had 35,000 miles on it, with a Chorus set, was looking very sharp.

    Dogs are an issue in North Carolina.  We have lots and lots of roads and lots and lots of little farms and lots and lots of farm dogs.  Many of the farms have been in the same family for generations and little pieces of the farms get cut off for a son  or daughter to build a house on.  That makes for even more dogs.  Invisible fences are becoming more popular, but lots of dogs come out into the road after bicycles.  One little Boston Terrier -- Boston Terrorist -- seemed determined to get into one set of spokes or another.  I wonder, if a dog like that took out four cyclists, could the owner be prosecuted for possession of a weapon of mass destruction?

    We stopped in Seagrove just long enough to fill our water bottles and get my card stamped.  I chugged a bottle of V-8.  Then we were into sixty miles of serious up and down in the Uwharrie.  After a few descents, Joe and I talked about tires.  In the Blue Ridge, he’d done most of the same ride I did around Easter and he mentioned that he’d mounted a pair of 28s for the dirt road section and asked what I’d used.  I told him the same tires I was on today: Panaracer Paselas that cost me $12 or $13 on sale.  He said that he noticed on the descents that they roll very well and asked if they are heavy.  Yeah, they are heavy with wire beads and a good bit of tread, but they have very nice casings.  

    Joe Ray said he is too much of a weight weenie to run heavy tires.  At 135 pounds, he can reasonably be a weight weenie and we talked about that for a while.  I mentioned that I was on a club ride one cool, cloudy day when we ran into three women doing pretty much the same ride, but in the other direction, at a convenience store stop.  One of the women had a new Seven that was titanium with a carbon fork and carbon stays.  I asked her about the bike and she said that she had another Seven before this one, but she asked them about an even lighter bike and they built this one for her.  I pointed out that the third water bottle was kind of heavy and she admitted it was, but insisted she needed the water.  I was carrying one water bottle that day and I might have might have topped it off once during the ride.

    Joe laughed and said, “Yeah, sometimes weight weenies don’t get it.  If you’re going to be a weight weenie, shave your beard, cut your hair, and get serious about it.”

    Joe figures that after a certain weight, you’re going to spend $1 a gram to lighten your bike further.  He said the Campy Record group would have cost him $500 more than the Chorus group and that it is about 500 grams lighter.  We did agree that since I’m carrying thirty two pounds more than Joe Ray on my body (seven pounds of that weight I really and truly should lose) my slightly heavier bike is still a much smaller percentage of my bike and rider weight than his bike is of his.  I could go to some lighter and narrower tires and lose weight at a lot less than the $1/gram ratio.  Or I could loose that seven pounds and save myself, what?, $3,175.  I am paying attention here.  Weight is only an issue on climbs and in sprints, but this is hilly country so I guess it’s an issue, but my bike is plenty light and I’m not.

    At the turn around, I poured the Instant Breakfast into a bottle of chocolate milk, filled my empty water bottles, and had my card stamped.  Everyone else was busy and we rolled out five or six minutes after pulling in.  100K behind us and the same 100k now ahead of us as we back tracked to the start/finish.  I can’t exactly see the time on my card, but we were 15 or 20 minutes under four hours to this point.  I know the crew wasn’t trying to drop me, but I was pleased to still be with them.  

    As we turned off of Bandy Road and onto Flint Hill, I tried to get into a power bar wrapper.  I don’t know what the deal is with those sport bar makers and their wrappers.  Any child can open a candy bar, but the sports bars are not made for easy opening and I don’t get that since the makers should understand that some of them are going to be eaten by people who are actively engaged in something physical.  A couple of heads turned around and saw me riding no hands and lost in trying to get a hot, goopy, mess of a sports bar out of a package that only allowed me to tear little pieces of the wrapper seam apart.  When I finally got one end open, the bar was stuck fast to what was left of the shredded wrapper and I got some of it on my glasses as I tried with both my hands and all of my teeth to get some of it into my mouth.  I was definitely off the back now.

    I managed to catch up by the bottom of Flint Hill, but I couldn’t hang with the others on the accent.  Not only am I carrying those seven extra pounds, but the pounds are prima facie evidence that I don’t take my training as seriously as the rest of the crew.  

    A couple miles later, I caught them under the shade of a tree.  They were sipping water and I reminded them not to wait up for me.  All of them insisted that they’d just stopped and that they’d hoped I was further back so they could rest longer.  As we pulled out, Joe Ray rolled up next to me and said, “The real story is that just before Flint Hill, Wes told all of us to go like hell when we get to Flint Hill because we can’t let an old man on a home made bike get to the top first.”

    Joe’s a nice guy and we must be about the same age.  I think he made that story up and I think he’s the fastest on the hills, too.

    I pulled into the stop at Seagrove a couple of minutes behind the rest and this time we planned to sit inside and eat a little something.  I ordered regular french fries for here and got curly fries to go.  Another chocolate milk and a V-8 filled me up.  Joe Ray ate a hamburger, and Wes had french fries and a coke.  Billy ate more reasonably.

    We left Seagrove feeling better and found a tail wind that I did not welcome since it was hot by now and I was liking riding into the breeze.  We were all hot and I wasn’t able to eat during the last thirty miles.  I tried to eat a date, but it just mushed around in my mouth and absorbed what little moisture I had in there.  Finally, I took a swig of warm water, swished it around, and swallowed the goopy mess.  It didn’t help.

    By now, Billy and Wes were out of sight ahead of us and Joe Ray was easing off to let me catch up now and then.  I think he realized I’d be happier at my own pace and he slowly moved ahead.  Back in Silar City, I saw Joe make a right turn and I stopped to check the cue sheet since this part of the ride is different from the 300K and the 400K brevets.  Joe was out of sight by now, but as I approached Highway 64, he pulled up next to me.  He’d made a wrong turn.

    We finished about eight hours and fifteen minutes after the start, which, for me, was a good time on a hot and hilly 200K.  

    I’m not really interested in becoming one of the really fast guys since I did that as a swimmer when I was a kid and I know how much effort it takes to get to the top, but I do like to ride with the people who really like to ride so I am committed to losing that seven pounds by eating less and riding harder when I am out and about on my bike.

    The Yellow Roadie seems like the perfect bike for me on rides like this and I think the other guys appreciated it as well.  It was the fourth frame I built and I could do a nicer job of it if I built myself another one, but it just rides so nicely, I can’t justify redoing it.  I’m thinking that sometime I might recreate it but with a modern drive train so that it will be easier for today’s riders to relate to.  First, the seven pounds, though.