Yesterday was absolutely a gorgeous day for a bike ride - one of the best of the year I expect.   Vickie chose one of the toughest routes on the books.  The texaspermanents site has it at 7500 fet of climbing but I don't think it's that much.  It certainly doesn't seem to be as tough as Spanish Fort, but it kicked my butt early this summer and left me gasping on the side of the road 3-4 times the last 30 miles, and a long stop at the last control.  
 
 I met Mark Metcalfe and Vickie Tyler for a 7am start in Cleburne.  It was foggy and wet, and the sun was nowhere to be seen, but everything dried out by the time we reached the park road where the Texas Time trials was run.  We held a warmup pace while the sun came out and I stopped at the top of Goatneck hill to take a nature break and heard a hissing from my tire.  Seemed to be small so I hurried to catch up to M & V.  Kept checking it all the way to the control in Glen Rose.  Replaced the tube which wouldn't hold air in the tire unless the valve was shut tight.  By the timer I could do that, my last co2 cartridge was gone, after all the recent flats I'd had.  It wasn't as full of air as I'd have liked, but it ended up being fine.
 
On the section of nasty rollers when you make the turn to bluffdale, Mark wanted to do some Bent Vs DF tests so we did some coastdown testing and then on the steepest hill (VERY close to that long sucker we climbed on the River Roll Bud) Mark takes off for a chase.   I caught him not too long before the control and we roll up and wait for Vickie.
 
On the way back I shift prepping for the big hills again and my chain drops off to th inside and snaps in two.  I've had my share of bad luck lately and hopefully this is the last of it,  Just as we get the chain back together with a quicklink, a guy on a motorcycle rolls up and asks us to keep an eye out for HIS shifter!  
 
Apparently Vickie had done a lot of miles this past week and didn't have a lot of juice, so Mark and I rolled along pretty leisurely and had lots of great conversations, and he has some interesting ideas on nutrition which I'll have to try out.   We all stopped at the new bike shop in Glen Rose and met the two owners.  Vickie bought a quick link after seeing mine go, and the owner checked our chains and offered to put the bikes on the stand for a free once-over.  Theer are apparently some club rides out of there now that we'll have to check out.  They had an ez-3 usx there for repair, and I gave him our website info - he says he's quite interested in bents and really enjoyed looking over the carbent.
 
It was a solid ride and Mark and Vickie are great company.  Even with my technical issues we had a great ride and still finished in 10 hours even will all the unplanned stops and relaxing pace.  The wind never got to speed as forecast.   I was muscle sore and jelly legged after the last few big climbs, but it went away quickly and I was only a little footsore at the end.  The cherry cola kolache at the end control was tasty as well.