7 am on the 4th, yep that's right.
I've hooked into a gals group ride and instead of Monday evening, it's the
Dawn's Early Light ride.
"oh say can you see, by the don-ser-lee- lie....."
This group is put together by a local "fun" racer gal. She's heavily into
rounding up beginners and getting them out on the trail, so the theme of her
rides are really easy and fun. She's let me know I'm welcome if I don't
mind the
pace and would I help sweep/lead?
But of course. And for an early start, it looks like we have a pretty good
group. I know that we'll be skipping most of the technical parts. Nice
thing is, there is plenty of fun fast non-technical single track that we can
actually keep a decent pace on.
It turns out that one of the gals, has lost #120 through weight watchers and
exercise, and her sister, the organizer, lost #60 a few years ago.
Impressive. Very impressive.
This is fun in a mellow way. Liz takes us on some trails that I didn't know
were there, or that I have only ridden the other direction. Change is good.
Being fresh from camp, I'm anxious to help out the beginners with basics
like " the saddle is not butt rest" but I'm never sure how much is welcome,
and how much is too much. But the door is opened when one of the gals talks
about how much she hates rocks in the trail, and how she can't just trust
her bike, so that is a good time to bring up how basic body position can
help you.
It's cute, later on her sis says " she'll listen to you, I've been trying to
get her to do that for years, but you actually got next to her and showed
her!!!"
It's really a trip. For years I was the slow one, the one in the back, the
one walking everything remotely scary, and now here I am, passing it on.
It's tricky - I have to really think hard to get back to when certain trail
sections were scary to me.
The earliness of the ride is nice, we're back at the trailhead before 10,
lots left to the day.
One of the gals, probably the third non-beginner rider asks if she can ride
with me some other time.
These rides are going to be a lot of fun, just bringing the girls along, but
I'm going to have to find some new gals to hammer with on the other days.
penny