Weekend before last a small group of us “SpinCyclers” journeyed the four and a half hours south from Grants Pass, southern Oregon, down to Chico California for the annual Chico Wildflower bicycle ride. Our bike genre’s represented a cross section of most of the bike types found on the ride. Mike and Julie Claydon rode their upright tandem, Kathy Szewc, Frank Bean and Fred Borngasser rode their recumbents and I rode my upright. A recumbent is sort of like sitting in your comfortable chair at home, tilted back a bit and pedaling. Easier on the neck, back and wrists than an upright for a lot of folks. The upright is your good old traditional road bike type one sees all over town.

We did the “Flatflower” metric century, 63 miles, sans the hills, which the full century was replete with. The Chico Velo folks put on another (# 27) pretty well organized event and the meals were once again decent. As usual, there were a couple of humorous moments. Frank and I were cruising along at about sixteen mph behind three early fortyish gals who seemed to be enjoying themselves. But when the large lady with the massive tattoo on her leg, riding in front of our little line of five, moons! her friend behind her, I’m thinking, ‘hey, could we be following too close?’ A few miles down the road the gals pulled off for a rest stop and I thought of saying ‘keep cracking on’ to the one who’d been in the lead but thought better of it and kept my mouth shut. When I told Frank he said it was ‘the better part of valor’ that I did.

Kathy and Julie were in the back seat knitting socks!!! on the way down, if you can imagine that. If I can successfully sew a button back on I feel like Martha Stewart. Kathy’s the pro and she’s mentoring Julie on the finer points (sorry, couldn’t resist) of sock knitting. When I first overheard their conversation from the front seat they sounded like they were discussing rock bands because it was ‘pearl’ this and ‘pearl’ that. Enjoy the pictures we got, and if you’re looking for a way to stay/get in shape and not beat your weight bearing joints to death, (while having a ball doing it) and meet some wonderful new friends, try road cycling.

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