GSW Seacoast Half Century

Rode a half century in the GSW Seacoast Century. 53.7 miles

For the past few years, I have tried to ride the Seacoast Century, mainly because I really like the ride T-shirt, and the ride is not half bad, either. However, today is also the day when we had Red Sox tickets and my daughter had to be at the football game to play in the band. Given the conflicts, I opted for the half century. The forecast for the day was for partially sunny and 70s. But, as I cranked toward the Newington rest stop, it was 55 and drizzly. The grate on the bridge heading to and from Salisbury over the Merrimack River at the Hampton rest stop was slippery and treacherous. I was glad to be heading back, but the route was unfamiliar and the markings on the road were impossible to discern. There were no flaggers anywhere. There was talk the flaggers they hired for critical turns had worked too much yesterday, so they took the day off. I began following the wrong markings and got lost for a mile after missing a turn. The one good thing about heading back early was I was able to follow the trail of stragglers heading north. I felt really bad for riders starting a century at 10 a.m. I tried to ride around 20 mph on the way back, which is about my limit, because if I'm not going to do 100, I'm going to hurt myself doing 50. Actually, I was glad that I had cut the day short. Lake Tahoe and its insane climbs are next week.
My ride with MS Global 2012 is only one week away. If you want to support my ride, and cutting edge research into a cure for Multiple Sclerosis, please check out my FirstGiving page.

A good reason to ride

A Reason to Ride bikeathon fundraiser for cancer research at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital on Sunday, Sept. 9

I met Ethan Fleming at the start of the A Reason to Ride bikeathon at the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers. He was a big guy wearing a Team Discovery kit from the 2006 tour. The reason that he struck me was he nearly had my name! He became rider Number 3 and I became Rider Number 103 at sign in.
I caught up with him a few miles out. He was riding a road/commuter bike with the rack still attached, and he commented that the bike rides a lot faster without the trailer hitched on the back. He told me about the time at work a co-worker came into the bathroom while talking on a cellphone, and Fleming was changing in a stall after riding to work. Fleming flushed, then got reamed out by the guy for, what? doing what comes naturally?
Ethan is a rebel commuter. He got horrible stares at work when his company put a bike rack in the closest spot to the front door. And, he works at a biotech firm, of all places. He's also high up in efforts to create bike lanes in Boston, and can even report cars parked in those lanes to be ticketed and towed.
I didn't want to do the ride alone and I guess he did not as well, so we tagged along. Then, for no reason, he sped up and passed a guy with a camera with a car that had a bike rack on the back. Turns out, this was his dad, who was taking pictures of him along the way, riding support. I kept seeing that car, and it reminded me how we always see the van during the MS Global ride, riding in support. I thought that was a nice thing for a dad to do.
We rode, and I tried to keep the pace at an MS Global friendly 17 mph. I noticed that when my doppleganger got out front, he tended to slow, so I got ahead of him and pulled.
I chatted about which towns we were passing through, Essex, Ipswich, Hamilton, Wenham, I knew them all and I knew the route. When I announced we were in Danvers, both he and I were relieved. It's always good to finish. I wanted him to ride ahead of me to the finish. At the end, someone told us that while we were not in the lead group, we had finished well ahead of anyone else. I had done my job, and Tom DesFosses of Peabody had done his, raised a lot of money for cancer research and again thanking his doctor, Eric Wong, for saving his life. I hope to be back next year. Maybe I will run into Ethan, there.