saturday hub ride

so my man dan b is always writing in his blog about how great the HUB group rides are. there seems to be lots of interesting characters that show up, and there are always good stories to tell.

i'm always up by 7am anyway. the baby is up, deanna needs to get up for work, whatever. but this morning, i had set the clock for 6:50 (yes, AM for those sleep-in-on-the-weekenders) and it felt like a small medicine ball was resting on my head when it went off.

i sprang out of bed, medicine ball and all, and wearily made my downstairs, ate granola bars and drank a dr. pepper, checked cyclingnews, and headed out.

i rolled up to the HUB, and there were 100 or so people there. nah, not a 100, but 20 guys, i think. first guy i came up to was none other than dan b. he was dressed in his fred kit...you know, cut off generic jersey and stuff...the same stuff i ride in every day instead of my race kit. seems he was using today as a warmup for soulard tomorrow, and didn't want to soil the super-deluxe HUB kit. next, my ol' pal bruce murphy was there. i've known bruce since 1986, back when he was my manager at tc in richmond heights. the first few months i worked with him, i hated him. he had a really dry sense of humor, and was always telling me what to do...you know, manager stuff. after a while, i really started to like the guy. he just has a great way of cutting right to the task at hand, not much b.s., very realistic...my kind of guy. anyway, in later years, he ended up moving right down the street from my mom's house. and now, he sports the HUB kit and rides very well these days.

let me start off by saying that i am not the reason why the HUB ride was faster than usual today. there was a good group of guys out there, and we just pedaled fast when it seemed like a good idea. ok, if you don't believe that, i'll blame it on dave b. and adam. and bruce. i felt like poo, as is usual these days. i kept thinking how much fun the ride would be if i could breathe. as it was, i just suffered like i was in a 230km race with the rest of the TDF peloton today, even though i was pretty lucky to get only 43 miles in on the day.

whatever. it was SO nice to ride with people. and, that's a good group of guys to ride with, so i'm done complaining, because noone listens and it doesn't do any good anyway, right??