The Alberta COVID restrictions have lifted enough for our club to have outdoor bike rides of groups of 10 or fewer as of June 1st. June 1st was a Tuesday, so we had our “soft launch” on the Tuesday morning ride and our first evening ride last night. The idea of having the first ride be Tuesday morning is that it usually only attracts a dozen or so riders. Not so with COVID FOMO: we had 28 riders. I took some time off of work to ride down to the shop to help organize, but only stayed with a group until Tuscany when I peeled off and returned home.
The weather has continued to improve, to the point where Calgary hit 29 degrees yesterday and is forecast to hit 31 today. That made for a weird situation of my first club ride being scorching hot. Normally we would have fought off mixed weather for a month before now. Again, I was the greeter and organizer, and we had 50 riders signed up. When three groups had already formed and left, there was the “C” group and a mixed “B” group remaining. Each had only one leader, and I elected to ride with “C”, as Colette was leading it. She’s been in the club for a long time, but it’s her first year as a ride leader. The “B” group was being led by Daniel, who’s a couple-year veteran. That plan only lasted about 200 metres. Daniel’s group was ahead of Colette’s leaving the shop and we’d barely pulled out onto Bowness Road when there was a sound like a gunshot. Daniel’s rear tire had blown, coming off the bead. It was not easily fixable, so he had a short walk back to the shop and I took over the “B” group to lead it.
We had a great ride, and didn’t want to head back. The evening got nicer and nicer as the temperature dropped.
The only problem was that 66km later as I pulled into the driveway, I was out of water and in need of more. Drank a large bottle with electrolytes, so I’m doing fine.
Tonight is the first ladies’ ride and gravel ride. Hope they remember to take enough water.
