The weather has changed from summery to early-Fall here. You never know what the weather will do in Calgary. We might have a nice, long Fall or it might snow. You gotta take advantage of the conditions while they last.
This weekend was the last of the scheduled “Event Rides” of the Bow Cyclist Club 2023 season. We had:
- The Road to Nepal Ride on the 11th of June (cancelled due to smoke)
- The Water Valley Ride on the 16th of July
- The Banff to Lake Louise Ride on the 30th of July
- The Canmore Express on August 20th (Ian and I missed it while in Victoria)
Today was the Sheep River Ride, starting in Diamond Valley and heading west until we ran out of road in the mountains.
It was an early start: Ian and I left before 7:30 am to get to the ride start. But since the traffic was light and we had some extra time, I took a detour to show Ian the part of some of our gravel rides where you have to ride across a ford. The water was very low, barely getting the wheels of the Tiguan wet.
The group parked at the Hard Knox Brewery in Diamond Valley (with their permission: most of the riders had lunch at their BBQ food truck after the ride) and got organized. I volunteered to help lead the faster group, along with Paul, Adam and Kurt. I talked Ian into joining the group, pointing out that he could keep up with us, even if some of the other riders in the group were scary-fast.
Well, that didn’t work out: Adam was the first to get dropped, and Ian, Paul, Paul P. and Mike were all spit out the back when the road went up. So we made our own group.
That wasn’t all the drama: I got a flat about 18 km in. I fixed it pretty quickly, but by that time, our little group had been caught by the B group, so we mixed it up with them for the rest of the way.
Well, I didn’t. You see, when I repaired the flat, I accidentally bent the little bit of extra cable on my derailleur towards the spokes. When I geared down and started to put on power at the big hill at the 41 km mark, I started to hear “pinging spoke” sounds. I thought that I’d broken a spoke, but when I stopped to check I couldn’t see the problem. I tried riding again, and stopped again when the sound repeated. I thought I was going to have to limp back to the start, and told the last of the B ride leaders who went by me to let Ian know I’d turned back.
Then I realized what I’d done with the cable, bent it back and was on my way again, working hard to try to catch up, which I did at the turnaround.
We rode back into a breeze that turned into a headwind. We stopped along the way to get a group photo of the various A’s and B’s who ended up riding together. Paul P. got some cool drone photos/video that I’ll post if I can.
Updated: Paul has posted videos on his Strava Ride. Check them out! Very cool. 😎
On the last leg back, I found myself in a group behind the one that Ian was in. But as we climbed the last hill into the Turner Valley townsite, I saw Ian in the distance. He’d fallen off the back of his group, and we slowly reeled him in over about 5 km. So we ended up finishing the ride together this year!
We headed over the Dairy Queen for lunch (including a couple of very large fountain pops) before heading home. Ian drove home.
Did I say it was a big cycling weekend? Yesterday, I led out the Saturday Endurance ride on a 81 km loop to Cochrane. 168 km for the weekend.
Nice pictures. Sorry you had some troubles with your bike