After last week's success with the Round Mountain 200, I was looking forward to riding again this coming weekend. As it turns out, the promise of rain caused Jeff to ask if there was any chance to ride on Friday instead of Saturday. I was able to get caught up at work and ask for a mental health day on Friday. It's been a tough week at work with a number of things going on and I as glad to be able to take a day to ride instead of work.
Earlier in the week, I stopped by The Peddler bike shop to pick up my rebuilt wheel. My original Kyserium wheel had been gathering dust in the garage. Before I left for Florida, I stopped at Peddler and asked them to order a new White Industries hub (that matched the one on my rear wheel). It took a long time to arrive, but they finally got the part and rebuilt the wheel this week. Since we planned to ride Newer Braunfels in total daylight, I opted to use the new wheel instead of my typical one with the Schmidt hub. When I first installed the wheel, I spun it and the disc brake was rubbing against the brake pad. I spent some time working with mount and slightly pushing on the disc. I got it working better, but it was still rubbing the brake so I will have to get this fixed as I expect the new hub to work way better than the old one.
I got up early and fixed coffee while I got dressed and got the bottles filled. I was happy to have a brand new Podium Ice bottle that replaced a very old one that was starting to show some signs of discoloration inside the bottle. I tucked my battery-based headlamp into my handlebar bag just in case. I rolled out of the driveway before I remembered I needed to use my asthma medicine. I turned around and went back into the house to do that. My wife was looking at my like was crazy as I had been in and out of the house several times.
I rolled out and heady to the Speedy Stop.. As it was Friday, there was. bit more traffic so I was forced to wait at a few intersections for cross traffic. I arrived to the control store about 10 minutes before the start time of 7am. I was pleasantly surprised to find Ian was joining us for the Friday ride. I ran into the store and bought a Snickers and Hostess apple pie. I ate the Snickers as we rolled out. The weather was perfect and we made good time to Lockhart. Jeff had said we might arrive too late for.breakfast tacos, but he was lucky to find 2 tacos. I opted for chocolate milk and a banana. I bought a Payday bar which I tucked into my back pocket.
We left Lockhart and headed south and west towards Fentress and New Braunfels. The weather was still cooperating and we made up more time. We skipped services at Fentress and continued towards the control in New Braunfels. Below, rolling away from Fentress.
I ate my Payday bar about half way to NB to keep myself from bonking. When we arrived to NB, we found the usual traffic nightmare on 306 where it crossed I-35. The construction is mostly finished, but the traffic is just as bad. We arrived to the QT where we had been talking about pizza. I mentioned on the way into town that I could not eat a whole pizza. When we arrived, I bought a slice along with a Dr. Pepper and a cup of ice. As we sat outside, I found out that Jeff was denied pizza because the QT Kitchen was out of pizza cheese. So Ian and I both at slices of pizza with meat (Jeff's a vegetarian) while Jeff ate peanut butter crackers. Below, Jeff and Ian near Fentress,.
The weather was heating up, but the wind was about be our friend. We left New Braunfels and rolled north and east towards San Marcos and Kyle. The start of this stretch features some heavy chipseal and the traffic was worse that normal because it was Friday. We continued to ride briskly and made it San Marcos in good time. I was pleased to see some people out in the park near the university. We kept rolling and arrived to Kyle where we parked in the shade and bought drinks and ice cream. I ate a Snickers ice cream bar and drank a bottle of water. I refilled the bottle I fill with orange juice. When I opened a packet of salt to put in the bottle, it turned out there was salt and pepper in that packet. It was dumped into the bottle before I noticed. Oh well.
Below, a photo of yours truly and Ian at the control in New Braunfels.
The traffic near the store in Kyle was pretty heavy and it took us 5 minutes to get across the road and regrouped. We continued to roll north with our average speed hanging around 12.7. We new that as we got into Austin, our average would suffer as we made our way through town. As usual, we opted to avoid riding on the Pfluger hike/bike bridge to avoid the crowds of people. We didn't need to visit any stores and we finished the ride in 10 hours 37 minutes.
On Thursday, the CDC announced new guidelines about masks and social distancing for fully vaccinated people. In every store we visited, this memo was received loud and clear. I saw many fewer people wearing masks including most every cashier. Mostly it was a few customers wearing masks (including us). Mask wearing was a little more prevalent in Austin, but even in the city I saw more people without masks. Jeff had originally predicted 11 and 1/2 hours for our time to finish. It was nice to finish well ahead of that. Later in the night, I checked and my fastest time on this route was 10 hours 10 minutes. The fastest ever time goes to super speedy Russ who finished it once in 9 hours 8 minutes.
At home, I craved a hamburger for dinner and went to What-a-burger to get a burger and fries. When I got home, I found there was no ketchup (catsup?) in the bag. We don't have any at home so I opted to use BBQ sauce instead. I dank the huge 32 oz Dr. Pepper and drank plenty of water. I still suffered cramping as I lay down to sleep. I had to limp around with a huge pain in my inner thigh which hurt worse than the usual foot cramps. I drank a hot shot and some water to recover.
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