The Wheeler Dealers MS 150 Team: The Bike Gods II: Making Sport of Bob

Two weeks after our less than stellar April Fool's ride, and after taking a weekend off for Easter, Bob, Sarah, and I headed back to White Rock Lake, ready to resume training in earnest. Due to the heavy rains from a couple days before, we wisely decided to drive to the lake and start from there, rather than risk encountering more mudslides on the trail down to the lake. By 7:30 or so, the temperature was still in the 40s, but the Dealers were not to be deterred. We unloaded the bikes, pulled on a couple extra layers of clothing—Bob's lobster gloves are particularly sexy—and hit the road.

As the uncoordinated one in the group, I always try to take off first. That way, if I fall down I'm taking everyone else with me. I'd traveled about a hundred yards from the parking lot when I heard Sarah call out behind me.

"Hey! Where's Bob?"

I didn't know. I thought both he and Sarah were right behind me.

We turned around to find out what was keeping our fearless leader and arrived back at the parking lot to find him fiddling with his bike. One of the cranks swung loosely as he poked at it with the toe of his shoe.

"Geez, I just had it in to the shop to have the chain cleaned!" he said. "Why would they have taken the crank loose?" None of us could think of a rational explanation, except that the bike gods appeared to be having a bit more fun at Bob's expense.

So Bob loaded up the bike and drove back home to pick up his backup bike. Meanwhile, Sarah and I headed out to put a dent in our planned 63 miles. We cranked along at about 15 mph, which is right about the pace we plan to ride during the MS 150. As the morning wore on, it started to warm up, and we stopped after every second lap to peel off layers of clothing and to take care of other necessities.

At a little past the halfway point, Bob finally made it back with his hybrid bike and salvaged (if memory serves) about 28 miles. With Sarah as a riding companion, I rode a more sensible pace than I usually do and was having a really good day. Sarah had more miles on her legs for the week and wasn't feeling as spry, yet when I dropped the hammer about halfway through the last lap to "do the demo",* she jumped too. She claimed she just found a little extra energy left over, but I think she was sandbagging on me.

* This is an expression coined by performance recumbent rider Rich Pinto. When a recumbent takes a wedgie rider to school—drops him like a bad habit—that's "doing the demo". It's usually the result of an overheard remark about recumbents being slow or for old, fat guys with beards and pocket protectors (which, while to a certain extent true, doesn't really tell the whole story).