GSW Tri-state
What a miserable day! Cold, wet, raining, savage winds.
You know that movie Caddie Shack? Remember the scene with the priest who was having the best game of his life? That was the sort of weather.
The first part is a southerly loop from the start at the state park at Hampton Beach, NH down to Newburyport, MA and back to the park. It was getting cold, so I stopped and put on knee warmers. Boo! It’s too early for that! But it was lucky I had them, as it was pretty darn cold. Winds going north were tailwinds and that was sort of nice. I averaged almost 18mph for the whole first half of the ride. Then we had to turn around just north of York, ME and head into the wind. Savage, savage wind. And it was whipping up the surf so there was plenty of salt water in the air. (I rinsed off the bike after the ride, but there was still rust on the chain the very next morning.)
In spite of all that, it was a nice ride. No punctures this year (last year this ride was my only puncture of the year, I think.)
As I say, it was very wet and there are still people who think it’s not stoopid to try to ride across steel grate bridges when it’s wet. There are three steel grate bridges on this ride, for a total of six crossings (out and back over each one). It wasn’t raining in Hampton Beach, so I don’t think there were any incidents there. I rode across without any trouble. The sheriff is very strict about bikes walking across the Route 1 bridge between Portsmouth, NH and Kittery, ME. So there were no incidents there. But the other one in New Castle, NH on 1B claimed quite a few. I saw someone down both coming and going and talked to someone else who saw a five-man pace line go down hard. Really, how stupid is it to try to cross a steel grate bridge in the rain? It’s not exactly easy to do when it’s dry.
But, as always, and amazingly, the ride was very well organized. It’s hard to figure how a smallish club can organize a ride catering to about 3,000 people over two days and have it run as smoothly as it does. Then again, after 33 years, they’ve probably got it down to a science. Well catered and well run.
There was only one wrong turn that almost everyone made. Some recent constuction had obliterated a turn signal, so everyone went straight through the like instead of making a left and continuing on ME 103. The straight through was a nice, pretty road, but after a mile or so it dead ended in a salt marsh.
In spite of the weather, or maybe because of it, it was my fastest 100 of the year, almost a full mph faster than the previous. Still way slower than last year, though. I’m really glad I swapped out the chain.
It would have been miserable trying to deal with that in the middle of a gale. As it was, there was so much water than it washed all the lube off the chain and it started to squeak. Another 10 miles was the rest stop and, luckily, the mechanic was still there. (Thanks Nault’s!) I asked if he had any lube I could use. The only thing he had left was 3-in-1 oil. Well, beggars can’t be choosers and it got me through the rest of the day, so it’s all good. Since I had to clean all the salt and sand off the bike the next day anyway, it didn’t really matter.
Stopped at Brown’s on the way home for a quart of steamers. Yumm!
September 24th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
[...] had to park in the overflow lot! It was more crowded than I’ve ever seen it. Of course, last year it was pouring rain. This year it was humid, but cool; overcast until 1:30 when the sun came out [...]