Saturday's Ride 7/6: What is this? Humidity?

After a long rainy evening, a few brave souls were up at the crack of dawn on a long holiday weekend to get a little miles in.  Our route today was the modified city loop (here).   Seven of us (Buddy, Olga, Brady, John, Dave B, Peggy, and myself) met up at O'Neill's and headed off at 6 am for the ride along the south end of the city to our second rally point at 6:45 at Tramway and Central where we met up with a few more riders (Matt, Greg, Calvin, Tammy, and Rob).  Unfortunately, we lost Rob in the Smith's parking lot to a staple to the tire, but he got in good 40 miles later after a tire repair.

Doesn't look that early does it?

From here everyone headed north on Tramway in the strangely humid Albuquerque air. (Humid?  Albuquerque?  At 6 am it was a damp 58% relative humidity!)  We spread out a bit with a contingent racing ahead, a few in the middle, and then another group behind them.  The official rally point was Tramway and the road up to the Tram, but most everyone rode straight up the very steep one mile hill to the base of the Tram for a little hill work before heading back down.

At the base of the Tram.

At this point, Buddy headed back along Tramway - even though all the hard work was over! - and the remaining 10 of us headed down the long 6 mile downhill segment to the bottom of the valley.  From there we headed south on 4th street til it intersected Alameda.  We lost Matt at this point, but considering he is probably the strongest cyclist on the team, we did not fear for his safe return home.  We then headed east to pick up the diversion channel trail to head back to Nob Hill.  Calvin, Greg, and Tammy peeled off about half way to head back to the Heights and the remaining 6 of us headed back to Nob Hill finished up at a quick 3 hours.  Back to ride start at 9 am.  Turns out Serafin's was not open yet, so no breakfast today - next week for sure.

In the final 2 miles almost back to Nob Hill.