Saturday's Ride: It always starts easy...

[Here is a writeup from ride captain John, who along with Laura, led an excellent first preseason training ride of the season!  A big thanks to both of them for organizing this while I was out of town.]

As usual, we started out in the dim light of the morning, but in a break from our usual routine, we met up at the park at the east end of Arroyo del Oso municipal golf course, which is on the north side of Osuna between Wyoming and San Pedro. Starting out, we had ride captains John and Laura, Olga, Gary C. and Dawn, a new rider.  The route of the ride is here.

The few, the proud, the ride group

The route started out heading west on the Osuna bike trail towards the North Diversion Channel Trail, using the pedestrian bridge over I-25 to help us get there. It was an uneventful start for us, but Calvin had already started the day with a flat, yet managed to meet up with us on the diversion channel trail across from Journal Center. Now six-strong, we took the path parallel to Paseo del Norte over to the Bosque trail and turned south. 

We had the usual assortment of folks along the northern part of the trail to dodge until we started getting close to the bio park. There was some kind of running event happening there, since there were large clusters of runners (mostly heading north) spread out over a couple of miles. Our usual regrouping point at Tingley "Beach" was not as pleasant as usual. There was a group of workers preparing some digging for what looked to be eventual concrete pouring. Whatever they were doing, it involved loud equipment, but at least the restrooms were still open. 

From there, we had a short ride to Bridge Blvd, next to the NHCC, then a short, fairly unpleasant ride back over the train tracks to hook up to a north-bound leg on Broadway into the edges of the downtown area. Once we got to MLK Jr, the real fun began, as we put our early-season legs to the test of a steady climb up to University. After we regrouped at University, we zig-zagged through the fringes of UNM to connect to the North Diversion Channel Trail again. From there, we kept a pretty leisurely pace all the way to the big tree just south of the Osuna underpass. 

We hung out there in the shade plotting our assault on breakfast, choosing Weck's on Louisiana as our target. Unfortunately, Calvin was not done with flats for the day. During the stop, he accidentally dislodged a goat-head in his tire, and air started bleeding out. He decided to make a dash for Weck's to see if he could make it there before his air ran out. Less than a mile up the trail heading back to Osuna, it was clear this was not going to work. Laura stopped with him to provide moral support (but not actual support, as you can see in the picture) while Calvin practiced his tube-changing skills. 

The evil gods of the Goatheads claim their first victim of the year.

Gary and Olga had other places to be, but the rest of the group eventually made it to Weck's after the ~30 mile ride. Weck's is no Serafin's, but it was still a satisfying breakfast, and John's son, Matt, was able to join us and multi-task between breakfast and Pokémon on his Nintendo. All in all, it was a pleasant, but not demanding ride for the riders who have already been on their bikes this season, but more of a stretch for the riders who made this their riding debut for the year.