Monday, April 12, 2010

The Lenore Ride of 2010






Here in the Lewiston Valley there are a group of 5 of us who enjoy doing some back roads rides away from all the traffic. However up until a few weeks ago we 5 have never all assembled in one place to ride. We finally did and today was part 2.

I really enjoy these get togethers as we all share this common bond and all have similar levels of ability. Today, two of my part time co-workers, Bryan and Aly joined us. Bryan is head of computer security for Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories and Aly works most of the time at the Palouse Clearwater Environmental Institute. They both have fun coming to the store and working but we consider them to be very very valuable assets that help us get through our busy times of year. So I was very pleased to have them riding with us today.

I've done a few short rides with Bryan the last few years but had never done a long one today so I was unsure how he would do. To top if off he was using a cross bike as opposed to a mountain bike like the rest of us. His bike did not have the low gears that the rest us had (Not that I never need to use low gears given my powerful tree trunk legs). He did suffer a bit on the major climbs but otherwise did well throughout most of the ride, he got tired of seeing all the uphills we could see and would let out a grown each time we saw one.

I've never ridden with Aly before but know her to be a very accomplished cyclist. She has ridden from Idaho to Montana, just came back from a bike tour in New Zealand and is also an accomplished mountain bike racer. She seemed to do just fine on the ride too. She mentioned that she was not in good enough shape to do the ride but I never saw any evidence of this. She rode as well and suffered as well as any of the rest of us I thought. Those who know Aly know her to be a very positive person and we all enjoyed having her on the ride with us as well as being impressed with her riding abilities.

We started our ride, riding next to the Clearwater river to get a warm up over several miles before we began the major climb up to the Camas Prairie of Idaho. This was about a 2000 foot climb over just a few miles. Very, very steep. Eric and I were riding up the hill which had many turns. My GPS was often reading grade percents in the low to mid teens and occasionly into the 16-17 % range. When going around a corner we'd often lean our bikes just to see if the road was going to get any less steep. One time we were looking hopefully for a break when we came around a corner to our disbelief we could see the road was actually getting steeper! We both spontaneously and independently of each other let out a laugh when we saw this. When we hit that section of road my GPS amazingly read a 20% grade that means stupidly steep. I was glad to be able to keep up with my friend going up this hill as he normally kills me on these kinds of climbs.

When we reached the top we dealt with a bunch of rolling hills (rollers). I tend to really enjoy these, I enjoy the hard effort up and then the break when you go down the other side before heading up the next one. Scott and Doug claim to hate these but today those rollers were starting to get to me, I could have done a few more but not many.

We all made it down our very steep descent safely and enjoyed a nice warm down back to the cars.

Thanks Bryan and Aly for joining us, we hope to see you again.