FLCC> 80 miles of Hills or Casey's Cookies Ride

Mon May 21 12:43:44 EDT 2007

Twe is clearly listed as a particpant as "twe" at the beginning of Don's
report.  And he is only slightly less stupid than Don, Mike, Casey,
LiLynn, and me since he didn't do Burns Rd. in reverse with us.  I.E.,
he doesn't get credit for the whole ride.

Jack

-----Original Message-----
From: flcc-bounces at icycle.org [mailto:flcc-bounces at icycle.org]On Behalf
Of Mark Rishniw
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 10:23 AM
To: flcc at icycle.org
Subject: Re: FLCC> 80 miles of Hills or Casey's Cookies Ride

Ernie,
Obviously, according to Jack's comment, you were smart enough not to
even start out - your IQ must be MENSA level.

At 09:24 AM 5/21/2007, Ernie Bayles wrote:

Great Report Don, wish I was there.  I guess I had just imagined that I
was on this ride with you guys.  My dream was so realistic that my legs
still hurt.  

twe

Donal Fitterer wrote: 

At 0830 today 16 souls set off to ride the Terrible Hills Century. We
had the Hawaii kid (Glenn, a little less tan because of all the time in
the bike shop), twe, Ano "CR1" Garcia, Abe "Better living through
chemicals" Struuck, Dr Dave "Painless" Heck, Mad Dog, Rhino, ByLynn
Braves, the Mighty Casey, Twinkie, the Prez, Cracker Jack, Mike the
"Artist" (he's a well known painter), Stevie Moto, Peter "I crush your
legs!" Blenkiron and yours truly. Bibian had too much fun the night
before and did not join us. 

Right from the beginning we knew that many of us, if not all would not
be completing the full century. My personal goal was to at least ride
all the hills through Bruce Hill Rd and return to East Hill Plaza. This
would include the following: 

Baker Hill Rd
Yellow Barn
Birish Settlement
Buffalo Rd
Brove School Rd to Bald Hill Rd
Besemer Hill Rd
Burns Rd to Bing Rd
Bostwick Rd
Blakesly Rd
Bruce Hill Rd
Burns Rd back to Rt 79 

The other requirement I forced upon myself was to ride with a 12-23
cassette and normal cranks. This decision was based upon a good friend's
opinion that he would start riding a 23 so he would gain strength while
hill climbing. He showed up on todays ride with  50 - 34 front rings and
a 12 - 34 rear cassette! 
We left the parking lot within 10 minutes of the posted start time and
headed out towards Rt 366 with everyone wearing arm warmers, leg warmers
and vests. Once up Baker Hill Rd and past the observatory I was down to
just leg warmers. Mad Dog was our first casualty as he could not get his
cleats out of the pedals and ended up doing a great dismount by holding
on to me and slowly sliding his butt to the ground. Turns out that Matt
had new Northwave custom made shoes and the cleats kept sliding on the
smooth carbon surface of the bottom of the shoe. We stuffed some dried
cow pattie material between the cleat and the shoe to act as a shim and
that solved the problem. 

We climbed Yellow Barn at a nice pace and then had an exciting descent
to our right turn on Ferguson. The excitement reached a very high
adrenalin level when  Bill didn't realize that we were turning. Luckily
, he was able to bounce off of  Matt and make the  turn.  Many of the
folks were disappointed that Beam Hill Rd was not on the cue sheet. We
will try to work it in to future versions. We made it all the way to
Buffalo without any more mishaps and the climb to the top was
reasonable.  We had a wonderful descent to Old 76 and then on to Brove
Hill Rd that gave us a wicked dirt descent down Bald Hill Rd. Stevie
Moto decided not to ride his road bike on the dirt and so was our first
loss. Matt's day got even better as he had our only flat of the day on
Central Chapel. That was quickly repaired and we were off for Besemer
Rd. Matt made up for his bad luck by winning the next two town line
sprints up Besemer! 

Thirty miles and 20% grade were enough for many of the group and we lost
Dr Dave, Twinkie, Peter, Abe, Ano, and Bill. The rest of us descended
through the neighborhood to Park Lane and Rt 79. The Prez climbed up
Burns to Coddington and then turned off. We continued climbing up Bing
Rd and crossed 96B and then descended Stone Quarry Rd. Glenn took the
town line on Stone Quarry. Matt and Glenn decided to do repeats on
Cascadilla St while the rest of us made our way over to Casey's house.
Casey had to call home first to make sure Judy wasn't traipsing through
the house au natural. 

We refueled on some awesome Gingersnap cookies and loaded up the water
bottles for the last 3 climbs. Bostwick/Culver/Bostwick wasn't too bad a
climb but I could tell that my legs were getting toasted. I was starting
to re-think my goal of climbing Bruce. We had another awesome descent
down to Rt 327 and again a great high speed drop down to Treman and Rt
13. We made it through the 96/13 interchange and on to Blakslee. Man,
did it look steep on the approach. I have to admit that I did the news
paper boy wobble back and forth across the road to get up the steepest
parts. Mike and Casey rode up like the hill was nothing! Once we reached
the top Casey did say that we were at the top of the ridge and "What's
the point in going back down and climbing up again?" I told Ernie that
we were rethinking our route to Bruce Rd. Ernie said, "Don, what is the
point of this ride if we don't do Bruce? The worst that is going to
happen is that we will have to walk!" Ernie won the argument and so off
we went to Bruce. Again, we had a fantastic descent on Station Rd and
then turned right onto Brown Rd. Brown is one of the most beautiful
roads in the county but it ends too quickly at Bruce. Luckily for me
Mike's right crank arm came completely off his bike and he needed my
tri-allen key to fix it. I left the tool with him and headed up Bruce.
It was worse than I remembered with loose gravel and rocks the size of
baseballs in the road right at the steepest part of the climb, which is
also a switchback! The only way I made it up without having to walk was
to balance on the top stroke pedal, keep my weight back and then pull
myself and the pedal down using my arms and shoulder muscles. I did this
at least 10 times through the switchback. My arms got all tingly and my
vision shrank to a small tunnel directly ahead of my front wheel. The
gradient eased up for just a moment and I was able to sit for 3 pedal
strokes and then I had to stand again. The gravel was so slippery that
all my weight had to be over the rear wheel. I passed Jack and then
caught up to LiLynn. I could not pass her because of the loose gravel so
again I had to track stand at the top of my pedal stroke and wait for
her to move forward enough so that when I took a stroke I wouldn't run
into her. I am way anaerobic when I finally get by her and  then it is
just shear  willpower to the top,  counting each stroke and lying to
myself, just 5 more and then I can stop. 

At the top of the climb we all regroup and wait for Casey and Mike.
After about 5 minutes Casey shows up and says that Mike can't put the
crank back on. Just then a woman with 2 dogs in crates in her car stops
and asks if we need help. She offers to go down and get Mike and his
bike but says there is no way she will drive into Ithaca. We told her if
she can just get him to the top of the hill we can push him to town. The
woman drives off and we started imagining what was going to happen. Is
she going to drive by with Mike stuck in the crate and the dog sitting
in the front seat and we will never see him again and then read in the
newspaper about the Artist that became Alpo? Not too much longer we see
Mike riding up the road having fixed his cranked and escaping the crate.

Onward back to East Hill Plaza finishing at 4pm and  80 miles of
training in the tank. Next time we will tackle the remaining hills in
Newfield and I will be using a 27 tooth cassette!

Cheers,

Don 

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Ernie Bayles, Architect

209 Utica Street

Ithaca, New York  14850

607-275-3722 (tel and

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