MS Ride 2010

I'm back and we survived!  It was a little touch and go there on Saturday.  I don't think I've ever had such an eventful ride. 

But, let's start at the beginning.

Stef and I decided to stay down in Quincy and take a shuttle over to the start so that we wouldn't have to start out so early Saturday morning.  The hotel was very nice.  Here's our view.

We had to bring the bike up to our room for the night.  Here's the tandem enjoying the amenities.  I have to say it was pretty inteteresting getting it up and down in the elevator.  It just fit diagonally and was a bit of a trick to get in and out.

In the morning, we took the bus over to the start. The traffic was unbelievable and it took us over an hour to get just a few miles.  We'd have probably done better to ride over.

We made it, though, and here we are at the start.

We met lots of nice people there!

And we weren't the only tandem.

It took a while to get everyone going.  You can't just let 2000 cylists out on the road all at once so we got going a little after 8am.

Saturday was very hot and as the day went on, Stef and I found ourselves feeling worse and worse.  By the fourth rest stop, we'd ridden about 51 miles and were both feeling very ill.  We sat in the shade at the rest stop for a while eating and drinking and hoping to feel better.  Unfortunately, we weren't able to and decided to call it a day.  I'm surprised that the heat got to me so much.  Usually, if I keep drinking, I'm fine but not that day.  We really wanted to ride Sunday so decided not to destroy ourselves Saturday.  We got a lift to Mass Maritime Academy and spent the afternoon and evening eating, drinking and resting to make sure we could ride the next day.

Apparently, we succeded since we both woke up feeling pretty good Sunday.  It also helped that we got to leave at 5am and get most of our riding done in the early part of the day.

Here we are pedaling along the Cape Cod Canal first thing in the morning.  It was really lovely and peaceful.

Yes, that's my back.  We were experimenting with Back of Bike Cam.  Stef took these two pictures while were riding.

Sunday was definitely the more picturesque of our two days.

Sunday, however, was the day of technical difficulties.  When we got going, we noticed our gears had gotten a little out of wack from the truck ride the day before.  We were able to fix them a bit but they needed a professional touch.  We limped into the first rest stop only to find out that the mechanic who was supposed to be there hadn't showed up.  A helpful stranger did what he could but didn't really fix it.  So we limped it to the next rest stop where the mechanic fixed it in a jiffy.

We were chugging right along, feeling good when about half way between rest stops 2 and 3, we got a flat rear tire.  Now, I'm extremely bad at changing tires.  I'm actually pretty bad at doing any kind of bike maintenance.  I consider myself a fairly mechanical person except when it comes to bikes.  The lessons we got from Liz aside, I've still been known to walk into a bike store and say something like "Bike not working.  Make bike work." in a sad and pitiful voice.

We flagged down SAG vehicle who pumped up our tire for us again but we could hear the air escaping so they decided to take us to the next rest stop.  I'd been looking at our rear tire and not liking what I was seeing.  Fortunately, there was a bike shop at that stop so we just bought a new tire and the awesome mechanics put on and got us on the road again.

From there on, things went pretty smoothly for a while.

We saw lovely scenery.

One of our rest stops was even at the beach!

They even hosed us down at our last rest stop.  It felt great!

The last bit of our ride was straight down Rt. 6.  We were about 2.5 miles away when we took this picture.

Then we got another flat in the front tire.  Arrgghhh!

It was a slow leak so rather than changing it, we decided to pump it up and see if we could limp in.  It was tricky because a flat tire really effects the steering but we managed.  We had to stop and pump up the tire once more but we made it in.  Stef's husband and daughter picked us up at the finish and took us home.

All in all, we managed to ride 123 of the 150 miles of the ride and we both want to do it again.

Thanks again to everyone who supported our ride.  You are the best!