Coffee and Lies #79 Back in the saddle

A portion of our merry band

Recently I was able to join in the weekly ritual known as the Coffee and Lies ride. As the usual suspects gathered in the filtered morning light we exchanged the usual pleasantries and my brothers in brown told me what they have been up to and I also shared some details of my meaningless existence.

It was great to see the old gang and even El Jefe’ made a cameo appearance and rode the first 300 meters with us.  The sun was fighting to come out and the cool air was invigorating. I was on my go fast bike and true to its assigned duties the stiff bike wasted little time in launching a water bottle right out of my Arundel Mandible cage (big letdown) and into my rear spokes. I stopped and my wheel was hopelessly out of true and I didn’t have a suitable spoke wrench.

Since so many of my rides of late have been solitary affairs I was in shock mode and must have appeared stunned.

Brown comes in all shapes and sizes..

Before I could comprehend what had happened or what was happening; Feral Dave was speeding home on his bike to fetch his car and a spare wheel.  I finally collected my thoughts (they were strewn all over the pavement like an explosion of loose change) and sat down and waited.  Before too long Feral Dave pulled up and I had a wheel and two minutes later we were chasing the peloton who by now had nearly a twenty minute lead. 

As a matter of fact we ARE too fast for normal cameras to focus !

We pedaled hard, leveraging a short cut (poetic license) we caught them in time to join in for the majority of the ride.  It was good to rub elbows with the gang.  Dave had sacrificed a good part of his ride so I could enjoy mine. There just aren’t a lot of people who would do that. He didn’t really even ask, he just said he was going to do it and off he went.  I can tell you that of all the people that I know who would do such a selfless act a whole lot of them wear brown jerseys when they ride. 

Feral Dave front and center !

While we are a USA cycling licensed racing team; I have to admit we are in fact more of a gentlemen’s club populated with kind hearted souls.  We do have women and children on our team so it isn’t quite an explosion of testosterone, but more like a group of like-minded riders who respect the sport, each other and have some perspective.

A while back I had a friend on another team try and recruit me away from the brown team but I would have none of that.  I don’t know how I managed to fool the membership committee on my team, but I am glad to call these folks my teammates.