Goal Met - Miles Ridden - Degree Conferred "with praise

Before I get started bringing you up to date on the progress of my charity ride for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, I just want to share some great news with you all: I have exceeded my $4,300 sponsorship commitment! Many thanks to everyone who contributed. None of this would have been possible without your generosity!

I'll continue to forward checks and the Society will gratefully accept any donations over and above . It’s a big relief to me to know that I made my goal.

I'll pick up the story at last week's ride, and in order to reduce the "spam" will cover two rides in one message. May 5 found the Team in Training (TNT) leaving at 7:30 from the Davidsonville Park and Ride off of Maryland Route 50 for a bayside cycling ramble. It was a sunny morning, a bit cool, and I pushed hard through the farms, fields, and exurban houses to try to keep up with Robert and some other folks. But little by little they kept getting ahead of me and soon I was riding by myself.

I think it was on Jewell Rd as I cycled along innocently (not hurting anyone or causing global warming or doing anything else that would merit ill fortune) that I suddenly heard a flapping and scraping sound, looked to the left and saw two large black vultures battling it out on the roof of a large, new looking gray house. I hesitated, thinking of stopping to capture the strange scene in a photo, but then noticed Greg had come up behind me.

He said "It can't be good when there's vultures fighting on the roof of your house." (Note: you may remember we posted a picture of Greg picture hoisting his bike high overhead like some Viking warrior.)

I reminded Greg of the ride in Middleburg cut short when the crank fell out of my bike, and shared with him my suspicion that this odd and unexplained event must have been caused by the buzzards I'd passed in Poolesville the week before that. In this case, however, Greg and I concluded the vultures on Jewell Rd had nothing to do with us. After all, they were fighting on someone else's house. We soon arrived at the support and gear (SAG) stop on Friendship Rd.

Our friendship, it turns out, was also with those among the departed; the parking lot there adjoins a cemetery. There were many gravestones and flowers, and it seemed quite cheery in the sun. I like to think that the dead appreciated our cheerful banter, our careful depositing of orange peels in our own trash bag and that they would not have wanted to cause any problems.

Onwards - another 20 miles – to the western shore! That is, the Maryland bay shore, with marinas and condos shining in the sun of the town called Chesapeake Beach. Forty miles I'd ridden and finally some water view! I took out my camera and began taking a few pictures, dexterously maintaining my seat on the bike. Only this turned out to be questionable, because I wasn't watching the pavement beneath and rode over some pretty nasty bumps. But there was no harm, it appeared, I pocketed the camera and began paying more attention, but then the bike began to shake, to bump up and down, and up and down. It was a flat tire.

I was all by myself, so I began trying to take the rear tire off the bike. This is very complicated with many parts to disengage and I wasn't getting very far, but then Greg rode up. He has expertise with bike maintenance and showed me how to take off the tire, use the tire levers to remove the tire from the rim, take out the inner tube first removing the valve, put the new inner tube in and replace the tire. In the process we found the perpetrator – a half inch long roofing nail which I've circled in the photo below.

So here is the question – was this incompetence by the rider, or just bad luck?

I mean anyone can ride over a nail anytime, you don't have to be taking a picture to do that. The problem could have been caused by the vultures, not by my carelessness…Blame the vultures!

Anyway, this post is getting kind of long and probably no one but me cares about vultures and graveyards and the mysteries of causality.

There are a few pictures showing horse farms and country estates. It rained a bit and I got slightly lost a couple times. Suffice it to say after all the screwing around with the tire and getting lost in the second part of the ride I ended up being one of the last people to finish.

But finish it I did, and without any short cuts like some that finished ahead of me.

Many things happened after that. I had to go the Olney Tavern that night and have dinner with our friends Jim and Teri as we watched the Sherwood Blues band play. I never thought I could stay awake over three beers for hours after an 83 mile bike ride, but I mostly did!



Then the following Saturday I missed the TNT's Ferry Ride (which involves a ferry boat life across the Potomac west of Washington) due to my son Jack's graduation from St Mary's college. He graduated cumm laude "with praise" with a History/Economics degree.

I did, however, ride on Sunday with Ned for 73 miles, all the way from Arlington to Leesburg VA along the Washington and Old Dominion (W&OD) trail. This ride was basically uneventful. There was no sign of vultures or ghosts or anything like that. I just hope the people in the gray house are doing ok!

Next week is the last training ride before they put our bikes on a truck bound for Lake Tahoe. It will be a 93 mile ride starting in Middleburg and it will involve climbing Mt Weather, which has its own Wikipedia page and is otherwise known as a "secure, undisclosed location." Ned, who has ridden with TNT before, describes this ride as "a necessary evil..."

Dan