Friday, November 9, 2018
How about that tour wrap up? My personal oversight committee chair person let me know today that I've been remiss in closing the book on this last tour. This is that effort
Distance does soften the hard edges of regret or something like that...
A lot of time has passed since returning home and life just takes over, you know? Above two shots were taken Sunday afternoon, August 5, 2018. That's bout 5 weeks after returning home. I had completed about 55 miles in the annual 100 mile Tour of the Litchfield Hills out of Torrington, CT. While screaming down a hill on a new bike I encountered a hairpin turn and a patch of gravel. Road 1, Jim 0. Bike handlebars took a beating, jersey scraped up pretty good, left knee was torqued in an uncomfortable direction while right forearm and elbow seemed to take brunt of the stopping action. Drove home and got tidied up before heading to urgent care center. Didn't want to spend the rest of Sunday afternoon and evening waiting around in the ER waiting room. Good call as I was only at urgent care for a couple hours getting x-rays and having gravel teased out of my arm. Happy to report no broken bones but one rather dashing scar along my arm. Even now, three months later, it's a keeper. Kind of like a natural tattoo.
Key to major rides
XC15 - 2015 Crossroads Cycling Adventures, LA to Boston
ABB North - 2017 America by Bicycle, Astoria, OR to Rapid City, SD
CCC - 2018 America by Bicycle, ‘Cross Country Challenge’ San Francisco to Pueblo, CO
So. About that ABB Ride from SanFrancisco to Pueblo, CO. On August 8, 2018, a few days after the bike crash described above, a friend from my first major tour (XC15) asked me how my ride went. He had just finished the ride I did last year along the north. Here is an excerpt from that reply. I include it here in order to record my analysis close but not too close to the event. As it usually happens, after several months I tend to romanticize the lure of the road and forget some of the sting along the way. Excerpt below.
First, Let me say that if you had Judy, Pam and Karen as tour leaders on the North tour, you had the A-Team. I love those ladies. Karen especially is a goldmine of information on route topography, geography. Anyway…Personally, after I did XC15, I really really really enjoyed the North tour through to Rapid City SD (just after Mt Rushmore) - wasn’t that an awesome ride? - and Matt and I actually were in the top third of riders instead of the bottom third as we seemed to be on XC15.I figured we’d repeat that experience on the Cross Country Challenge (SanFrancisco to Pueblo legs). Ha! We were back in the bottom 20%. Very humbling. It was a smaller group, too, only 21.Out of the 21 or so riding days, I say I count 3 days as really special days. The others were either really, really hard slogs due to headwinds, or just dull ugly uninteresting rides. Of course more favorable winds would have made a difference bumping the number of great riding days up to maybe 5 to 7.What I hated most of the tour was the staff. They were disinterested in the riders, provided no insights on the areas we were about to travel through other than read the cue sheets to us at route rap…Further, they just didn’t do the work. We went to a restaurant and the restaurant wasn’t expecting a group of our size. Another restaurant had closed. Jeepers! Don’t those guys have phones to make a call and confirm before we head over?And then, cleaning stations at hotels? Nope. Had to beg front desks at every hotel for rags (except for one), and there was no water hose to wash down the bikes except for that one. I know the packing list for tour says to pack your own supplies but really? Hasn’t been my experience on the other rides I’ve done.
I'm not sure what 2019 will bring but I just signed on with my coaching program again which runs from now through April. I wasn't going to do it because I have no plans for a tour next year. But after they sent me a picture from the studio beckoning me back... I needed to re-up. Who could resist a crew like that?Forget about looking for pictures or blog entries by the staff on the ABB website. After asking the riders to submit pictures to crew to include on the blog, the blog was abandoned after day 2. Seriously lazy. I was sorely disappointed on my overall experience. Would never do that route with that crew again. I would do it again with Judy, Pam and Karen, though.I did enjoy the company of many the riders, Matt from XC15 and John from the ABB North ride was with me, too. There was one married couple, a cop, a Dane, a Britt - who provided much speculation between Matt and John as to his developing relationship with another lady on tour - there was a Belarusian, someone from Singapore and the balance were really strong riders from various parts of the states. Nice people, strong riders.Evening meals were good no complaints there, but SAG grub was uninspired. Crew was just too lazy to care, you know?Here’s a link to my blog from that tour if you’re interested. I didn’t bellyache in the blog as I knew I would reread it later to get a sense for the riding features of the tour.My assessment is that the North Ride is the jewel in the ABB crown. This ride, the Cross Country Challenge (CCC) used to be “The” ride for them with as many as 60 riders in past years. Some folks that did the north ride with me in 16 did the Mississippi ride and liked it, and I hear Judy is going to do the East Ride starting soon. I think the Mississippi ride and East Ride are run on alternate years.I think ABB is a good company but they need to re-staff the CCC ride.I heard mixed reviews of Tracy’s route run by the new owners. Entire staff fired somewhere along route leaving just owner and two others to see riders through to the Atlantic (Don from XC15 did that ride).
