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Day’s Verse:
Many, O LORD my God,
are the wonders you have done.
The things you planned for us
no one can recount to you;
were I to speak and tell of them,
they would be too many to declare.
Psalm 40:5
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The Quick Version:

We — Artemis and I — successfully completed the 90-mile Tour de Landry’s without dying, breaking down, bonking, hitting anything (moving or stationary), having my legs fall off or knees hurt too much, getting lost, or any of the gazillions of other bad things that could’ve happened.

The Long Version:

Read on.In fact, considering my longest ride since the STP was 68 miles several weeks ago now, I feel that this 90-mile ride went swimmingly. We hung out with the slowest group (the 15 to 16 mph pace), but spent most of our time at the front of that group. We started with nine people, including the executive director of MassBike (Dave Watson), one of the owners of Landry’s and the Landry’s marketing director; also a lady and a dude (he looked very young) who had never ridden more than 30 or 50 miles, respectively. Those two people eventually ended up riding some of the way in the support cars*. The route took us to all the Landry’s stores: Starting in Natick, then Boston, Norwood, Westborough, and back to Natick. The 35-mile stretch between Norwood and Westborough felt very long after a while, but I had the hardest time on the way back to the Natick store. We struggled against a steady headwind — riding due east with a wind directly from the east — and I ended up by myself enough that I didn’t get the benefit of riding behind somebody most of the way.

* Two of the support cars, which were official SRAM SAG wagons, came from NEW JERSEY just to drive along behind us and fix our flats.

The weather cooperated and we ended up with a partly cloudy day with sun breaks. This highlighted the beauty of the route, with the trees all colors ranging from red to green. We meandered through wooded, lightly-traveled but beautifully paved winding back roads, occasionally coming upon a clearing with a pond reflecting the vibrant red, yellow, orange, and green leaves in still water. We saw a whole huge troupe of people riding their horses down the road at one point, and we stopped to let them get well away before we came along. Bikes and horses do not mix well. However, the rest of the ride we saw only conventional conveyances on the road, and it was pretty neat to see all these tons of riders all in Landry’s jerseys (a requirement of the ride), moving down the road.

I really enjoyed myself, had a very nice ride with other people, got to really stretch Artemis’ legs (wheels? She certainly proved herself, and I’m adjusting to the feel of riding her. The fit feels great, the gearing is excellent, the ride smooth, the handling responsive and sharp), and spend hours out in a beautiful fall day. Sure beats sitting in front of my computer working on reports all day!