Rode my bike today. Skipped the ramble ride thanks to the lack of feeling prepared to ride 100 miles and very little sleep the last week after being sick.
Decided to connect with a friend and leave early to ride some extra and then ride the Saturday shop ride to which only 2 other people showed since everyone else was at the Ramble.
One of the 2 extras was new to the shop rides, didn’t load the route in his Garmin and didn’t really know the area. We had a very polite conversation about distance and pace and he had good self awareness to tell us that we should go ride what we planned and not to worry.
The 3 of us set off at a decent clip on the usual loop. What a perfect weather day and it was nice to just ride without having to try and do the equivalent of herding cats for a change as ride leader.
On the way back we were on some of the Ramble 100 loop which pretty much went past my block. I take my one buddy back towards the shop via a shortcut since he was getting tired and we see a guy in the side of the road with a day glo vest on the opposite side of the road. I thought he was a ride Marshall for the ramble until I saw it was the local “hybrid cruiser” guy Dave and he had a flat tire. This is the same guy a few months back that left his bike behind in my neighborhood and drove home without it but I posted it on FB and someone called him and I got it back to him back then.
We whipped around and he has a brand new Trek Verve but no tools and no flat kit. And no idea how to change it. We moved off to a shady spot under a tree and used some of the park tool glueless patches to get him back on the road instead of walking 2 miles to his car. I added an extra loop to top off at 65 and was still home by 10:30 before all 3 teenagers were awake.