Our last practice ride

The plan was perfect. Leo, Joc and myself were meeting at the South Bellevue Park n Ride at 8:30 am to embark on our ride around Lake Washington on a beautiful sunny, summer day. Ah, but nothing works exactly as planned. 1. Not even out of the parking lot, Joc notices her tire is low on air, so we bike .2 of a mile to the Bellevue Way Chevron where our TEAM spends 1 hour attempting to inflate, change and fix a flat tire. Her valves don't match the gas station pump valves and our pumps are slow.. Then we attempt the supposedly miraculous carbon cartridge to only have hers explode sorta in the air and mine all over my hands. OUCH! Finally we get her tire pumped with my hand pump just in time for.... 2) Her handlebars to twist around just enough to snap the a piece of the front brakes off. *&^()&( (A series of swear words followed).

What is a TEAM TO do? Ride cautiously to Gregg's and enlist TOM's help. He did come through for us and even installed some extra bells all over our bikes :)

Another Starbucks later and 3 hours we leave heading North on Bellevue way. (approx 11 am.... Dang, we should be halfway home by now!!!)

3) A mile into our ride, Joc hits a bump and her NEW computer flies off the bike and shatters on Bellevue Way into a million little pieces...

Should we turn around now? Probably, but lucky for us, we didn't and the rest of our ride was a dream. 75 degrees and sunny, some hills and some long flats. It was great.

We took Bell Way to Lake WA blvd around the North end of the Lake to the Burke-Gillman which we took to San Point and detoured to Aqua Verde for the best Margaritas and Tacos EVER!!!! (Made it super hard to start riding again...)




After that we road along the Seattle side of Lake Wa towards Seward Park, Boeing and then across Renton and back to our cars.

Total Riding time: 4 hours
Distance: 54 miles
Issues: LOTS

This was our last team ride before our big STP event next weekend. Wish us luck, afterall we are almost at our goal!