Shakedown weekend

Less than a month until the odyssey begins! Considering we will average a 100 miles per day, we figured we should do a century ride to test our training, bikes and new gear a.k.a. padded shorts. Saturday, April 25th, we along with Rich Shaffer (going strong at 67), Shawn of TriSpeed bike shop and two Maryland boys, journeyed, no sprinted westward from Oregon Ridge park (Hunt Valley, Md) thru Westminster, Tanytown, and climbed Catocton Mountain (1,300') to the entrance of Camp David. We sprinted the return trip too, only to slow to a touring pace when we became directionally challenged 85 miles into the trip. Ultimately, we rode 103 miles, climbed approximately 10,000', averaged 19mph for the first 60 miles, with a final average of about 17.5. Just to make the shake down ride as realistic as possible, we arranged for the temperature to be raging just shy of 90 degrees. We all survived, and agreed that Sunday would be a SLOW recovery ride. Assuming that slow was synonymous with short, I applied factor 8 SPF sunscreen instead of 30 SPF and headed out the door with no powerbars and my heavy bike. Jere had a different agenda though. 75 miles and 5 hours later, in 90+ heat, I limped home, sunburned, and anything but recovered. But, I learned I can ride back-to-back long rides. Good thing since I'll have to do it 39 days in a row! The shakedown ride also demonstrated a fanny pack is dead weight and probably totally unnecessary when we have a support vehicle within walkie-talkie distance. Finally, there is no substitute for dead reckoning. With 2 GPSs, and Google maps on the IPhone, you can still get lost.
P.S. On Sunday's ride we encounterd our first character at a small country store in Md. . "Shorty", formerly from Chicago, now a repentent drug dealer in a self-imposed witness protection plan (his words, not mine). Shorty was cooking ribs for a living, but making a documentary, which we somehow got coned into participating in. Shorty talked faster than I could keep up, but he somehow lumped Rush Linbaugh and Al Sharpton together and both must go. Shorty, a very black man, got a kick out of showing us his enlarged (at least 2'x3') birth certificate, which indicated he was "White". We learned from this encounter. In the future we'll only be monoploized for 15 minutes before heading for the door, especially when we are on the business end of a video camera.