riding north with eric

eric showed up at my house around 12:30 and actually got on his bike despite the clear skies and pleasant temps. i took off and looked back and he was still standing over his bike. i think he was amazed at my quick acceleration. he claimed his chain came off. likely story.

so after he "fixed" his chain, we rode north on argonia road to avoid traffic so we could talk. he tried to keep up, but ended up sucking my wheel fairly often. he said he'd never ridden in a paceline before so he was trying to learn all he could while he had such a strong rider to pull him up and over the massive hills.

when we got to our turn around, we stopped for a drink then turned our front wheels south. the wind was perfect for a fast ride back to argonia. when the dog at seven miles out charged, i left eric behind. i figured the dog would ignore him when he saw how little meat there was to have. poor, skinny eric. the dog gave up either because eric found some speed that hadn't been there before or because of the smell. not sure which.

i slowed up a bit then and we rode side by side for several miles. had deep conversations about transubstantiation and supralapsarianism. neither of us had a clue, but it was fun.

as we approached argonia, eric begged to go east to my "around the world" line, so we rounded the corner onto highway 160 and headed into the wind. we pushed hard and paced each other. i did the bulk of the pulling, but who's keeping track?

we paused at the "ATW" line and eric bowed and scraped a few times. then we mounted up and rode back into town. at one point he tried to drop me. all i heard was, "i'm going to try to break 30," and he was away. i jumped on my pedals and quickly overtook him reaching a max speed of 34mph. eric said he broke 30mph, but wouldn't let me look at his computer.

turning south onto pine, we slowed the pace a bit to cool down before pulling into my driveway. somehow, eric ended up with an extra tenth of a mile. his computer read 19.04 miles. mine read 18.92. makes me wonder how accurate his speeds are.

after he changed, i walked him out to his suburban and saw him off. i had to make sure he knew he still owed me 100 miles. (18.92 miles @ 17.4mph)