Wednesday Night Ride: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

It's no secret that many of the TBR crew use the Wednesday night group ride as our proving grounds. In reality, this ride is a balls out interval workout disguised as a group ride. We ride our new rigs, we try out new components and we test our mettle against one another. We do this on one of the toughest trail networks in the tri-state area. I think sometimes we all take for granted how fortunate we are to have these awesome trails in our back yard.

In seasons past, these weekly efforts slowly build up team members, setting the foundation for some pretty solid results throughout the season. This year, there are some new regulars to the ride, who are pushing the veterans along. It's great to see the team growing, but still retaining that small team feel.

Last night was one of the toughest Wednesday night rides that I can remember. The trails were good but not especially fast... Looking down through the group, I think every rider had somebody to battle with and it made the whole ride faster, harder, more rewarding. It just shows that there's a lot of fitness floating around the ranks and it's exciting to see. I think the team is poised to have a great year, all around.

The post ride at Foster Boys had a good turnout as well... there were 25-30 people hanging out between the two groups. Nick hooked up a case of Bell's Brewing IPA and some other leftovers from his fridge. The Bells was a nice change, but I missed out on the "good stuff." I'm over it.

Now, I don't know if everybody has spring fever, or if it was a full moon, or what... but at about 9pm, things got a little out of hand...

We're all sitting around, talking, having good ole time, when out of the corner of my eye I see a yellow blur coming towards the shop. Seconds later, I see a middle aged woman wearing full tights and a day-glo windshirt, throw open the door to Foster Boys. Her attire was perplexing, since it was 80° and extremely humid yesterday. I was just about floored when she started screaming at our group of ~30. Just as quickly as she appeared, she was off and running towards LoweRiders - where about half of our cars and bikes are parked.

10 or 15 of us emptied out into the parking lot to see what all the fuss was about. She's standing in the middle of our cars, yelling about effing tow trucks, effing parking and yelling at us to effing move oure effing cars. We try to peice together what the hell she was talking about, but there's just no way to rationalize her gibberish. Ron, being unusually non-angry in such a situation tried to calm her down. She returned the favor by pushing him away and taking a swing. Then she proceeded to place a call to 911 Emergency services.



Rather than hulking out, Ron took the high road and walked away. Downingtown's finest, show up in full force, sending four peace officers. They were pleasant enough and not terribly interested in any of us. They seemed more intent on finding the lady who fled the scene after she saw them arrive. I doubt we'll make the blotter.

Never a dull moment in good ole Downingtown, Pennsylvania.