Covered Bridge Metric Century

Sorry for the long delay between posts.  It's been a busy month since I last was on the bike.  I spent two weeks in Newport, Rhode Island for the Newport Folk and Newport Jazz Festivals.  We do the sound on the Fort Stage, which is the big headliner stage for the festival, there are 3 other smaller stages around Fort Adams State Park.  This is what it looked like for Folk:

And here is the stage in Jazz trim, same stage, new scrims.

The site is gorgeous, here is the view from backstage of the audience area, we have water on three sides, and back up to the fort.  This was where I spent both weekends, I was in charge of patching the splitter for each act, while two of my guys were out on stage striking the previous band and setting mics for the new one.  We had 25 minutes between acts to get it done and show ready, only the headliners get soundchecks in the morning, everybody else was throw and go.

Then it was load out Sunday night (8/3/14) and catch a flight to Greensboro NC for the Market America International Conference at the Greensboro Coliseum early the next morning.   Quite the contrast :)

But anyhow, I got back from all that last Sunday, and after a hectic week of work getting caught up and getting some high profile stuff out the door, today was the Covered Bridge Metric Century, in Lancaster PA.  Kathleen & I went up yesterday afternoon and met up with some of her friends from the Rebels with a Cause group for dinner.   Then it was up early to do the ride.   The day started of cloudy, and sure enough it rained for about the first three hours, I have never been so wet on a ride. Here is my route map and stats.   At any rate, for the first 20 or 30 minutes it was dry, and on our way out of Lancaster we passed through this park, I thought it was especially picturesque.

And here are the Rebels, this was about the last I saw of Kathleen & company, they all move at a more substantial pace than I do.   Mara (closest to the camera) is slower, but she was only doing the half.

Lancaster is the heart of Amish Country, so lots of horse and buggies on the road, and lots of horse poop as well :).

This was just after it started raining, I love the umbrella/push scooter thing combination.

So as I mentioned this is the Covered Bridge Metric Century, so we went through/over several of them today.   This one was the first, at about mile 18.

And they kept coming, this is the second one for the day.

Somewhere in here I missed the third one entirely, it popped up out of nowhere before I could fish the old camera out.   But I am making up for it with this high speed (about 25 miles an hour down the hill) approach to the next one.

I started to brake here, it was still pretty wet, and the bridges are one lane and shared with cars.

Here is the exit of the last one, my attempt at the entrance side yielded a picture of my foot :)

From here it was about another 15 miles to the finish, and I bonked pretty hard at this point.  I kept thinking "oh well there will be a mini-market any minute now, I will get a coke and ride on pure sugar to the end".  But there wasn't.   In retrospect I should have stopped for lunch at the lunch stop.   But I did finish, ate half a subway sandwich, a banana, and a couple of cookies.  No sign of Kathleen and company, so I ran over to the mini-market and got a coke (actually 2) and a snickers bar.  30 minutes later when Kathleen showed up I felt much more human.   Then it was load up and say goodbye to the rebels and head for home.   So I ended up with 69 miles for the day (about 4 extra for a wrong turn, and having to back track to the course).   Not too bad for no miles in a month.   Now I need to clean up and tear down the bikes, riding in the rain made a mess out of them.