Life Is A Slow Leak

It's all springy out!

If you're unfamiliar with spring, here's how it works: one minute it's warm and sunny, then the next it's cold and rainy.  Also, there are beautiful explosions of color as the flora blooms, which you can't enjoy due to seasonal allergies.

Spring also means the Classics are in full swing.  However, I completely missed any and all Paris-Roubaix coverage, because owing to various time constraints and the vicissitudes of life in general I basically have two choices: ride the bikes, or watch other people ride the bikes.  Therefore, I chose the former, and just as the sun began peeking over the horizon on Sunday morning I was lined up in Prospect Park, Brooklyn among a bunch of other 40+ Freds for a bicycle race.

Things started out well enough; thanks to all those sumptuous Eroica California miles I was feeling pretty good, and you can even see photographic evidence of my participation here.  (I'm the Fred in black on the Specialized.)  However, on about the 4th time up the hill I felt a softening in my front tire, and by the time we passed by the start/finish my rim was bottoming out.  So I stopped, repaired he flat, and jumped back on the next time the group came around.  Of course, being a lap down, I stayed all the way at the back of the field and out of everyone's way, even though it's not only against the series rules but also grounds for suspension:

If this offends you and you'd like to rat me out and rob you of my much-needed-for-both-mind-and-body physical activity I'm rider #108, as pictured here.  However, in my defense I'd paid $40 and come all he way from the Bronx, and so what was I supposed to do?  Ride solo laps around Prospect Park while getting passed repeatedly by three (3) separate race fields?

I don't think so.

(Also, in my defense, I never even noticed that rule until today, so I figured what I was doing was fine.  But yes, ignorance is never an excuse, even though I possess it in liberal quantities.  I've only been racing in the parks for like 20 years.  Why would I bother to learn the rules in that time?)

Speaking of Eroica California, Juliet Elliott posted a video about it:



Not only does it give you a good sense of how stunningly beautiful the route is and how perfect the weather was, but also that stunning beauty is marred for one fleeting moment by your's truley struggling up a hill:

For that, and for being a rule-breaking 40-plus Fred, I am truley sorry.