St. Paul Bike Classic 2014

This will be the year of the sub-par gluten free brownie for me.  Ming said it was very good.  It was so-so.  He can deny it, but he's now got old man bitter-treat taste buds.

We finished up in about 2 hours.  That was a quick ride.  Doesn't seem that quick, but for some mountain bikes/sport bikes in the mix and some stop-go, it was darn quick.  Here were are: me, Larry, Erik, Ming, and Alan.  It was nice to have Erik back after a long hiatus.


I tried to shoot ahead to get some pictures at one point, running along at 20 mph on my bike with some guys on road bikes.  I didn't get very far ahead and it was tiring, having not biked a longer distance in a month and a half, but it was far enough for a few photos.

Ming and Erik at the top of what's sort of the last hill, right before Como Park.


Larry - same hill (see the tree?), giving the wave.


Larry biked with this guy.  They coordinated shirt colors before the ride so they'd look like a team.


Woo!  Woo!  CRUSHING IT!  Same hill, but with some posing.


Alan was too fast, so I couldn't get a picture of him on the hill.  But here is at our usual post-ride breakfast haunt, The St. Clair Broiler.  For as long as I can remember, he's worn the same orange Pub and Putt shirt on the ride.  This year he was out to confuse me.  He admitted to considering it.

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It was a bit longer of a day than I expected on the bicycle.  This is the only picture I took of the St. Paul Bike Classic, despite doing parts of it twice.  After breakfast at The St. Clair Broiler, I biked up to Dan'l house and saw the last two riders as they passed close to Como Lake, a cop car behind them with its trunk up picking up things.  Then later as I biked home, I passed all the signs, and I was clearly the last person on the route.

So 11.5 miles to the ride.  32 miles on the ride.  11 miles round trip to Dan's.  11.5 miles home.  10 miles of various riding by taking a longer route home around the fairgrounds and getting lost up around Larpenteur and Victoria.  And a mile to the grocery store and back to buy Eryn a good selection of junk food.

Kyle brought her a refurbed Goodwill bike last night before her singing and guitar gig over at Ring Mountain (they paid her in free ice cream, and I scored a leftover quart of Chocolate Chili Pepper someone hadn't claimed), so she rode that over to Cub to try it out.  She likes it, although she's not fond of the slippery seat.  We may try swapping it out with the big seat I used on my old mountain bike.  I gave Kyle the wheels off it last night.  I'm going to just keep stripping down parts for reuse until the only thing left is the broken frame.

Larry, Ming, Alan, and Bjorne all went on the Classic.  Not as a big of a group as we've had in the past, but a good size for a quick ride.

Bike Classic 2009

It was a somewhat lonely St. Paul Bike Classic this year, relatively speaking. No LissyJo or Dad. No Mean Mr. Mustard (plantar fasciitis - but he did volunteer, so we stopped at the first rest stop for the first time ever to see him helping out and to ask him whether Eryn's snotty napkin belonged in the compost container...it did). No Kyle (elbow nerve). No Ming and Logan (work - unfortunate release). No Christy (unknown). No Sandy (no Christy, among other things). No Brady (probably hanging with Ming at the unfortunate release). No Erik (riding later with his new friends). No Doug (bike stolen after RAGBRAI). No Dan (he never rides with us, he does the 30+15). And a few others.

The sole attendees were Alan, Brian (new this year, works in the same row as me at work, and biked all the way up from Eagan and back), me and Eryn on the tagalong. The problem with that setup is that there was no one slow to regulate my speed, and I just try to keep up or set a brisk pace. So by the time we were done with the ride I had an average speed of 12.5 mph. If I was on a flat or slight downhill, that might be ok, but hauling a tagalong and six year old behind a mountain bike up the river bluffs of St. Paul, that's about 2.5 mph faster than is advisable. After breakfast at the St. Clair Broiler, I went home, inspected the heat rash developing on my arms and sides, and promptly fell asleep for two hours.

So this year, no pictures of people exiting toilets, no videos of crazy old dancing ladies, no stories about thongs. Just a few nice pictures of us on the ride.

Eryn at Indian Mound Park. She was excited to learn that the people way down on the road below us (where the river is) were bicycling where we had been before climbing up the ridge. She was more excited when we went down the big hill before the park, topping out at about 30 mph. She loves the speed.


Eryn and I at about the midway point.


Alan and Brian, probably waiting for me to get back on my bike.