John’s Ramblings

Our Newcomers group ride was a wet little number this morning. We bill this ride as “rain cancels”, but there was a large enough turnout that we opted to “buck up” and ride. It was just sprinkling at the start, after all.

The heavy rain waited… until we got 1 mile into this sucker. It started to feel like we were riding through a fire hose, so at approximately mile 5 we pulled the plug. Everyone’s misery meter was maxed out, so we concocted a shortcut back to the start line. We ended the ride with 9 1/4 miles, soaking wet and shivering.

I have been surprised with the great turnout for group rides this winter. Tuesday night’s Use It or Lose It ride had a total of 12 riders. For a 22 mile ride on a 40 degree night in the winter, I found that astounding. Thursday we had 6 folks, and did another 20 miles.

51.8 miles this week, 4,055 year to date.

I did go to spin class on Monday, but I skipped the Wednesday version to attend the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert at Key Arena in Seattle. I’ve seen the Christmas videos of these folks on the ‘net, but never in person. The first half of the concert was a Christmas themed presentation, which I can describe (expeditiously) as Rammstein meets the Boston Pops. The frontmen of this group are rockers with long hair and tailcoats. They wear uber-long guitar straps so that it appears that it’s a requirement that you play guitar at knee level in order to join the band. Don’t get me wrong, it was an entertaining show, and the lighting and staging were very well done. I must profess to being a little “ear-fatigued” after 3 solid hours. I’d put the highlight of the show as the rocking little excerpt of the Carmina Burana. Head-banging classical, that one.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.