John’s Ramblings

Last night (of course) was the “annual” Halloween ride for the Green River Riders. The GRR’s are a small group of cyclists in the greater Kent area, training and doing group century rides. The 2007 edition of the Halloween ride is the second annual.Thanks to my new wool jersey with a horizontal stripe motif, a bee costume came to mind. I affixed two glow-stick bracelets to the helmet for antennae. A co-worker informed me that my costume would be grossly incomplete without wings. After trying to purchase wings at the local Halloween-Price-Gouging-Outfitters (they wanted $25 for an incomplete child’s bee costume, from which I would only use the wings), I made my own. Two coathangers and a pair of my wife’s black tights, and had myself a nice pair of wings. A lighter color would have shown up better, but this was pretty last-minute. I looped them through a stretchy reflective belt from the Randonneurs, and I was set to go.

We had a rather light turnout. Only 5 riders were able to make it, and two of those came as “cyclists”, of all things. Lee Spencer and I both had a bee theme working, while the mighty Russ donned flashing devil’s horns.

We only rode about 10 miles. We did have the opportunity to stop once to hand out some candy to a young family of trick-or-treaters. The youngest “princess” of this group could not have been much older than three or four. She tolerated the aging bee giving her candy, but it seems that “El Diablo” may have frightened her a bit, and she turned on the water-works for Russ.

After our shortened loop of the valley, we headed to Zao Noodle Bar at Kent Station for some warm noodles and cold malted-barley recovery beverage. A fair amount of the conversation centered on the tentative plans to take the GRR’s on a week-long tour of the Canadian Rockies in the summer of ‘08. As it turns out, Peter (cleverly costumed as a cyclist) announced that he had, in fact, spent some time driving tour buses through the very route we want to explore. His local knowledge should prove invaluable as we lay out the logistics of this trip.

10.7 miles for the night, 4,604 year-to-date.

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