Tour du Rouge - Day 2

After riding for the longest distance yet, I was pleasantly surprised that I felt as good as I did this morning. We had a great breakfast, dropped our bags at the baggage truck and attended the safety meeting.

Then it was off to the races for some, while a select few of us, who later in the day dubbed ourselves the "Six-Pack" settled into a cordial and leisurely pace. This is, after all, a tour and not a race. I settled into my now growing more familiar role as a "sweeper". The members of our group are Tim and David King, Jeff and Christine Carek and Carla Jennings.

We had an interesting day starting with the Pleasure Island Bridge. Carla and I went up last, she on her mountain bike and me on my Fuji. I was using the little ring/big ring combination to take the tall bridge. As soon as I hit the top, I went to shift to the big front ring and dropped the chain. That was embarrassing. I got it remounted on the front sprocket and flew down the other side. The next bridge over the Sabine River was not as difficult, but Tim broke a spoke on his rear wheel on the way over. That was something to watch from behind as his rear wheel wobbled all the way down the bridge. We had the ERV chase vehicle behind us that stopped and called one of the trusty Bike Barn mechanics back to our location for a quick repair. Have I mentioned that support on this ride has been stellar?



We had lunch at the Apache Gas Plant office on Holly Beach. Great lunch of spicy smoked sausage links. At that point (mile 55), we said goodbye to Carla for the day as her mountain bike as not geared for the long distances that we were traveling.

Shortly after, we made the turn north on Hwy 27 and got a tailwind. We were able to make about 22 mph for a while until I cramped up and had to ride the SAG wagon for about 5 miles to the last rest stop in Hackberry. My cramp issues solved by a copious amount of water, Gaterade, and a couple of nutritious snacks, we picked up a new member for our six-pack, Rebecca.

About 8 miles out of the rest stop we came to our last bridge. Someone asked me if I was going to stay on the top ring. I did. Seems like I flew by everyone ascending and descending the bridge. I later looked at my ride log and it looked like I was doing better than 40 at that point. One thing I like to do when I can get gravity's help to build that kind of momentum is to keep it. I just kept cranking and it seemed that those last 10 miles or so flew by. The crew said that I was there one minute and a dot on the horizon the next. Jeff said, "We ain't going to catch him!"

I finished about 5 minutes ahead of the group, ready for a rest.