Thursday, September 11, 2008

I am holier than the dirtbag I rode with on Central yesterday

As I entered Central Expressway last night, I saw a guy up ahead also merging on from the next road up. Road bike, cycling gear. I watched his tempo for a bit and decided it would be worth catching him and either soothing my ego by donating a pull, or soothing my legs by getting a pull from him. I caught up relatively quickly, sat in for 15 seconds or so, and went around.

I set a pace just a tiny bit above what he was riding and started to monitor the situation. He had pulled into my draft, and looked to be doing fine. So I picked it up a bit. On the overpass at Wolfe he started to yo-yo a bit so I dialed it back and got him back into the draft.

At Mathilda, there is an entrance onto Central that is downhill perpendicular to Central and then an abrupt right into the merge lane. I spotted a guy on a Japanese crotch rocket motorcycle gunning it down the hill and predicted he would try to ricky-racer the turn and then try to hole-shot right past me onto Central. I wanted no part of that and sat up a bit to assess the situation. The Motorcyclist did the same. As we slowed and watched each other, the guy who had been in my draft for the past four miles ATTACKED. I let the motorcyclist by and tried to get my legs moving again, but now I was chasing a very fresh rabbit into a headwind. Then the bastard LOOKED ME OFF. This pissed me off to no end, but no matter how I might dump this guy in a time trial he had just enjoyed a 4 mile picnic on my rear wheel and it was going to take some time to catch him. Just as I was closing in to about 15 yards...



The dreaded light rail. The gate was coming down as he approached and he skirted by it, and I was stuck behind it. And this guy was not going to be penalized for his Leif Hoste-esque maneuver.

Suffice to say if I see this turkey again I will not let him suck my wheel...

1 comment:

Frank Irwin said...

I hate the LOOK OFF. I was riding with a couple of teammates, and stayed back with the slower one. The other guy went ahead, and when he was halfway up the hill that we were just starting, he looked back. I could not let him take the hill, and I succeeded.

He did not do that on the next ride, which was a good thing, because I didn't have it in me to catch him, that time. :-)