Yesterday, in beautiful Weatherford, Texas, I did my 13th bike rally of the year and my 459th overall. The rally is known as the Peach Pedal, since Parker County, of which Weatherford is the seat, is peach country. The rally is part of the Peach Festival. (My friend Joe told me that the peach crop is poor this year. I don't know why.) I almost hate to say it, but yesterday's Peach Pedal was my 20th. I did my first Peach Pedal in 1990, just 10 months after moving to the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex from College Station. None of my vacations or Western bike tours conflicted with the Peach Pedal, as they did with other rallies.
Joe and his son Jason were scuba diving in the Florida Keys yesterday, so they couldn't attend. Several other home boys showed up, however: Phil, Randy, and Bryce. I also got to see Don and Donna, a married retired couple who love cycling. They're doing RAGBRAI next week. They're looking forward to the riding, but not so much to the camping. I think they'll enjoy the camping. When I did Pedal the Peaks in 1993 (New Mexico) and 1994 (Colorado), the camping was as much fun as the riding, and you know how much I like riding. I'll never forget rising in the middle of the night on a high-school football field in Taos, New Mexico. The field was covered with tents. It was frigid. The sky was clear and the stars seemed right on top of me. I finished my business and crawled back inside to resume sleeping.
It's been scorching hot in these parts. The official high temperature yesterday was 101º Fahrenheit. It was 82º when I woke up at 5:10, so it was probably close to 90º by the time we started riding at 7:30. It was also humid and windy. (I count it as windy in my cycling log when the average wind speed for the day is 10 miles per hour or higher. It was 10.1 miles per hour yesterday, with a maximum of 17.) Suffice it to say that we were in for a hot ride.
I had a ball. Randy told everyone that I had given him a lecture on Custer the week before, which I had. He said it put him asleep. It must have, because when I tested him on the material, he came up short. I repeated the portion that he missed, and then added a few details, such as that Captain Marcus Reno's Indian scout Bloody Knife was struck in the head with a rifle shot. Bloody Knife's brains splattered on Reno's face, which freaked him out and led to a panicked retreat across the Little Bighorn River. I will test Randy on this new material next week. He's getting senile, so he'll probably forget it.
The first 18 times I did the Peach Pedal, the course went in a counterclockwise direction. I knew every inch of the course, right down to the pebbles on the turns and the trees alongside the roads. For the past two years, the course has gone in a clockwise direction. I don't like this one bit. Why change something that wasn't broken? Who's running this rally, anyway: Barack Obama? Change. Hope. Yes We Can. Phooey. Leave things alone! Sixteen years from now, when I have finally gotten used to the new course, they'll go back to the old one. Mark my words.
All seriousness (I mean silliness) aside, we had fun and stayed safe. Bryce has new tires on his bike, so he got to ride with us the entire way. You may recall that he blew a tube in Italy. He was riding on tattered tires. Randy rode well for a decrepit old man, while Phil struggled mightily to keep up with us. If he weren't vacationing with his wife Jean so often, he'd be in good enough shape to take a pull every once in a while. I'm tired of having him suck my wheel. He even stole a PowerGel from me. While at the start, I pulled the course map out of my jersey pocket to show Donna the course. I must have pulled my PowerGel out as well. Later, I couldn't find the PowerGel. Phil said he had found one lying on the ground at the start and handed it to me. It was mine! He'll probably say that he didn't see it come out of my jersey. Right. With friends like this, who needs enemies?
A year ago, on the same course, in almost identical weather conditions (it was one degree hotter), I averaged 17.81 miles per hour. Yesterday, I averaged 17.86 miles per hour (for 60.8 miles). (Elapsed time = 3:24:14.) I guess that one degree made the difference in speed. My maximum heart rate was 156, which is good, but my average heart rate was only 113. That shows that I didn't work very hard. My highest average heart rate in a bike rally is 132. See the price I pay for riding with my home boys? They are albatrosses around my neck. They are a ball and chain on my ankle. They are sacks of potatoes on my back. They are vermin!
The good news is that I burned 1,703 calories. That meant that I could eat with my vermin (I mean home boys) at the nearby On the Border restaurant. It took 30 minutes to drive the two miles to the restaurant because of a traffic jam along Interstate 20, but it was well worth it. I ate my fill and enjoyed talking about the rally and other things (though not Custer). The highlight of the meal was listening to Bryce, a self-proclaimed lifelong conservative, explain why he voted for Barack Obama. I was aghast. He said he can't stand Sarah Palin. I told him that I voted for Sarah Palin. She is the brightest star in the political firmament, and a future president. I think Bryce knows he did wrong. He will make it right in 2012 by voting for Sarah.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 