Bagels, Travel, Then Bikes, and some Karma

Realizing that my writings have been lacking in the areas of bagels I deemed it necessary to include a picture of my brunch from Saturday morning. A fantastic egg, cheese, and bacon sandwich on a bagel. In fact, touching upon the themes for which this blog is named in reverse order, I had traveled to New York City early Saturday morning with Pat and Sam to check out the Summer Streets event. Essentially, the city has closed Park Ave., 4^th Ave., and Lafayette St. to all motorized vehicular traffic in a route from 72^nd St. to the Brooklyn Bridge. The event allows people to wander down the street, run, bike, or do other things without being worried about getting hit by some maniac driver doing mach 2. The streets were absolutely filled with people, a lot of them running or cycling. There were some organized events going on as well, some performers, some exercise classes, and some people drawing on the street with chalk. The event was really good to see, I hope they decide to run such an event more often. All tolled, we walked over 7 miles that morning without worrying about traffic, but for a few cross streets, and even then we followed the light pattern. I took a few pictures too, view them here.

Oh, and in case you're wondering where to get such a sandwich, I got it at place on the corner of Lafayette and Duane.

Sunday included some more regional travel, to Keene, NH. The Root 66 race series is winding down and I was in the mood for a good bike ride in the woods someplace different so I headed north. You may recall a post some time ago about karma working its way around. Well I pretty sure I had some coming my way after deceiving my fellow competitor at the 24 hours of Great Glen, and it found me.

The race started off well, no one shot off the front too incredibly fast so I managed to keep my competition in check relatively easily. About a half mile into the race while cruising on some paved road heading for what would be a monstrous dirt road and atv trail climb my pedal decided to separate itself from my crank arm. I'm a bit baffled as to how it happened and there is really no excuse for such a failure but it happened. Darn Karma.

Without panic I pulled over to the side of the road and twisted the pedal off the bottom of my shoe then began to thread it back into the crank. I pulled out my multi tool and the emergency pedal wrench on it, tightening the pedal as best I could. I hopped back on the bike, conceding that I was simply out for a bike ride at this point. The course had a lot of climbing though, favoring me a lot, and as such I started to reel people in on the climb. I was truly only in competition with the 4 other guys in my age category, but it was nice to catch back up to people. Before long though I had caught and passed to guys in my class. Then I saw another one, and before long I'd passed him and was riding with first place. We rode together, one two, for a little while. At one point he got sent off on the wrong path due to a near crash by me. Feeling like I'd had enough karma circling back to me I slowed up and waited for him to get back on course and we continued together for a little while. The course pitched up again though and I pulled away. The last 2 miles were on a hard pack gravel rail trail, very fast. I'd caught a guy from an older age group at the start of it and we began trading back and forth allowing the other to draft. We were really cruising into the finish, I managed a 1^st place. The ride was a lot of fun, and it was really good to ride with a few different guys for extended lengths.