Independance Day Charity Ride

I participated in a charity ride today that the Schlumberger Cycling Club held to raise money for disabled veterans. Their aim was to raise money to fund and promote physical and leisure/athletic activities that enhance the disabled veteran’s physical and emotional well-being. This is the first year they have done this and for a first time, it went pretty well. They had a lot to overcome.

First, its not easy to organize a ride like this. They had the Knights of Columbus (parking lot and hall facilities), the VFW (food and drink), the police and EMTs from the three counties and five towns we went through, the Mayor of Wallis (civic support) and the US Army who supplied an Apache helicopter, just for the heck of it (see attached picture). On top of that, they ended up scheduling the ride on the 1st of December since that was the earliest date that did not have a competing ride somewhere in the area. December is an "iffy" month at best here in Texas.

They had planned on getting about 300 riders. By 6PM the night before, they had already had 400 sign up on line and, because the weather looked good, there were at least another 100 walk-ins the day of the ride. In spite of this superabundance of participants, the support staff did fairly well.

The start was a bit chaotic. With so many riders trying to get out of an over packed parking lot, there were bound to be a few bumps and thumps. At least one whole row went down like dominoes when a guy on the left stopped and could not get out of his clips (bike shoes clip onto the pedals like ski boots clip on to skis for you non riders).

Then there was the Apache. You remember the army helicopter that was brought in for the heck of it. Someone had the bright idea that it could lead each wave of riders out of the parking lot and down the road to the first turn about a mile from the start. Two small problems. First, an attack helicopter is noisy. Really noisy. Having it hover directly over the starter meant that no one could hear anything that he said. They ended up having to do the entire start by hand gestures, including some that were not so polite aimed in the direction of the helo pilot.

The second problem is that a helicopter stays up by blasting massive amounts of air downward at a high velocity. Bikes don't stay upright if their riders are blasted sideways by those same massive amounts of air. Do you see the problem? Neither the organizers nor the Army did. The first wave of riders took off, the helo screamed down the road at treetop level and attack speed and more than one rider headed for the ditch. Then, having reached the turn a mile ahead in about 6 seconds, the helo turned around and blasted back down the road toward the group. I guess someone on the ground was in radio contact with him because he abruptly stopped, climbed about 400 feet and slowed down to a more leisurely pace.

As an aside, I wish to point out that this was a fully outfitted attack chopper, with a Gatling gun and rocket pods fully visible. I can imagine that any auto driver who saw that first pass coming at them down the middle of highway 1093 at 100 mph and 50 feet altitude now believes that the city of Wallis is very serious about traffic enforcement and that speeding violations will be dealt with most harshly.

Luckily, I was in the third group to move out so I got to be a spectator rather than a participant in that little drama. I elected to take the shorter (42 mile ride rather than the 60 or 104 mile routes primarily because of the 20 mph gusting wind and the fact that I had done a fairly intense biking spin class the previous day. The ride was nice and smooth with a bit of climb and drop ( just a bit since southeast Texas is FLAT!) on mostly country roads with very little traffic. The support volunteers had scrambled to get extra fruit and water for the higher than expected turnout. The one thing that they couldn't get on short notice was more porta-potties.

Those of you who ride know that the first 15 miles shakes the **** out of you and there is a higher than average need for relief at that first stop. Our first stop had one and only one porta-pottie. The line was huge. However, the wait was not as long as expected. Come to find that the organizers had placed said facility directly on top of a fire ants' nest and said ants had migrated into the cabin. Needless to say, no one wanted to sit and think in there for very long.

The remainder of the ride went well with enough riders of my skill level that we were able to form a pace line of sorts and help each other out with the wind which was from the side or the front quarter for the middle 15 miles. We saw several flocks of migratory geese taking off from the harvested corn fields, forming up vees and heading south for the winter. We went thru the first capital of the Republic of Texas (San Felipe). We pounded out the miles.

The last few miles were the hardest. We swung directly south into the teeth of the gale. The SAG crews from Schlumberger were great keeping tabs on the weaker riders and picking up the "empties" (those being the riders who had run out of gas and needed a ride back to their cars). I was proud that my gym work, spin classes and weekend riding had gotten me in good enough shape to cruse in with a 16 mph average for the entire ride. Not bad for an old man.

The ride ended with a sloppy joe on a bun, potato salad, cole slaw, and a diet Dr. Pepper. Who could ask for more. I even got a tee shirt. And I beat the rain out of the parking lot by a good 20 minutes. All in all, a good day. As a parting shot, let me leave you with a photo of a Texas golf cart, imported to the ride to help the disabled vets get around. I'm not sure that you will see these on every golf course in Texas but it is indicitive of the patriotic feelings of our fellow Texans.

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