Best Ride This Year

I was not looking forward to today's ride. Yesterday I absolutely soaked walking errands on my way home (and was almost openly laughed at in Solly's I was such a drowned rat!) and had had enough of being wet. This morning I was up early and caught enough of the news to hear about the heavy rainfall warning twice. Not good at all.

I finally got out the door and was grumbling to myself about the rain for about five minutes. Then I stopped. Something was wrong, like some key element was missing. That element turned out to be rain. Yup, there I was grumbling about biking in the rain and there was none!

I met up with Joanne, who was so warm she'd had to take off her jacket. We met more of the group at the Aquatic Centre: Team Pink made a surprise appearance (kudos for braving the rain), Stan showed up and we came across Deb totally by coincidence so we took her with us too.

It was a great ride - through Stanley Park and partway along Marine Drive - we turned around before it got seriously twisty and hilly. It didn't start to dump with rain until we were at Park Royal, by which time it was too late to do anything other than keep biking so it wasn't a major issue.

All round it was a great ride. Amy & Brian hadn't seen my "happy puppy" back fender and were quite amused by it. The new drive train was great and it works well on hills, the Porspect Point Hill was definitely far easier. The best part of the ride, however, was on the return journey through Stanley Park. We were about 500m past Second Beach Park and we saw a wonderful vision - a barrista standing on the corner with a tray of coffee. It turned out the vision was reality - it was a barrista, it was a tray of coffee and, best of all, the coffee was free and just for us.

Best. Thing. Ever.

Joanne shot-gunned hers while the rest of us merely gulped.

A great ride and a fun time had by all.

The stats:
time: 2:55ish (had some timing issues)
distance: 46kmish (had some bike computer issues)

Post ride run:
20:57 min

Core/physio work:
12 min