A ride in the Sun

So since I skipped my ride yesterday to let my legs rest from the weekends worth of races, I decided to get out this afternoon and get in some miles. The plan was to go down to Mellow Johnny's bike shop, more correctly Lance Armstrong's bike shop here in Austin and get in their ride.
On Tuesday nights there is a ride called the "Tuesday Nighter", imagine that. Its been going on for better than 20+ years and has a cult following around this part of Texas. In the old days it wasn't uncommon to have Lance himself show up and ride. It really is an unsanctioned race that can draw 60-100 racers of all abilities to throw down against each other on an old country road in South East Austin. But like all things in Austin, growth has changed the ride.
In the past few years housing developments and commercial developments have made the roads that are used to race on much more friendly to cars, than the bicycles that show up to attempt the race.
Well since I have never done a "Tuesday Nighter" and a few of the guys on my race team were going out to do it, I figured I would go see what all the fuss was about.
Since the traffic in Austin SUCKS! And it really SUCKS anywhere around 5 pm, I decided to head down to my favorite bike shop in town, Austin Bikes, around 3pm to beat the traffic.
Austin Bikes is a cool little shop on 5th street in downtown Austin, and since it is only a few blocks from Mellow Johnny's it was a great place to go waste some time with Sol and his crew before the 5pm ride start.
Sol or really Soloman Frost, man what a cool name, is a professional cyclist who raced in Spain for a while and came back to Austin and opened up a neat little bike shop. He carries mostly mid to high end bikes, out of my price range for sure, but the guys that work at his shop are such nice guys and Sol is about the nicest guy you will ever meet in your life, anytime I have a chance to visit I will. I always leave Austin Bikes in a great mood!
So I stop by and mention that I am going to try the Tuesday Nighter out finally. Well I thought I was.
Sol and Scott, another great guy who besides working at the shop is also is a top bike racer in Austin, proceed to tell me about how the ride has really become a dangerous event and that they would probably never ride it again. Well if two professionals say its dangerous then that's enough for me. I have no reason to go out chance it. So I call the guys up and tell them I am skipping the ride.
Well since the traffic will be terrible if I try and head home and my wife works downtown, I call her up and we meet at a burger joint called Phil's Icehouse for a great burger and fries. So we visit a little after the burger and my wife says she is going to go shopping for awhile, which means she might get home by midnight if the store closes and kicks her out. Since I know of another ride in town tonight I head over to join that ride so I can burn of the massive meal I just consumed.
This ride is a hill ride which means we go find some really steep hills in West Austin and ride one after another until you can hardly turn the pedals around. I did it last week and it is a lot of fun, well parts of it are. So we head out and hit the first few hills and I start feeling like I probably should have skipped the food before the ride, although it was nice to re-taste the meal I just finished. It was like having 2 burgers tonight.
Well the ride went good and we had about 10 riders show up which was a nice size for a hill ride. I hammered up a few of them and ground my way up the hardest, Ladera Norte and it was nice to get out and ride after the day off Monday.
I guess I'll get some miles in tomorrow and then get ready for the races on Thursday night.
That's when all of Austin shows up to race at the Driveway. The best weekly race in America!