Flash - Tour de Fat Ass

I know I posted this last minute so I wasn't expecting a lot of turnout. This morning when I woke up to a the steady falling of water droplets I knew 'Rain No Train' Jackson probably wouldn't be showing up at Mile 0. He was the only one who had posted expressing interest but I figured I would pop by Stanley Park on the way to Cypress in case someone decided to show up. I don't know who would be stupid enough to want to go ripping down mountains at 75 km/h in the pouring rain other than me though. I stopped for a couple of minutes at Mile 0 and when I didn't see anyone I headed off down Park Drive. The ride through the park was nice and flat for a warmup even though I was soaked before I had even got there despite a cycling rain jacket and water resistant booties. After crossing the bridge, I saw a new cycling lane that had been completed, and having been used of being on the other side followed the sign to West Vancouver rather than North Vancouver. After a bit of a detour I found my way up to the other side of the highway and headed to the Cypress Bowl turnoff. The weather began to worsen, and its funny since its August but I thought to myself that the second I saw anything that even resembled snow in the mountains above me I would get the hell out of there. It wasn't quite that bad but it definitely got worse and worse the higher I went, mostly just due to lower temperature and much worse wind conditions. The KM signs ticked away slowly especially when I would come around the corner to be hit by crazy blasts of wind that always seemed to come at me head on. I was shivering despite climbing steadily for some time and wearing a thermal long sleeve cycling jersey under my rain jacket. I swear it said the altitude was 675 metres on the mapping website I used but the brown posts kept going until 885 or so. Finally it flattened out and I could see some power lines, then some ski slopes, then the parking lot. Normally I would have been raring to rip back down the hill but I was shivering badly, and I wasn't going to be pedalling much for some time, so I decided to stop in the ski resort wahsroom and warm up for a few minutes. After a couple minutes I decided there was no time like the present and headed back down. It is the first time I have been able to ride this bike I recently bought off my sister (a titanium-frame Quintana Roo Ti-Phoon with the aero bars and all that) on a long downhill and even with the weather conditions it was a blast. There was no traffic due to the weather so I was able to just go in the middle of the lane and go full out. When I recently did a 1/2 iron distance triathlon on a hilly course I borrowed a road bike and I noticed that although I passed well over a hundred people on the bike, on the downhills despite pedalling my ass off I was getting passed by people with the aero bars who weren't even pedalling. By the time I reached the bottom I was shivering with frozen hands and feet, so I decided to skip the climb up Seymour for today and save that for a day with better weather. So if anyone wants to do this, or a portion of, before there's snow up there let me know. I am trying to get out for a long ride once a week.

Hey Ryan, My fat ass has not felt the hard leather of my road bike seat yet this year. According to my new years resolutions (ride at least once a week), I'm a bit, uh, behind on my goals. The triathlon in the Olympics have inspired me. No way I'll be able to keep up to you for the whole 125K, but will aim to meet you for at least the first bit and one hill (Cypress). I'm out if the weather is crappy 'cause I hate to clean my bike.