10th ride - 5/14/15

 Enjoying our splendid stretch of spring weather, I outdid yesterday's "longest ride to date" by going slightly farther today. I had intended to ride down to Weller's in Saline; but when I discovered that the sidewalk ended a few hundred feet short of there, I quickly redid my plans on the fly in order to maintain my goal of staying off-road for now. But I was still able to do a ride of 15.6 miles, in 1 hour and 42 minutes.

Despite the sunshine, it remained cool, so I wore a sort of silly, incongruous outfit - a hoodie combined with shorts! My hoodie was a treasure I was delighted to find on Facebook a couple of years ago: "Team Allen: Lifetime Member."

Today's "adventure" quotient happened right near the beginning of the ride. When I assembled the trike after returning from Dearborn last evening, I was evidently in too much of a hurry to get in and see how the Tigers were doing, as I neglected to secure the center folding joint securely. As I was riding down on the hill on the sidewalk beside Lohr Rd., on a broad, unpopulated stretch, the joint collapsed, so that the trike began to fold up on me (while I was sitting on it). However, this did not cause any serious problem. I was able to dismount and fix the joint securely. As I rode on, however, I did notice that I had evidently failed to tighten the seat clamp securely, as it swayed like I was in a hammock. But I had not brought the L wrench with me, and so could do nothing but ride carefully.

As I headed southward on the Lohr-Textile Greenway, the combination of the folding incident and the swaying of my seat made me rethink my plans to do such a long ride, and I thought I'd pop in to see my friends the Granums instead and show them my new wheels. When I passed Tom, who was riding northward on the path, I took it as an encouraging sign of my chances of finding Doris at home. However, once again I missed her, as I did earlier this week.

One other significant thing about today's ride was that it put me over the 100-mile plateau for the year, since restarting. I hope this is just the first of many such milestones I'll reach this year. In 2013, when I was riding so much, I did over 1800 miles between March and September. But it's a whole new ballgame now!

Finally, after the ride, I was just entering our condo building when I came across our neighbor and friend, Kim McKenzie, out on her patio. I was coming in with my laptop, which I had left in the car trunk during my ride, so was able to have a nice visit with Kim.