Silk Sheets

My cousin Beau Landry was in town this past weekend. Technically he's my brother's brother-in-law, but we're both from Louisiana and in Louisiana, every distant family member, even by marriage, that doesn't have an obvious designation like aunt or uncle, is a cousin. So he's my cousin :) He came up for the weekend to visit my brother's family and given that he rides both road and mountain bikes, he brought them with him, and we rode the Silk Sheets.

The Silk Sheets is a hundred miles of smooth rolling pavement on the backroads of quiet Georgia hill country. (we only rode 50)

It was a nice day...



...but a little cold, 42 degrees I think. The first cold ride of the year.

Beau.



Represent.



BOR's.



Lots of BOR jerseys in Douglasville. The shop's closed but we still wear the kits.

We parked at a church at the beginning of the route. A really sweet elderly lady came out to let us know that next Saturday there would be an event at the church and we'd have to park somewhere else, but that we were welcome today and every other day. In 40 degree weather, she was wearing house clothes, and walked a long way, taking very short, very labored steps to get to the parking lot. I love meeting people like that. I hope when I'm her age, I'm as sweet as her, and also as hard.

The loop itself was tougher than I remembered. It's like 3 millions hills in a row. I had it, but it wasn't easy. And the cold sucked. I never got warmed up and my lungs hurt. Beau was struggling too. He's strong, but there's a lot of technique to riding rollers, and not too many hills in Louisiana. He did know how to ride a crosswind though, which nobody in Georgia knows how to do.



I had to get to Isabel's gym meet for 2:30, so about 10 miles from the end Jake and I took off ahead. Jake is strong though, and he put the wood to me without even trying. Worse, John and Beau showed up about 10 minutes after us. I could have just cruised in and still made it. Ehh, no pain, no gain. Hopefully I've got my winter lungs now, the Swank's coming up.