Weekly Beatdown

This weeks beatdown sucked. Now that I'm getting acclimated to the warm weather, 51 degrees feels too cool to ride to work in, so I didn't do any of that. No warm up. I didn't flat on the way over though, so I guess that was good. I dropped my chain on the roll out, got stuck at the back, and yo-yo'ed for ten miles. There was just nothing I could do to move up. The group was moving faster than most of them could handle. Everybody was panicky. I rode through a hole that yanked the bars out of my hands. On Sawnee Mountain I got boxed in and blew up trying to catch the break heading back into town. I tried dropping back, but there was gravel on the road and the group was so far back I couldn't even see them. I had to climb the big rollers by myself and when they caught me I was really blown. I moved to the left, kicked it up to ease back into the group, but they were riding all the way across the road and gave me all kinds of grief for riding on the left.

Somebody's got to clue me in. If you're in a group ride in the US and you need to fall back into the group, do you pull to the right or left? I've always pulled over on the left, let the group, which generally keeps to the right, roll by and eased on in. That's what I've seen others do. It doesn't seem right to pull to the right and make everybody go around. But, maybe I'm missing something.