9/10

When is a century ride not a century ride? When you're too dumb to look at the map. Or the route isn't clearly labeled. Or both.

For those who aren't familiar with organized bike rides, road bike routes are often marked using labels known as "Dan Henrys", which are named after their inventor. Basically they're just circles with lines in them painted directly onto the road surface, and they're pretty self explanatory. They look like this:

If you are looking for them, they are everywhere; you'll come across them on almost any decent length bike ramble. If you are assuming they would be pretty easy to follow, you're right. Saturday we should have been riding in dunce helmets, because when we hit mile 90, we looked up and realized we were back at the start of our loop.

We first wondered if it was possible that the route wasn't actually 100 miles, then tried to figure out where we had missed a 10 mile loop. What we didn't do was get back on our bikes and ride 5 miles out and back. Once you're done with a long ride and off the bike for good, you really don't have a lot of desire to get back on. In the end we just shrugged our shoulders and went home. Looking at the map now, we think we missed a loop right after the final rest stop.

We won't be back to the Wabash River Cycle Club and Columbian Park Zoo Century Ride next year. While is was by no means a bad experience, it wasn't exactly a great one, either. My riding partner was surprised and frustrated with the amount of hills, and we were both a bit confused about the choice of roads (not exactly the smoothest choices). I understand that in order to make a 100 mile loop you often have to pick some roads that aren't the best, and I don't like to make excuses on the bike. It was a fine experience, I just think that perhaps there are better options in organized century choices. Oh well.

As an aside, I'd just like to know where the young people are on these rides. It's not very often I see someone my age or younger, which also means I can forget about seeing any young attractive ladies. Everyone likes young attractive ladies.

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Fulham won 1-0 this weekend on a goal by Jimmy Bullard. Mr. Bullard is leading the team in goals with 2. This was Fulham's first win this year.

Real Salt Lake were destroyed in New York/New Jersey by a score of 6-0. They were probably due, having not lost in 5 games. Hopefully they'll shake it off and resume their push to the playoffs.

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Thanks for the comments and vacation suggestions, everyone. I'm still kicking around a few things, so if you have any other ideas, let me know.