despite my best efforts I could never find out what the L, A, T, and E stood for in the friends of the park L.A.T.E. Ride, but now after completing it despite my best efforts to enjoy it I'm pretty sure it stands for Lame, Annoying, Thoroughly Elbow-to-Elbow Ride.
we started with the best of intentions....psyched on the el, crowding the car with our bikes and not understanding why people didnt feel compelled to go through the OTHER set of doors when we were clearly in the way.
pictures from this when CLAIRES finally posts her pics.
we navigated through the crowds when we arrived and found an empty-ish spot to decorate our bikes, our helmets, and ourselves for our adventure.
we stood in the massive group of people waiting to start, mentally preparing for the crowd that would be at the beginning of the ride....something like 2000 people starting a ride at one time when there were already 2000 in front of them and another 5000 behind....this was going packed...but we assumed this would spread out eventually....right? (we could only hope)
WRONG.
three miles in and probably a half hour later we were still elbow-to-elbow attempting to ride down the road. by this point we'd probably passed the 10 pile bike pile up with was reportedly bloody. by this point I'd also probably had to tell the people who stopped in the middle of the road waiting for their friends who got stuck at the red light and who hadn't mastered the idea of inertia and how they'd need some time to start their bikes, leaving me to nearly run into them that they need to watch before they pull out in front of people.
12.5 miles in and an hour and 45 min after the start, after watching a cyclist (who was on the wrong side of the road and ran a stop sign) get hit by a car and then proceed to yell at the car driver about how he was riding his bike, we reached the rest stop, where we hoped for our $45 there would be some water and nourishment. WRONG again. there was mint water (GROSS), bananas, and some life savers. the cliff bars were apparently gone...the people in front of us must have taken more than one...WHAT there were 7000 people behind us...DONT RUN OUT OF FOOD. DON'T SERVE ME GROSS WATER WHEN I NEED TO BE HYDRATED.
the last half of the ride was better. along the lake in the dark, where I'd try to pass swerving people hoping I didnt have to swerve myself and end up in the lake. but at least there was the delish all I could eat pancake breakfast waiting for me when I finished and for split seconds I got to just ride.
Delish pancake breakfast I paid $7 extra for...this should be good.
WRONG AGAIN!
pancakes were good...but that was all there was. nothing to drink (REALLY are they TRYING for me to pass out from dehydration????), no fruit, no protein, and then we had to stand in line again to get the with-ride breakfast....they couldnt have brought some of those bags down? At least we're still smilin' because if there's any one we like to have times with (not good times or bad times, just times) it's each other.
we were supposed to stay for the sunrise. it was 4 am. the sun rose at 5:30. our arms hurt (not our legs because we gripped the brakes more than we peddled). our butts hurt (because it took us about an hour longer than any 25 mile ride should take and we weren't prepared). our tummies and heads hurt (because we had no more water after finishing our own). and so we lugged our bikes back to the el.
nick and I did catch the sunrise in evanston.
and we weren't the only ones who bailed on the ride and came up to watch it closer to home.
in summary:
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