2023 Blazing Saddles: No Soup For You!

Ever have a fun event end on a bitter note that just colors the whole experience?  Sadly, looks like the 2023 edition of the North Shore Cyclists' Blazing Saddles Century falls into that category for me.  

It's a pity since it was overall an amazing ride.  The weather was just about perfect.  I got to ride with a couple friends who bagged their first ever century rides.  The views were often jaw droppingly beautiful.  The support on the road was very good with well stocked pit stops.  

Big Sky Country. In Massachusetts.

I woke up well ahead of my 5 AM alarm.  This meant I had plenty of time to enjoy the potato, egg, and cheese frittata I had made the night before.  My friends texted me, so I knew everyone was up.  No stress there.  Jay and Richard were up and ready.

I got out on time & finished picking up my friends and their bikes by 6:45.  Traffic was light so we got to the start right on time.  After completing our registration we hit the road.  It was just a bit chilly, but the day promised to warm up nicely.  I decided to leave my jacket, arm warmers, and knee warmers behind in the car.  Fortunately, it worked out.  The weather was pretty much perfect the whole day.  

A whacky guy in a pickup yelled at us "you have to follow the rules of the road!".  Uh, OK.  No idea why he was so upset, but whatever.  The great thing was I think this was the sole hostile interaction with a driver all day.  So, we got that out of the way.

Early AM selfie with Jay in the background

For a while we rode with a woman named Megan who was with the CRW.  We also rode with an Israeli guy named Roy (no, not Ro'i).  I got to practice my Hebrew and he got to try to convince me to do a 5:30 AM weekly ride out of Newton, MA.  LOL.

After a somewhat longish 27 miles we got to the first pit stop.  Among the wide selection of food was peanut butter and nutella sandwiches.  Outstanding.  I also made sure to slug down a full water bottle during our brief break.

A little after this I made a wrong turn, but everyone quickly and loudly corrected me.  The 100 mile route split away from the rest of the routes (80,60,50, and 20).

The route. 

That was the only wrong turn for the day.  The arrowing was just that good.  Also Richard had the route on his Wahoo and Jay was keeping a close eye on the printed cue sheet.

Shortly thereafter we ran across a field with BISON.  

Bison. Kind of Amazing.

I'm not sure if this is a new thing or if I've just zipped past the bison without noticing them in previous years.

Riding so early on a Saturday combined with the rural nature of the roads really meant for a lot of car free miles in the first part of the ride.  It was just gorgeous.

The Merrimack River

Jay hadn't had an effective amount of caffeine yet, so I gave him one of my Forto coffee shots.  Good stuff.

Jay and Richard on one of those very quiet rural roads.

Around mile 50 some guy just popped out of nowhere calling out "we've done 50 miles! We're halfway done!"  And then he kind of disappeared for a bit.  I said to Jay, "where did he come from and where did he go?".  As the guys know, this kind of obsessive out loud tracking of miles and such gets under my skin on a long ride.  Yeah, we're all keeping track, but let's try to look up and enjoy ourselves?  Well, that's my idea anyway.  As it turned out Cotton Eyed Joe's name was Michael.  When I reviewed photos from the start he was in the background, so he must have been just behind us all day.  At the next pit I invited him to ride with us -- and he did for the rest of the ride!  I also saw Megan -- who turned out not to be Megan, but rather Maria!

She looked so much like Megan that both Jay and Richard also thought it was the same woman.  I invited her to ride with us, but she still needed to spend some more time in the pit.  It's nice to ride with a group.  100 miles on your own can make for a very very long day.  I've certainly done that enough.

Richard at pit 2

Jay and me at pit 2. Kind of a mystery why I didn't have watermelon all day.

The stretch between pit 2 and pit 3 is kind of long.  In 2022 it had been a pretty hot day and I had drained both my water bottles.  This year it was cool enough that two bottles was more than enough to have on the frame all day.  There's also the gorgeous stretch out on a peninsula and a marsh that are some of my absolute favorite places to ride.

That's Michael behind Jay. He stuck with us the rest of the ride.

The tidal marsh in the background.

Perfect stretch of road or perfect stretch of road? You decide.

After the section in the marsh heading out to the peninsula traffic gets a bit heavier.  We also passed the "Global War on Terror Memorial Bridge".  Personally, I preferred calling it The "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism" or GSAVE.  Of course these days charity begins at home.  And inexplicably I didn't get a photo of the bridge's name.  Something for next year I guess.

Three time soap box derby champion Ronnie Beck says poorly guarded construction sites are a gold mine. They may also have clean porta-poties.

Where ever you go, there you are.

Next time get closer to get the photo of the puppy in the backpack

Coming off the peninsula we headed back the way we came into the teeth of a tough headwind.  I actually got down in the drops for a bit here to push hard.  Pretty stupid of me, for several reasons.

Deer hanging out in the pit

In addition to energy bars, pretzels, sandwiches, water, gatorade, pickle juice, etc. the pits also had coffee!  I was psyched.

After mile 70 Jay was in PR territory.  After mile 94 Richard was in PR territory.  Stupidly, I didn't get a photo of Jay setting his new PR, but I did remember to do that for Richard.

Richard riding with Michael bagging his PR passing mile 94.

It may have been mile 94, but we still had a bit of a ways to go.  Nine miles, to be exact.  I turned on some music for the first time all day.  We had sort of quieted down a bit (perhaps due to some stupidity on my part, but whatever).

We did talk a bit about our excitement for the much ballyhooed post ride picnic now with more vegetarian options.  I always liked having a veggie dog or two.

Finally, after a couple turns and an annoying small climb, we got to the finish.

All smiles at the finish. Jay in the background asking about the vegetarian food

At this point I may be smiling, but I'm really angry.

103 miles in the bag.  A gorgeous and fun ride.  Perfect weather.  And now to enjoy... wait.  What?  There's no vegetarian food at all ("uh, you can have a tomato").  They were out of pizza and they didn't have veggie hot dogs.  With something like 45 minutes left they didn't order more.  There was no food for us.  I was livid.  It's probably a good thing I've waited a few days to write this up, because damn the day off I was ticked off.  OK, I'm still not happy about it.  Delivering pizza is one of the things we do extremely well here in the United States.  All they had to do was pick up the phone and get some more pies delivered.  Oh well.  Lesson learned.  Great ride.  Excellent support until the end.  Bring some extra food for the finish in case the North Shore Cyclists decide to screw you over.

North Shore Cyclists Club to vegetarian cyclists