bailin' on the long ride

 At 71, I've developed a number of those thousand shocks that flesh is heir to, as my ol' pal Bill put it, and a number of the medications I now take reduce my strength and stamina, so I haven't been doing rides longer than about 30 miles... and most of 'em have been much shorter than that.

But friend Ricky G saw a ride that Laura OLPH had posted, and noted that it was routed right past both our houses. He's also not been riding the way he once had, and he had an Idea. 

Ricky said something to the effect of, "Look, the ride is 40-plus miles. But how about I drive both our bikes to the start, and you and I can do the ride up to near home... and if we feel like bailing at that point, we can get in your car, and you can drive me to the start so I can get my car?"

Well, that sounded just the ticket. Ricky went on to say that we might feel like we could do the whole thing, and we wouldn't have to decide to do anything about it until we were actually on the ride.

It sounded good to me. We signed up, and Ricky brought me to Mercer East lot, the ride start, this morning.

 We ran into Marty and Bobbi, doing their own ride from there.

 A number of the folks I used to ride with regularly were there, and it was good to see them and ride with them again (Tom H, Laura [of course], Eric H, and others). But, first, the route wouldn't load into my GPS (there may have been something wonky about the way the route downloaded). And then the pace was faster than I could maintain, although I did reasonably well for the first twenty miles or so.

By the time we were a few miles away from the stop at about mile 30, I was cooked. I told Ricky I was planning to bail at the stop, the way we'd planned. Ricky agreed, initially.

We stopped at James Brew, the local cafe, to which I should give more business than I do.

 After the stop, though, Ricky decided he was going to do the distance. I thought about it for less than a flash, but I knew I was done, and went home.

Ricky has been referring to my getting to the top of Cadillac Mountain before he did when we were in Maine (the story of the ride is about halfway down the linked post). I told him after the ride that I may have done the climb, but he did the distance.