PartnerMD is On the Night Shift

We transitioned with the Roo Crew, who thankfully had a much better day than they had the day before. We hoped to get a bit beyond Roanoke to make up for the loss of time the previous day. Everybody rode well. We have a wonderful team, and I feel privileged to be part of Team PartnerMD. All of my team mates are strong riders, and we get along very well. We have different sets of skills that go well together to cover almost any challenge. Also, we have been blessed with excellent weather and only a moderate amount of climbing so far. None of our climbs have been particularly steep or excessively long, and they are interspersed with long descents. I’m gaining some confidence on the descents, or at least I was until the herds of deer began crossing the road in front of at twilight. To think, I thought hitting a large dog was bad! I don’t even want to consider what would happen if one of us collided with a deer on a descent. We made good time with Scott in the lead much of the way. Will stayed back and looked out for me on the long descents so that we didn’t get too badly separated.  While it was still light,  I tried climbing ahead on some of the longer climbs so that I could get a bit of a head start on the descent and not slow them quite so much. The ride was peaceful and not particularly eventful, although we interrupted a little copperhead crossing the road. I didn’t stop to ask him why he was crossing. I yelled “Snake, poisonous snake!” back at the rest of the group, and heard, “What? Oh, SNAKE!” from Will, who was just behind me. The trickiest time to ride is “in the gloaming,” that time when the sun has dropped below the horizon, but it is not yet properly dark. Once it’s dark, I feel energized! About 3 hours into the ride, Kim’s light flickered out. We rode a bit more closely grouped after that, but we separated just enough that she couldn’t see the expansion joint on the bridge about 45 minutes before the end of our shift. She hit it quite hard, badly damaging a carbon fiber wheel, but she managed to stay upright. I’m grateful that the only thing broken was her wallet, although that is bad enough. About 20 minutes later, Will hit a deep pothole and I heard the clang of his tire hitting some metallic road debris, so I dodged toward the center line and thankfully missed the obstacle. A few seconds later, I heard his tire deflate rather dramatically, and he joined Kim in the van. Scott and I rode on for a few miles, and his light flickered out as well. We didn’t have far to go, so we carried on over the badly pock-marked road until the end of the shift, loaded up our gear, and headed off to the hotel. Jamie’s wife, Lynn, donated all of her frequent flyer miles to book us several rooms at the Hilton, a real treat after a long day in the saddle. Sam worked her magic yet again, and Jamie ordered us a pizza for dinner and had it waiting for us. We don’t ride again for 24 hours, so we will have plenty of time to rest and do all of our sweaty laundry before our next shift, Tuesday morning at 6am. We stopped at a nice little bike shop in Roanoke on Monday morning to repair/replace the damaged parts on Kim and Will’s bikes, and I bought another extra light to be sure that we are not caught out like that again. I’m off duty, and I want to stay that way! Seriously, I hate to see injuries that could easily have been prevented with a little bit of planning and a $20 light. I’ve seen far too much in my line of business not to think that way, and I love my team like family.