Writers Note: Yes, I have moved. It was great posting at Cajun Cyclist but Alex asked for me to post here…so here I am. Figured it would not over load their site with my dribble. Before anyone ask, no I do not use Jed as my endurance trainer (but would if I could) so this is just merely entertainment for his site. This post is meant to be light-hearted and fun. I will at times, I will review certain products and give my best fat man unbias opinion but the majority of the time it will be my view of the world of cycling from a big guys viewpoint. I am posting two older post from Cajun Cyclist, then next week I will be posting new stuff. Thanks David

I want to give a little info before I get into telling you about my 1st group
ride. Yes, I am the fat man, but I am going down with a quickness. I went from
260lbs on June 6th, down to 230lbs on July 22nd. My bike (Lucy, named in honor
of my Dad, will give info on that later) is a beast. It is a GMC Denali hybrid
that is a whopping 31 lbs. When Matt at Precision Bikes cheched the weight, it
made the ceiling make popping noises.

Now you know a few facts, let’s get into the group ride. First and foremost, it
was awesome, but it didn’t start that way. When I first got there, there were
guys coming out with cool looking team jerseys, bikes that drool over in
magazines and at Mark’s place, and they were all under 200 lbs. All the
excitment that I had the night before was steadily running into dread. There was
no way I was going to keep up with these guys.

[pullquote1]I made up my mind, I was going to bail out with dignity. In other words when everyone took off, I was going to slide out the back.[/pullquote1]
Just then I noticed a
little group of 3 that wasn’t leaving with the others. Found out that this was
the beginners group I was hoping for. Meet Rhonda, Jen and Elijah.

Rhonda started out by giving me pointers on how to ride group, hand signals,
call outs etc. We started out at a nice click (13-15 mph) and was enjoying
talking with everyone. As me and Rhonda was talking, we noticed we were dropped
a good bit, so we pushed to get up with our 2 man breakaway. Then IT came. They
called it a hill, I call it a small mountain. Honestly, it wasn’t that bad but
still ate my lunch and put my lungs on the floor.

Before I knew it we were by the Farm golf course and really enjoying ourselves.
Plus, they were right, riding in a group makes you push harder. There was one
time I hit 26.9 mph. Of course it was downhill and with a tailwind…but it was
my accomplishment.

All in all, it was one of the best times I had on my bike. Next Sat. guys I will
be joining you for breakfast.