Final Tuesday C ride 9/13

[Chris Stratton]

The weather for the final Tuesday C ride of the 2022 season Tuesday September 13th is looking to start out rainy, and current predictions have it clearing only in the 7pm range.

But should the weather system accelerate, there's still a chance we might be able to ride from Pulaski Park at 5:30, so I'll be watching the forecast all day in hope of being able to make such an announcement late afternoon.

If we are able to have our end-of-season ride, it will be a 21 mile "Chipmunk" variation:

https://ridewithgps.com/routes/40842005

Regardless if Tuesday's ride happens or not, I'd like to remind everyone from the club and the C ride in particular that on Wednesday the 14th we'll be having a whole-club social ride through Hatfield and potentially Sunderland to which both intro and C riders are explicitly invited, followed by a free pizza party.   I'm committed to making sure there's a version of that ride which is welcoming to everyone who shows up, so please do join in.  I personally intend to be the last rider back, regardless if that's around the full river loop, or if some of us need to turn around before the bridge and return through Hatfield, we'll make sure there's a version the ride that works for everyone, so please come and enjoy our last weeknight ride as a club.

Of course just showing up straight to the party is allowed, but getting a chance to ride with a broader spectrum of the club is a great opportunity I very much hope everyone will take.

Looking forward, I'm very interested in replacing the loss of the Tuesday night C with some sort of similarly moderate daytime weekday ride, so if there's a time or day during the week when you're available, please let me know via either off-list email, or in person at the party on Wednesday.  The C+ folks are already organizing an earlier version of their ride, and we can as well - be that a Tuesday morning or a Friday afternoon, you tell me. 

I'd also like to point out that even as early sunset means we lose the weeknight rides, fall is in many ways the best and most traditional season for longer rides - the 40-60 mile Saturday C rides will be continuing well into fall.  And I'm likely to continue complementing those with some sort of more relaxed and/or shorter offering many Sundays which anyone who's done the Tuesday C will find comfortable.

I'm also hoping to organize a yet longer ride for club members (and one without an entry fee!) this fall that can potentially be either an Imperial Century (100 miles) from a Northampton start or a shorter Metric Century (62 miles) for those who'd prefer to drive to a remote starting point along the way.

Hope to see you Wednesday if not Tuesday,

Chris

[Chris Stratton]

Weather for tonight's final C ride still seems indeterminate - on the one hand it's presently a halfway decent day with little on the radar, yet forecasts still predict that we'll be hit with some storm activity in precisely the time range of the ride, and it's not yet clear to me what the source of that would be.

Although I fully understand some will need to firm up their plans by making their own assessment sooner, I'm going to wait to see how things develop before making a call on the ride itself.