Spaghetti Anyone?

Dateline: October 22, 2005
Yeah, I know I'm slack when it comes to blog updates, but better late than never. On Saturday, October 22, Suzy, Fred, myself and lots of other slightly insane folks opted for the scenic fat tired tour of Northern Florida and Southern Georgia Plantation dirt roads. This was one of the options of the organized Spaghetti 100 bike ride that oddly enough, did not offer spaghetti after this year's ride - something about a scheduling conflict with the usual space that they cook in... Totalling 68 miles on a combination of dirt and pavement, but mostly dirt, we left Miccosoukee, FL and headed North towards Thomasville, GA, then to Boston, GA, then back to Miccosoukee. Boston is where Chloe was found wandering loose after she turned herself in to the Police Station there. Speaking of Chloe, she just celebrated her 3 year anniversary here with us, hard to believe she's been with us that long...
Back to the ride, it was very scenic, but it was about 20 miles too long for my tastes. Suzy said she chose this option, since "Everyone knows that dirt roads are flat!". This statement was proven false MANY times over during the course of our trek, but Fred and I only called BS on her maybe 30 times or so. I had asked the ride co-ordinator about the condition of the dirt roads, and if they were sandy or hard packed clay, and she told me they were mostly hard packed, so I opted for skinny road slicks inflated to around 90psi for the ride - much to my chagrin, the roads were quite sandy, especially the leg from Boston back to the finish. This made for some interesting moments for Suzy and I, but luckily neither of us actually fell from the sand. Fred kept extolling the virtues of his fatter, more suited knobby tires at a much more reasonable 35 psi. I, of course, ignored him and continued my sand surfing on skinny tires. To pay him back for all of his snide comments, I laid the hammer down on Suzy and Fred at the end of the ride, just trying to get back to the truck so I could get off my bike. Little did I know that they were plotting to kick my bike and knock me off - if they could only catch me, which fortunately for me, did not happen. Shortly longer than 7 hours after we left the parking area, we arrived back, sore, dirty, tired and VERY thirsty. We changed clothes, (except for Fred, he opted to stay in his bib shorts, which he claimed were very comfortable - go figure) piled into Fred's 4 door Ford F-150 and headed for civilization and in search of food and cold beer. We found a Beef O'Brady's in Thomasville that had excellent food (isn't all food better after a long bike ride?) and ice cold beer on tap. It was a great experience, but Fred came home and immediately had me list his bike on EBay - I guess he wanted to ensure he would not be able to do this ride in the future.