Steve, Greg, and I joined this FWBA club ride, and left from the shopping center at Sublett and SH287 in Arlington shortly after 8:00 this morning. It wasn’t a very big turnout for an FWBA ride, but there looked to be 25 bikes or so doing the 60 mile route.

I was on seriously tired legs today. I don’t know if it was from Goatneck or the 800+ miles I’ve done this month (probably both), but I struggled to keep up with the unusually brisk pace of the main group, and spent as much time off the back as in the group.

This ride tries to stay on small, low traffic roads south of Arlington and Fort Worth, and makes a lot of turns to do it. In fact, I think it makes more turns than any club ride I’ve ridden. Today, we seemed determined to see how many of those turns we could miss. There were bonus miles to be had all over the place.

At around mile 47, my chain jammed. I was only stopped for a minute, but that was enough to put me far off the back of the group. I recognized a turn that would let me shortcut and probably catch up with the group, so I took it, but then missed the next turn and ended up far off the route. I decided the only thing to do was just ride in by myself. I took the shortest route I could think of from there, and arrived back at the parking lot a couple of minutes ahead of the main group. I ended up short about a mile from the other riders. I’m feeling really guilty about that mile, but somehow I think I can live with it.

As usual, there were lots of questions about our bikes. I enjoyed the always friendly company of the FWBA riders, and especially enjoyed having Steve and Greg along. I’m usually the only recumbent on these FWBA club rides. I ended up with 56.0 miles and a 16.2 mph average.